vkastronomy.com - Astrophotography Weblog
M57 with Orion Europa
17:30 9/10/2004 UTC
< Previous Next >Recently I purchased a new OTA, Orion Europa 200f6 Newton with Hilux coatings. Yesterday weather was excellent and I decided to image M57 to see how it performs in afocal photography. I shot as long as my batteries lasted in zero degree temperature. Result was some 55 images from which 10 was discarded because of vibrations or tracking problems. I also spent some time with post processing. All post processing except scaling and JPEG conversion was done in IRIS. Features I used from IRIS was automatic artificial flat field, sigma-clipping combine and maximum entropy deconvolution. All channels were processed separately and before combining they were morphed to fit together to reduce coma. Despite of irritating JPEG artifacts, I am pretty happy about the result. However it's a point and shoot camera!
NGC/IC Object List:
NGC6720 planetary nebula RA:18h53m35.1 Dec:+33°01m'47" BMag: 9.7, M 57 Ring Nebula
[High Resolution : 800x600 16kB]
Camera: Canon PowerShot A70 digital camera | Telescope: Orion Optics Europa 200mm f6 Newtonian reflector | Mount: Orion Skyview Pro | Filters: - | Guiding: - | Exposure: 45 x 15s f3.2 ISO400 | Software: IRIS, GIMP | Target altitude in the beginning of the exposure 58°
Average Rating 4.50 (2 total votes)
Added: 05:31 10/10/2004 UTC
![[High Resolution : 800x600 16kB]](images/m57-2004.10.09-17h30m-high.jpg){kind=link}