Friday, September 18, 2015

Craters Pics


The first pic is of galaxy NGC-3077 that you spotted, Wescott, in your scope at Craters, Friday night.  NGC-3077 is an irregular galaxy, at 10.6 magnitude, belonging to the M-81, M-82 group.  They are all gravitationally interacting with each other, making one revolution as a group, every 100 million years.  NGC 3077 sits about 70 degrees above M-81 at about the same separation as 81 appears to be from 82.  All 3 are roughly 12 million LY from earth.  The photo was with a Canon 20D set at 3200 iso for 30 seconds. It was at prime focus on a Celestron GPS 11 SCT at f/10.
The second pic is of M-45 Pleiades.  It was also with a Canon 20D at 1600 iso and exposed for 5 minutes.  The camera was at prime focus on a 6" f/4 newtonian on an EQ mount.  The guiding was done visually through a 3" f/7 refractor running at 150X.

-- Ron Pugh