Oooh I got Lovejoy and I didnt realise

[philjay]

Last Tuesday night during the gales I set up the Star Adventurer and Canon 1000d with the nifty fifty lens as a first light of the set up. Due to the bright moon I went for an area of sky away from the main offender and chose the Perseus/Cassiopeia border for one test. I managed to get eventually 15 subs of 1 minute due to fast moving clouds stopping long runs and moon glare stopping subs of longer.

 

Ive just had a play and stacked them tonight just for a laugh, (no great processing just sky glow and some very mean gradients) and lo and behold theres Lovejoy. It had me fooled for a moment, "what is that bright green blob?" then I twigged. I had completely forgotten the comet.

 

Its not up to much due to short duration but its an interesting first light cos theres quite a bit in there when you start looking. Ive annotated to help recognise a few things.

 

Now all I need is a good run of clear sky to try this properly.

 

Edited April 4, 2015 by philjay

[Tweedledee]

That is lovely Phil

So many DSO's to find in there. I love to see Stock 2 in the 15x70s.

[Smithysteve]

Great picture Phil, amazing background of stars and DSO's. There's a lot going on there,

Lovejoy is moving quite rapidly across Cassiopeia, I was looking at it a couple of weeks ago, when it was the other side of the W.

it must have been a nice surprise when you realised you had captured it.

[BAZ]

That is good for the few subs you did, you'll be able to nail the Milky Way with that. It looks good Phil, a really nice wide field. It also shows how big some objects actually are.

[philjay]

Ta chaps. Its an education this widefield because it shows you where stuff is in relation to each other. Ive spent the past few years doing dso imaging through a scope with narrow fov and letting the mount goto find them so you loose track of where they are in relation to each other.

cant wait for a ckear, dark night to do this justice

[Smithysteve]

That is lovely Phil

So many DSO's to find in there. I love to see Stock 2 in the 15x70s

Hey Pete, I bet you knew that stock 2 is known also as muscle man cluster - if you look long enough it looks like a stick man flexing his muscles - it looks really good in Philjays image above...😊

[catman161]

Nice one phil [emoji106]

[Tweedledee]

That is lovely Phil

So many DSO's to find in there. I love to see Stock 2 in the 15x70s

Hey Pete, I bet you knew that stock 2 is known also as muscle man cluster - if you look long enough it looks like a stick man flexing his muscles - it looks really good in Philjays image above...

Steve, don't get me started, this is one if my favourite areas!

Stock 2 is also sometimes called Stichpunks (according to Stephen J. O'Meara) as it resembles character "9" in the animated film. In 1956 Jűrgen Stock was first to recognise that this massive group of stars was actually a cluster, not just a denser milky way patch, so it became the second in his catalog of 24 clusters that he studied. It is interesting to note that Stock 2 is much closer than the nearby double cluster. Stock 2 is 1100 light years away in the Orion spiral arm while the double cluster is 7300 LY away in the Perseus arm. Stock 2 would be much more visible if the stars weren't obscured by so much interstellar dust. It was originally thought that Stock 2 had about 160 members of magnitude 8 and fainter, but recent studies show it has over 600 members down to mag 20. Since it is about 1 degree across it really needs binoculars or a small scope which should show up to about 80 stars on a good night.

Phils image is packed full of clusters originally discovered by Stock, King, Melotte, Collinder, Czernik and Messier which is why I love this region.

Another nice one is Stock 23 "Pazminos Cluster". It is the bright trapezium on the left of Phils image just above half way up.

I'm at a dark sky site in the Cotswolds and just off out for a session