Deep Sky Slide Images

This picture shows the effect of star trailing. This exposure was for about 15mins with a 55mm lens. I had to do a lot of tweaking to the picture because of light pollution. Film: ISO 400, negative.

I took this image of M31 at prime focus for about 40 seconds unguided. You can just make out M110 above it on the larger image. I had the R.A. drive on my mount on and left it running. It was taken at 1:10UT on 1999/11/17. I used Kodak Elite chrome slide film and tweaked the image using Paint shop pro.

This image shows the constellation Aquila. Delphinus can be seen top left. I took it from my light polluted back garden in the UK. I wanted to get an image of the Nova Aquila 1992 II. It was around mag. 4 on 1999/12/03.

I took this image on 1999/12/08 at 19:25UT. It had dimmed quite a bit by now and this was the best clear spell I had for a while. I used a 55mm lens with my camera on a tripod for a 10 second exposure on Kodak Elite chrome slide film.

This is a close up of the Nova Aquila 1992 II. I have circled the Nova so you can easily pick it out!! This exposure was for 30 seconds and a bit of star trailing is evident.

This image was taken on 2000-12-28 at 21:20UT. It shows the main part of the constellation 'Orion'. This was a 30 second exposure.

This image was the same as the one above, but for 60 seconds.

This image was the same as the one above, but for 120 seconds.

This image was the same as the one above, but for 240 seconds.

I used the 240 second exposure for this image, but I zoomed in on the sword area and then scanned the slide. I also emphasized the red colour to bring out the nebulosity.

I adjusted the red in this image as well to bring the large areas of nebulosity.

I took this image around 21:36UT. The small cluster at the bottom of this image is the 'Beehive' cluster or Praesepe (M44). The two bright stars at the top right are Castor and Pollux from the constellation 'Gemini'. This was a 90 second exposure using a 55mm lens.

This is a close up of the cluster form the above image. I zoomed in on the cluster and scanned the slide.

This image was 60 seconds long and shows the Pleiades, (M45) the Hyades, the planets Jupiter and Saturn. The Pleiades is the small cluster of stars at the top/middle. The Hyades is the 'toppled V' in the middle of the image. The Hyades is actually the head of the bull (Taurus) with the bright orange star (Aldebaran) marking the eye of the bull. Jupiter is the bright object in the centre and Saturn is the slightly elongated object to the right.

This images shows a close up of the Pleiades from the above image. You can just see some of the nebulosity around a couple of the stars. The stars are blue because they are quite young compared to the red giants like Aldebaran.

This image is a close up of the Hyades from the same images that the Pleiades came from. You can easily see the orange colour of Aldebaran (the eye of the bull).

This wide star field, of 120 seconds, shows the double star cluster in Perseus. Its also known as NGC884 and is very nice to look at in a wide field scope. The cluster lies roughly half way between Perseus and Cassiopeia. From a dark sky site, you can just see the cluster with the naked eye, and is easily found in a finder scope.

This image is from the one above and shows a close up of the double cluster on the left and some red nebulosity on the right.

This image was also 120 seconds long and shows the constellation Cassiopeia. The familiar 'W' shape can be seen from the bright stars. There is a lot of red nebulosity visible in this image and the double cluster (NGC 884) can be seen in the lower right hand corner.

I zoomed in on the main 'W' part of Cassiopeia and scanned the image again. This images shows the main bright stars quite well.

This image is a 240 second image of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). It also shows the three middle stars of Cassiopeia in the top right hand corner. M31 is a very large object compared to most deep sky wonders. It is the furthest object you can see with the naked eye. It is roughly two million light years away. The light year is a way of describing the distance of very distant objects. For the Andromeda Galaxy, it means that the light has taken two million years to reach your eyes, travelling at a speed of 300,000,000 meters per second! That is quite a long way to go.