700 individual exposures of 5 seconds each were stacked for this image for a total exposure just under 1 hour. The camera was a QHY183M (M for Monochrome) and was attached my C14 operating at a focal ratio of about 7
In the near future I'm planning to post a review of the QHY183M monochrome camera. As part of that I've been testing the camera on different objects. One of the subjects I have been photographing is galaxy M83 in the constellation of Hydra. This galaxy is "just" 15 Million Light years away which puts in the galactic neighborhood as shown in the diagram below. It belongs to the Centaurus Galaxy cluster which got a recent @steemstem mention in @lemouth 's article discussing how satellite galaxies organize themselves around their parent galaxies (and implications on the Standard Cosmology model). Incidentally, the name M83, is short for Messier 83, named after a French amateur astronomer, Charles Messier, who cataloged it in the 1700's.
I did this diagram for a friend a few years ago for a book he was writing. Even though he did not use it, I think it is still interesting and shows the arrangement of large galaxies in the vicinity of our own Milky Way Galaxy
So what about a color image? Well I'm working on that, last night I started acquiring color images using a colour camera but not only was I thwarted by cloud, but it appears dew formed on the telescope optics as the images got dimmer as the night progressed. Anyway, here is what I got. I will need a few more exposures to get this to a point where I can combine it with the mono image above.
320 x 5 second exposures with the same setup as above, but using the color version of the QHY183.
NOTE : All the images are the author's, please credit @terrylovejoy if you plan to use them in your own posts
Great Post @terrylovejoy, I don't know much about the stars, but when you say "just" 15 Million Light years away, I feel like we will never have a spaceship capable of traveling light speed or warp speed to reach such distances. And yet I wonder what is out there?...
Never say never about space ship :D @bernardino
We might never get out of our "Local Group" because of the speed the other stars move relative to it.
More info here: https://www.quora.com/Will-we-ever-be-able-to-exit-the-Local-Group
Let's just hope that the scientists are working at the Alcubierre drive we saw everywhere online a few months ago :)
http://www.sciencefictionmodels.com/real-space/ixs-enterprise-nasa-faster-than-light-concept-ship/
Thanks @bernadino , I am not sure if Faster than Light Speed travel will ever be possible - probably not. I do see it possible to get to the nearest stars, using small robotic spacecraft, but even then the technical difficulties are enormous.
What I'd like us do in the next stage is to build a large space telescope designed to detect and categorize planets around nearby stars.
We are still in our infancy stage of space exploration, just wish haft of the funds dedicated to war efforts would be redirected towards our universe, travel & exploration. It would be amazing to see a future with human space travel and colonization.
It is obvious there are habitable planets out there, just we have no way to get to them! It would be incredible to see and possibly interact with alien life!
Being A SteemStem Member
Back in business, great to see!
You make it sound as if its 15 km away.. Nice shot!
lol..its a matter of perspective I guess!
Very neat lens even if a lot too expensive for me to use it as a hobby :)
But what I am curious about is what type of telescope do you use and how does it do the tracking. Is it just a hobby or is it something serious?
I literally know very little regarding the telescope industry.
I also prefer the less noisy monochrome but both of them are incredible.
This is being done purely at an amateur level, although there is quite a bit of pro-am collaboration in astronomy. The telescope uses an equatorial mount for tracking and here is the exact model of telescope.
I've got some better color data now, so might update the last image soon :)
WOW! Only when I saw it alongside a person I did realize the scale of it :D
Great work! Now I can explain your posts a little better.
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For some reason, I prefer the B/W image by a lot ^^
Why? Is it because the colors are false colors?
Nope. It just looks more professional ^^
I do too, but there is not enough color data so the image is very noisy
I feel this is more visible on the colored picture than on the B/W one :)
Great post as always. It's impressive what kind of images can be captured with a monochrome camera ;)
You deserve an upvote for all that work. Looking forward to seeing more.
Thank you @sharpshot
That‘s some nice details - and this with just 5s at f7, wow!
Are you using pixinsight? I would love to see a version with applied deconvolution :)
..and with no fancy processing :)
This was mostly with Maxim dl and Gimp. I haven't got around to looking at pixinsight yet, one day soon.
maizing your post... i like