November 2016 Skynotes - M1 & M15

At long last the weather has been kind enough to finally get imaging. This is the first outing since completely overhauling my EQ6 equatorial mount and fitting a Rowen belt kit. The mount performed amazingly well for this first outing and after carrying out some final tweaks I managed to capture 2 objects. My main target for the night was M1 but as it was still early and M1 was not in my view M15 was a easy target. Despite being a clear night the seeing was no better than Average III to Poor IV and the stars could easily be seen twinkling with the naked eye so I used a longer exposure for guiding than normal to prevent the mount from chasing the seeing. No preprocessing has been carried out on the images so they are a little noisy.

 

Messier 15 (NGC 7078)

Messier 15

M15 is a globular cluster found in the constellation Pegasus.
M15 was discovered by Jean-Dominique Maraldi in 1746 and Charles Messier added it to his catalogue in 1764. It should be visible as a fuzzy star in a small telescope but to reveal individual stars a larger telescope will be necessary. It is estimated to be one of the most oldest and densely packed globular clusters around 13.2 billion years old.
The image is compiled of 40 x 60 sec exposures. 60 sec was used to prevent over exposure the core.

 

Messier 1 (NGC 1952) - Crab Nebula

 Messier 1  

M1 is in the constellation of Taurus just above Zeta tauri. To see more than a fuzzy patch clear dark skies are really required to see this object as it's wispy features are easily lost in the background. The image attached is a compilation of 79 x 2 min exposures taken over 2 sessions the first taken earlier this year in January this November this but still requires further data to capture more of the finer details.

M1 is a supernova remnant  in the centre of which is a neutron star the Crab Pulsar and was first recorded by Chinese Astronomers  in 1054 AD.
The supernova remnant was first found by John Bevis in 1731 and later independently found by Charles Messier in 1758. It was christened the "Crab Nebula" by Lord Ross because the drawing he made in 1844 looked like a crab.

Both of these objects are really interesting and is well worth viewing and researching their astronomical histories.

 

Bob Sayer
Location: Cornwall

December 29th 2015

Equipment details
4" Apochromatic refractor @f/4
Imaging Camera - Artemis285 CCD
Guiding - Celestron 80mm f5 refractor Skyris132M b/w camera
Mount EQ6 controlled by EQASCOM and PHD2.
Filters: Lumicon Deep Sky
Captured and processed in Nebulosity 3/4 and Photoshop.

reference for notes: SkySafari.