Burren Skies

: cheer: hey Frank, those images came out great, a pity the cloud rolled in at 11pm as expected.
what a night!!, the milky was was just awesome, the sky was comparable to what we got in Greece except that horizon here it's alot more murky, to be expected as we were at altitude of 600feet as opposed to 4500 feet.
I have recently been doing up my own atlas/booklet where I have the best ngc/ic objects for each constellation, the small atlases don't have enough detail but the big ones are too bulky to be using in the field. I've got 28 of these for cygnus and went through alot of them,
All I can say is that there are alot of spectacular open clusters in Cygnus, ngc6819 was particularly striking, how messier didn't see this I'll never know. The crescent nebula was amazing with an O3 filter, it looked similar to the link here except for the colour.
www.astropix.com/HTML/E_SUM_N/NGC6888.HTM
We tried the north american nebula again with an O3 and it was there in all its glory, the gulf of Mexico was plainly there, the veil was stunning and high power showed alot of wisps and twists.
We tried these 3 objects at Birr, the veil from there was not impressive and the other 2 were simply invisible, the dark sky in the burren is worth the trip.
The cocoon nebula was also stunning as was the blinking planetary ngc6828.
IC1318 was 2 diffuse elongated patches with good edges, many of the ngc clusters were diffuse and wide and looked like dense sections of the milkyway, a merriod of stars.
I spent most of the night in cygnus, but we also had to get a look at the whirlpool galaxy, ring nebula, and the messier clusters in auriga and ended up on the pleiades.

At this stage the clouds were coming in, we could have easily stayed there until sunrise had the weather been on out side.

Frank, Denis, I hope that you didn't get pinkfloyd overload :laugh:
I had the ipod fm transmitter plugged into the powerpack and velcrod a small fm radio onto the pack so we had some good music (to me anyway) for the night.
Frank, next time you can select the music. :silly:

Beautiful images as always Frank. I loved the second image especially. Cassiopia, Double Cluster, Auriga Messier clusters M45 Pleides and the mighty M31 Andromeda galaxy all in the same naked eye sized FOV. Really gives you a sense of the scale of M31. Then you go and blow me away with the last shot. Looking over the Persues Milkyway arm at Andromeda 2-3 million Lightyears beyond. Did you flip and mirror that image for the composition though. The orientation has me befuddled.

LOL @ Dave with the Floyd :laugh: Last Winter with the CloudyNights Mallincam Video Astronomy webcam Yahoo Live broadcasts, someone had to provide backgroung music for the channel that all us viewers would hear through our PC speakers while watching the amazing live views of Galaxies and Nebulas. I provided the music and streamed it to the others. Guess what I was omstly streaming?:laugh: Floyd :laugh: There is no finer music to observe to!!

Thanks.

Calibos wrote:

Did you flip and mirror that image for the composition though. The orientation has me befuddled.

Yeah, I flipped it round and cropped it to give a sense of weight
to the image and also depth so your eye was lead out to Andromeda.
There was a small bit of high alt cloud came along and left a kind of orange streak
in the image. At first I thought it would be un useable but with a bit of
processing (in fairness it is almost overprocessed but thats the look I was going for)
it is not to obtrusive overall.
In fact, I like the idea of the cloud bieng in there for the reason that it
adds to the mental picture of 'depth' eg . Earth (cloud) - Milky Way - Space - Andromeda.
Anyway - that just gives you a rough idea of how I sometimes think out these images...
The full unprocessed shot is here;
www.frankryanjr.com/observing_sessions.htm


Calibos wrote:

LOL @ Dave with the Floyd :laugh: Last Winter with the CloudyNights Mallincam Video Astronomy webcam Yahoo Live broadcasts, someone had to provide backgroung music for the channel that all us viewers would hear through our PC speakers while watching the amazing live views of Galaxies and Nebulas. I provided the music and streamed it to the others. Guess what I was omstly streaming?:laugh: Floyd :laugh: There is no finer music to observe to!!

I wouldnt be a fan but it was great background music all the same!
I really enjoyed it and it really added to the session.

Calibos wrote:

LOL @ Dave with the Floyd :laugh: Last Winter with the CloudyNights Mallincam Video Astronomy webcam Yahoo Live broadcasts, someone had to provide backgroung music for the channel that all us viewers would hear through our PC speakers while watching the amazing live views of Galaxies and Nebulas. I provided the music and streamed it to the others. Guess what I was omstly streaming?:laugh: Floyd :laugh: There is no finer music to observe to!!

well isn't that gas !! :laugh: :laugh:
Watching the first quarter moon set on the western horizon with "dark side of the moon" in the background was cool I have to say.
The only thing is that I want to play the same stuff again but don't want to bore the lads, many moons ago I was a mad floyd fan, what can I say.

BTW, I really like your last shot Frank, seeing the milkyway like that + Andromeda is a shot not often done and gives a great sense of our galaxy and the distant Andromeda spiral.