2014-07-24 Images from Danville Wildlife Area

Post date: Jul 26, 2014 9:39:30 PM

I spent Wednesday night July 24 through Thursday morning July 24, 2014, at the Danville Wildlife Area. My primary interest was imaging M20 the Trifid and M16 the Eagle Nebula. The weather was surprisingly good, with low temperatures, clear skies and low humidity until 2:00 am. Except where noted, all images were taken with a Nikon D5200 camera mounted at the prime focus of a Meade LX-90 ACF 8 inch Schmidt Cassegrain telescope with an Antares 0.63x focal reducer, for an effective speed of F/6.3. The scope was mounted on a Celestron Advanced VX mount. All images were auto guided with the Orion Magnificent Mini 50mm auto guider and Starshoot camera.

NGC6515 (M20) the Trifid Nebula

NGC6515 (M20) imaged with a total exposure of 24 minutes at ISO-1600. The imaging details can be downloaded here.

NGC6611 (M16) the Eagle Nebula

NGC6611 (M16) imaged for an exposure time of 16 minutes at ISO-1600. The imaging details can be downloaded here.

The Milky Way in Sagittarius.

This image of the southern Milky Way was imaged with a Nikon D5200 with Nikon 55 to 300 mm zoom lens, set at 55 mm efl, F/4.3. It was piggy-back mounted on a Celestron Advanced VX Mount and auto guided during the 4 min 30 second exposure at ISO-1600. According to the Astrometry.net data, the image is centered at RA 18h 23m 00s Dec -14° 33' 59". The image size is 16.1 x 24.1 degrees at a scale of 29 arcsec/pixel. The imaging details can be downloaded here.

NGC7000 the North American Nebula

NGC7000 was imaged with a Nikon D5200 with Nikon 55 to 300 mm zoom lens, set at 55 mm efl, F/4.3. It was piggy-back mounted on a Celestron Advanced VX Mount and auto guided during the 20 minute second exposure at ISO-1600. Deneb is the bright star up and left of center. The imaging details can be downloaded here.

NGC0224 (M31) the Andromeda Galaxy

NGC0224 (M31) with companion galaxies NGC0221 (M32) and NGC0205 (M110) were imaged with a Nikon D5200 with Nikon 55 to 300 mm zoom lens, set at 300 mm efl, F/5.6. It was piggy-back mounted on a Celestron Advanced VX Mount and auto guided during the 12 minute exposure at ISO-1600. . The imaging details can be downloaded here.