| NOTES |
DATE:
|
Wednesday, October 6 - Thursday, October 7, 2010
|
TIME:
|
10:38 pm - 1:56 am EDT |
| CAMERA: |
Canon 550D (Hutech modified) |
EXPOSURE:
|
100 minutes (20 x 5 minutes) @ ISO 800 |
LOCATION:
|
Okie-Tex Star Party (Camp Billy Joe located near Kenton, Oklahoma) |
INSTRUMENT:
|
TMB-92SS triplet apochromatic refractor (with Tele Vue Focal Reducer/Field
Flattener) |
| MOUNT: |
Celestron CGEM Computerized Mount |
| GUIDING: |
Borg Mini 50mm refractor and Orion StarShoot AutoGuider |
PROCESSING:
|
Images obtained, aligned, stacked, and dark frame subtracted with Nebulosity 2. Further processing done with
Adobe Photoshop CS3 (using Noel Carboni's Astronomy Tools), Noise Ninja 2 and GradientXTerminator. |
COMMENTS:
|
The
Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is the sister galaxy
to our own Milky Way. Lying 14º to the
northeast of Alpheratz, the upper-left star of the Great Square of
Pegasus, it
appears as a 3º detached cloud of the Milky Way. Best
estimates put M31’s distance at 2.5
million light-years. Using its distance,
angular size, and some simple trigonometry gives a diameter of
approximately
170,000 light-years! Depending on what
book you read, M31 has between 200 million and 1 trillion stars!
Also visible in the image are two of
Andromeda’s two dwarf elliptical galaxies.
Closest to the disk of Andromeda is M32 and further out is NGC 205 or
M110. |
