Tag: star-gazing

Stargazing time on La Palma – Casa Las Flores

/ Carsten / Leave a comment
Star gazing Casa Las Flores La Palma

It’s stargazing time on La Palma again – this time from Casa Las Flores. The little house is located in Aguatavar – close to Tijarafe on a height of about 580m. You have a power supply outside the building, free view to Polaris from both terraces and in July the bright part of the Milky Way is perfectly visible between 22:00 and 4:00 local time. Furthermore you have a coffee maker, a table, chairs, a fast WLAN internet connection and a barbecue. What else do you need? 😀

The image is a single frame recorded with an Canon EOS6D in combination with a Samyang 2.8/14mm lens (15 sec. exposure time, ISO4000) . The post processing has been done with rawtherapee.

Tonight I only test my equipment – for tomorrow I plan to record the bright nebula M8 in the milkyway. So stay tuned for the result!

Last updated: June 16, 2022 at 12:10 pm

Observing the Coma Galaxy Cluster at the Tacande Observatory on La Palma

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Coma galaxy cluster - 2017/04/13
Date2017/04/13
LocationLa Palma / Spain
ObjectComa galaxy cluster
CameraModified Canon EOS6D
Guidingyes
TelescopeR120S / 120mm
Barlow lensnone
MountEQ6Syntrek
Cooling-
Luminance6x RGB frame / 240s
Red-
Green-
Blue-
Dark5x
Flat-
Total exposure~24m

Tonight I again spent the night at the Tacande Observatory on La Palma. There we observed the Coma galaxy cluster. The result is this photo taken with a modified EOS6D camera.

For post-processing I used the free software DeepSkyStacker and GIMP. The full resolution images is available here.

Clear skies!

Last updated: June 16, 2022 at 12:14 pm

3 Galaxies at once – Messier 65, Messier 66 & NGC3628

/ Carsten / 2 Comments
M65, M66 & NGC3628 - 2017/03/29
Date2017/03/29
LocationLa Palma / Spain
ObjectMessier 65, Messier 66 & NGC3628
CameraAtik383L+
Guidingyes, QHY5-II Mono via OAG
Telescope8" GSO Newtonian
Barlow lensnone
MountEQ6Syntrek
Cooling-10°C
Luminance9x 600s, bin: 1x1
Red9x 150s, bin: 2x2
Green9x 150s, bin: 2x2
Blue9x 150s, bin: 2x2
Dark2x
Flat10x
Total exposure~2h37m

I was able to record this image of three galaxies in a quite windy but clear night with my own equipment. This night I was based on a quiet place in Tacande on La Palma. I used my 8″ GSO Newton telescope in combination with an Atik383L+ cooled camera. The optics were mounted on an EQ6 Syntrek mount. The total exposure time of the resulting image is about ~2h37m.

It is a combination of 9 luminance frames a 600 seconds exposure time (binning 1×1) and 9 frames a 150 seconds exposure time (binning 2×2) for red, green and blue frames.
A full resolution image is available here.

The three objects shown on the picture are M65, M66 and NGC3628 (also known as the Hamburger Galaxy). All are located in constellation Leo. M65 and M66 were discovered by Charles Messier in 1780. Both are intermediate spiral galaxies and between 35 million and 36 million light-years away. The Hamburger Galaxy is an unbarred spiral galaxy also about 35 million light-years away which was discovered 4 years later by William Herschel.

Clear skies!

Last updated: June 16, 2022 at 12:30 pm

¿Por qué dormir en un hotel de cinco estrellas si puedes dormir bajo millones de estrellas?

/ Carsten / 3 Comments
2017_03_25-tent_milkyway1_border_web_qual_small

This image of the Milky Way has been recorded in a clear, cold night not so far away from Roque de Los Muchachos on La Palma. It has been recorded with an EOS6D in combination with a Rokinon 14mm/f2.8 fast lens. The exposure time was 20s with ISO6400. A darkframe has been subtracted later on. The RAW file has been developed using rawtherapee. For correction of vignetting and perspective a lens correction profile from this website has been used (btw. thanks for providing this profile!).

The image is also available in full resolution (3.1MB).

Last updated: June 9, 2022 at 22:10 pm

A new star-gazing location on the west side of La Palma

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small.telescope2

Since the last astro-tour the moon still has left the scene. However, unfortunately Mirador del Jable and Mirador Llano de Las Ventas are covered in clouds and there is quite some wind up there. I am happy that hdmeteo tells me that in advance. Luckily, it also tells me that the west-side of La Palma looks pretty good for tonight. I just have no idea where exactly I should drive to with my equipment. It should be a quiet place with no wind and no traffic but it should still be reachable by car…

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