Some other shots from Friday Night

These are presented as having potential for further work rather than as completed items!

My first M33



NGC 1499 - The California Nebula



And the Witches Broomstick with 52 Cygni, part of "The Veil"



All pretty close to the limit but could be improved a lot with a darker sky, more frames and longer exposures!

Hi Paul great go at those Messiers, I love the Veil one best very very nice.

Deirdre Kelleghan
Irish Astronomical Society

All nice efforts Paul Congrats. Would you say that you were assessing the suitability of each one for future work or were you intent on getting the best image possible from each one?

The reason I ask is that I'd suggest that really it's better to concentrate on one object and get the very best you can from that rather than trying to get too many objects in one night. However I get the feeling from your post that these were assessment shots to see whch ones have the most potential. Which I do think is a good policy.

Either way these are three nice shots. Well done.

Thanks guys!

Dave, it was a sort of experimental "there's other things in the sky apart from the usual suspects" approach so armed with a bit of knowledge and a GoTo I just did something a bit different and learned a lot from it.

I shall certainly take something a lot wider than my scope (750mm) to the Veil - something like a 210mm f4 perhaps - I hadn't appreciated just how big the whole thing is. Likewise NGC1499 has potential but not through thin cloud as in this case - my camera is one of the better ones where picking up the Ha is concerned.

It is undoubtedly the case that the taking of great pictures is achieved by taking cruddy ones and working upwards, learning all the way along.

Hi Paul,
I like the 52 cygni shot the most, it would be very interesting to shot this one with an O3 filter, it would significantly darken the background bringing out the Veils luminosity. You'd need a relatively low focal length to get the entire veil in one shot due to its big size.
M33 is a really tough object to get due to its low surface brightness and size, its the attempt to image it on these boards I can remember.

What scope did you use for these shots?

Very nice paul I like the veil the most. One tip you should play around with levels & Curves on photoshop it will take that brightness out of sone of the images. Great work