Karah's Astro Images: October 2007

Tuesday, 30 October 2007

Where to look for Comet 17/P Holmes

Comet 17/P Holmes

I managed to see Comet 17/P Holmes last night for the first time. Cloud has plagued me all week and if not cloud something else has stopped me from enjoying the view. As you all should know it was only supposed to be Mag +17 but due to an outburst it has become a naked eye object of +3.8. I have not seen one before so this is the first for me and WOW what a beauty it was. Didn't stop smiling all night. As soon as i went outside last night i could see it as clear as day, even under the BAD LP here in London. My Celestron gave me lovely views and am going to get the 5" out tonight as well to try and get some images. A friend of mine took these images which are fantastic but i want to try and get some afocal images to add to my little collection. Fingers crossed.

Monday, 29 October 2007

First Mosaic of the Terminator

This is my first attempt at stitching my images together. Taken on the 20th October but have only just managed to sort them all out. Equipment used was my Celestron 4 SE, Toucam pro II with 600 frames stacked and processed then put together in iMerge. Another lot of free software that a friend of mine showed me, very easy to use. I'm very pleased with the result being as it's my first but was unable to get the balance right towards the middle, no matter what i tried, but hey, all comes with practice. I have put 2 up as the one is in JPEG and the other in BMP. Can't decide myself which one i prefer...

Monday, 15 October 2007

Trifid Nebula by Chris Dixon

Needed to practice my processing with DSO's but haven't had much luck with my own images(if you can call them that!) so Chris very was kind and let me use his images. This one of the Trifid Nebula is one of my favs, just one word to descibe his image.....Beautiful. Chris has done an excellent job, better than any of mine. The first image is my attempt, the other is Chris's original.Using Gimp I played about with unsharp mask and then sharpened it up a tad, added a little more hue and saturation and finally adjusted the curves to darken some of the background and the blueish tint towards the bottom. To be completely honest i had no idea what i was doing and just played about with different functions to see what the result would be. I don't think it's that bad but do prefer Chris's to mine.

Saturday, 13 October 2007

ISS PASSES FOR LONDON

Seems to be a few chances from tonight to catch a glimps of the ISS passing over. All passes are very bright so you won't miss it. Here is a table for the times and where to find it. The minus in the mag coloum means it's bright ie: -2.4 is brighter than 0.2 and 0.2 is brighter than 1.2. Hope that makes sense.

Date	Mag	Starts			Max. altitude			Ends
Date	Mag	Time	Alt.	Az.	Time	Alt.	Az.	Time	Alt.	Az.
13 Oct	-2.4	19:08:09	10	W	19:11:01	88	NW	19:13:07	17	E
13 Oct	0.2	20:43:17	10	W	20:44:30	22	W	20:44:30	22	W
14 Oct	-2.5	19:31:21	10	W	19:34:16	85	NNE	19:35:18	35	E
14 Oct	1.2	21:06:30	10	W	21:06:42	11	W	21:06:42	11	W
15 Oct	-2.4	18:19:23	10	W	18:22:18	88	NE	18:25:09	10	E
15 Oct	-2.5	19:54:31	10	W	19:57:30	73	S	19:57:30	73	S
16 Oct	-2.2	18:42:33	10	W	18:45:16	77	WNW	18:48:18	10	E
16 Oct	-0.8	20:17:42	10	W	20:19:41	33	WSW	20:19:41	33	WSW
17 Oct	-2.4	19:05:40	10	W	19:08:38	74	S	19:10:31	18	ESE
17 Oct	0.6	20:41:03	10	W	20:41:54	15	WSW	20:41:54	15	WSW
18 Oct	-1.5	19:28:48	10	W	19:31:35	43	SSW	19:32:46	26	SSE
19 Oct	-2.2	18:16:44	10	W	18:19:38	75	S	18:22:29	10	ESE
19 Oct	-0.3	19:52:06	10	W	19:54:27	22	SSW	19:55:04	21	SSW
20 Oct	-1.4	18:39:49	10	W	18:42:38	44	SSW	18:45:21	10	SE
20 Oct	0.8	20:16:27	10	SW	20:17:08	11	SW	20:17:28	10	SW
21 Oct	-0.1	19:03:04	10	W	19:05:25	23	SSW	19:07:46	10	SSE
22 Oct	1.0	19:27:19	10	SW	19:28:05	11	SW	19:28:51	10	SSW