One of my favourite parts of the sky - the inner regions of the M31 andromeda galaxy. This is a mosaic of two frames. Each frame is 5x360s exposures. The right hand region strongly shows the dust lanes of the host M31 galaxy. The star cluster, NGC206 within the galaxy is clearly visible, along with various other small clustered regions.
The satellite galaxy, M32, is visible in the left hand section. This is a small E2 class eliptical galaxy associated with the M31 galaxy. This small galaxy does not show any features, but makes a nice juxtaposition with the star cluster.
With this image I feel I am now starting to make some progress with the Artemis CCD camera. And the weather cooperated. The starshapes are pretty good. I would never have believed a year ago I would be doing 6 minute exposures quite happily. Using the 2x2 binning (which gives 4x sensitivity for the same loss of resolution) is a very powerful approach. You don't get such a huge image, but capture and tracking demands are reduced. Using the Artemis unbinned is probably a little beyond the resolution of the local seeing, so 2x2 binning is a good approach, especially on mosaiced regions where you are going to reduce the size of the final image anyway.
THe image below shows the region reduced in size quite strongly to fit neatly across the page. The full resolution image can be found here
Captured with 2x2 binning in ArtemisCapture. Calibrated in Maxim. 2 frames were blended into mosaic using Maxim. Curves and seam removal in photoshop.
This image was autoguided using my 400mm focal length refractor and my black and white SC1 webcam.
Exposure Details :
5x360s on 200mm @ F5 with ART285
5x360s on 200mm @ F5 with ART285
Curdridge Observatory, Southampton,UK
