M 57 in Black and White

Blogged by Aurélie Le Fort Beunink on July 20, 2011 and tagged with Sample Images, Moon.

This is a more recent image testing my new Sky-Watcher HEQ5 mount and guiding with its finderscope using an old Toucam camera. The attached image is a result of 10x 90s seconds exposures at gain 500 with DMK 41AU02.AS camera, one day after full Moon. The raw images were processed in DeepSkyStacker and Gimp. It was a surprise to me to see how faint stars are visible even with short exposures with a 200mm F/5 newtonian from a big city. Note also the fuzzy patch right to the nebula, which - if I checked it correctly - is a 14.2m galaxy. Next time I'll use longer exposure times and also try some filters to enhance details/convert it to colors. Clear skies, Peter Molnar, Hungary

Please click to enlarge:

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