Tag: Markarian’s Chain

Viewing report Travel to Tenerife Night 3 – Saturday 6th July 2024

Started imaging at 22:20

Focus position main scope 12,330

I ended my observing at 6:15am

Tonight started with low cloud making it slightly hazy although the seeing was around 0.7’.

I found setting the guider to a shorter exposure of 3s improves the guide graph considerably.

Makarian’s Chain – Final stacked image from 3 nights of data

I took another hour of Markarian’s Chain before moving on to M4 for another hour of data.

M4 single 5 min sub

Next I slewed to the first new object for tonight M62 another glob very close to M4. I took 12 images of M62 the globular cluster in Ophiuchus.

M62 single 5 min sub

All was going really well so I moved on to M39 the Open Cluster Cygnus and being high up I took 2 hours of data.

M39 single 5 mins sub

Lastly before bed I took my first set of data on the Crescent Nebula NGC 6888

NGC 6888 Crescent Nebula single 5 min sub

Viewing report Travel to Tenerife Night 1 – Thursday 4th July 2024

Started imaging at 11pm

Focus position main scope 12,334

Camera temp -15℃

Ended imaging at 5:30am

Beautiful night slightly windy 0.9’ seeing at first but then changed dramatically later to around 2.2’

Markarian’s Chain suffered from many satellite trails, more so early on.

View from the iPad

12 x 300s so 1 hour of Markarian’s chain

By the time I started to image M39 the wind had started to pick up and I found even guiding at 60s was causing star trails.

M39 single 5 mins sub

So about 3am I started taking darks and then by 4:15am the seeing which was really the problem had settled down from 2.2 arc secs to 0.9! I went back and took 30 x 60s subs for M55 and then another 30 x 60s for M39 before heading off to bed.

M55 single 5 min sub

This is the final stacked and processed image

M55 – 33 x 5 min subs