My La Palma trip - the Milky Way and more

Hi everyone,

Some of you may remember me mentioning in my last port that I was going on a trip to La Palma to use the WHT to observe brown dwarf disks in the star forming region of Ophiuchus. Well I just arrived back and I have some Milky way images to show you guys. Also, while using the 2.4m telescope, we got to take some sneaky narrowband images of M16 (the eagle nebula) but unfortunately I have yet to process them, so I will post them asap. in the meantime, enjoy these Milky way shots

Nikon D80, mosaic of 30 second shots. Me in the forground of the first image, then the GTC (the largest single mirror telescope in the world right now) in the other.









Clear skies,
John

I'm very jealous John what superb skies, I've heard la Palma is a world class observing site.

We're you there to observe professionally or out of curiosity when using that tiny scope

Thanks Keith, best skies I've ever seen to be honest.

I went on a college trip as part of my masters in astronomy programme in the university of Groningen, Netherlands.

We hope to see some circumstellar disks around some brown dwarfs using spectra obtained. But our wavelengths focus on cooler objects. We observed 8 brown dwarfs in the infrared using the WHT. So a lot of pain-staking data reduction to do in the meantime but I will keep you guys posted on the progress. The brown dwarfs chosen have never been observed spectrally before so I am quite excited about it.

Clear skies,
John

Nice work John!
Like the meteor in the bottom image.

Your masters, is that full-time or distance learning?

Hi Michael,

Thanks! Yes, it is full-time, I am currently living in the Netherlands now.

Hi Guys,

As promised, the M16 image from my La Palma trip.

45 second exposures in H-alpha, SII and OIII filters.

Enjoy.