Triple APOD - November 19, 2024: Owl Cluster From Urban Skies by Wayne Malkin
Astrophotography from a city can be disheartening. Ten hours of photos from a city backyard might not get you close to what less than an hour would from a dark site when it comes to revealing faint galaxies, nebulae, and dust. Star clusters, however, are a different story. Compared to diffuse light sources like galaxies and nebulae, stars are really bright, and imaging stars and their colours is much less affected by light pollution. In today's image, Wayne uses a Takahashi Epsilon 180ED Newtonian scope which gives rise to the lovely 4-pointed star spikes that feel all too familiar thanks to Hubble. He's also overlaid a silhouette of an owl, helping us understand why the Owl cluster is called what it is. From Wayne:
"This version includes three hours of LRGB data shot on September 19, 2024, using a Takahashi Epsilon-180ED with the 1.5x extender (750mm focal length), an ASI2600MM Pro camera, and Optolong LRGB filters. It was mounted on an Astro-Physics Mach2GTO and shot from my deck in the middle of the city. The Mach2GTO has absolute encoders, so when well aligned it can shoot successfully unguided. In this case, I was shooting 60 and 90 second subs at 1.03 arc-seconds per pixel.
NGC 457 is an open cluster with about 60 known members, at a distance of 7,900 ly. and an approximate age of 21 million years.
NGC 436 is also visible bottom-right."
Related Products
ZWO ASI2600MM Pro USB3.0 Cooled Monochrome...
These are extraordinary cameras. Incredible detail and sensitivity combined with huge sensors result in gorgeous wide-field images. They also work ...
ZWO ASI2600MM Pro USB3.0 Cooled Monochrome Camera (ASI2600MM-P)
Optolong LRGB Filter Kit 36mm Unmounted (O...
