Chris Curtis Web Site

M46, originally uploaded by ThinkingCamera.

M46 is a star cluster in the constellation Puppis (not too far from Orion). It is a pretty cluster of around 200 stars around 5,300 light years away. It appears to contain a small planetary nebula (NGC2438) – a cloud of gas and dust around a dying star. There is some debate about whether this is part of the cluster or simply in our line of sight.
This cluster was only about 28 degrees above our horizon (very low) so I am particularly pleased with this image.
15 x 20 second exposures. Atik 320e camera. CPC800 telescope with Hyperstar.

NGC7789, originally uploaded by ThinkingCamera.

This is one of my favourite star clusters and this is the best image I have ever made of it. It is a collection of old stars (hence the colour) in the direction of Cassiopeia. The stars have used up much of their hydrogen and bloomed into “red giants”.
15 x 20second frames. CPC800 Hyperstar Telescope. Atik 320e camera. Quite a bright moon and there was thin cirrus cloud.

M50, originally uploaded by ThinkingCamera.

I like the image of the star cluster M50, but I also was thrilled to discover by chance that it might have a comet in it. I thought that the object marked with the lines was  comet 103P Hartley. The position was right according to software and there was nothing that bright on the charts I have, but the digital sky survey does show a double star, that bright and in the exact position, so it is not the comet. Oh well! “Blinking” between my image and the DSS one, I can see nothing different, so if the comet is in the image, it did not register.
This was made with 15 x 20second exposures on my new Atik320e camera on the 8inch CPC800 telescope.

This is an image I made with with Bradford Robotic Telescope‘s “clustercam” earlier this month. It shows the Pleiades (M45) or “seven sisters” a cluster of new stars, which are still surrounded by some of the gas and dust from which they formed. The stars burn hot and blue.

I am very pleased with this image. It took some work. There is a huge difference in brightness between the main stars and the wispy gas which caused “bloom” – where the light of the bright stars “spilled over”. The colour took a lot of work too and is still not quite right, but the sense of being overwhelmed by the sheer number of stars is strong.

All images from the BRT are copyright Bradford University.

M92, originally uploaded by ThinkingCamera.

I made this image on a lovely late summer evening (28 August 2010) when the sky was extremely transparent, though the moon was rising and making the background brighter than I wanted.

This is M92: a globular cluster in Hercules. It is smaller than the great cluster (M13) but roughly the same distance from us, so is actually more compact. I like the way this image has caught star colour, but you can see the effect that fairly strong wind was having by vibrating the telescope.

M13 again, originally uploaded by ThinkingCamera.

I think this one is a keeper!
I spent a happy couple of hours reprocessing this (actually doing much less to it than I might normally do) and then calculating the colour correction to make my raw frames match a reference image from the Hubble Space telescope.
I am particularly pleased that the two populations of stars are clearly visible. The majority are old and turning gradually yellowish as they begin to use all their fuel. The “blue stragglers” are a mystery, but the latest thinking is that they might be formed where two old stars collide and merge, effectively creating one new, hot star.

M13 – first light new scope, originally uploaded by ThinkingCamera.

This is the first image I have made with the new telescope. So much more depth and so many more stars than with the old one. I am not sure I have finished playing with this – the colour is not right yet and it looks a little over-processed (and has probably been enlarged too much) but I am very pleased with this, especially as there is no guiding (just the normal tracking of the telescope) and the telescope is in alt-az configuration which makes it harder to track the stars.

This was 40 x 30second exposures on an Atik16IC camera. Processed and aligned in Maxim DL.

Now I will have to study a chart I have showing magnitudes to see just how faint some of these stars are.