SkyView Acres September 2015

[Neil Heacock]

SkyView Acres September 2015

It's a real treat to go out in September. Would be even more of a treat to go out in January! But having the fall objects nice and high and the winter objects rising a bit it real nice.

I don't think I'll go back to SkyView Acres in July, August or September as the wasps out there are so bad it really takes the relaxation out of the daytime. I was cooped up in the RV again. Booo!

Even still, I had some wonderful times with good friends old and new. Richard, Greg, Dan and others I frequent star party outings with are always great because I rarely see them outside of astronomy events. Sharing image target choices and encouraging and helping each other is such a great part of imaging together.

This event I had a special treat. Margaret McCrea who is an avid visual observer came over and shared some wonderful views with me. Tricky galaxy groups where there were multiple galaxies in the field that took quite some time to identify them all. One view got quite convoluted with NGC 1325 being identified as 2 different galaxies (1325 and 1325A??). Will the real NGC 1325 please pop into view!

In my imaging session it was a rough few nights because it was so hot. Both cameras running at 70 degrees F... waaaa... I want a cooled CCD so badly! The shots I took that I used 5 minute subs are pretty decent. The ones I used 10 minute subs are decent in the modded camera and nearly a loss in the stock camera. I had to smack the image with far more noise reduction then I'd like and even then I was left with quite splotchy images. My backgrounds are darker in general because of this to try and hide some of that. Oh well. Serves me right for not using the Peltier cooling chamber.

This was also a good lesson in being prepared. I didn't get a chance to prepare a full set of imaging targets per setup, so there was a lot of random selections in this set.

Gallery From This Outing
See Full Gallery Here