Sunday, April 21, 2013

Some deep sky goodies with the 80mm achro and mallincam

I decided on a whim to setup the 80mm achro with the mallincam on Friday night, and here are the results. With Orion setting so fast in the evening these days, I did not get my cam/laptop combo up and running in time to catch the Hunter before he set behind the house, so I decided to go trolling for deep sky targets. Bear in mind, with a measly 80mm of aperture and only 14 seconds of exposure, pickings were slim. I didn't have the magnification necessary for any globular clusters, and moonlight didn't do DSO's any favors. I did however have a little bit of luck with some brighter messier objects. The following images were taken with an Orion short tube 80mm achro refractor, a mallincam color hyper imager, celestron UHC/LPR filter, and an iOptron smartEQ mount. Generally these were DSS stacks of 5-10 frames with 2 dark frames applied. Levels, curves, etc.. in photoshop.


M81 and M82 galaxies in Ursa Major. I was really impressed with this show and how well it showed up on this modest setup.


M37 open cluster in Auriga. The color noise was so bad on this I switched to monochrome and adjusted the gamma for a cleaner picture.


This is the Eskimo Nebula (NGC-2392) in the constellation Gemini. It is a planetary nebula, and with larger aperture can show some slight color at the eyepiece.


That's about it, the cold damp air did me in for the evening. I am again amazed at what can be done with a cheap 100 dollar scope and a mallincam.