Musings in the Cosmos

Wast Hills Movie

Another movie of the telescope at Wast Hills, actually these pics were taken during the most recent night we had out there which produced some nice pics (see here), the first one was only over a short period of time where as this video covers all the way from just before sunset to just after sunrise… (if below does not work try the link directly at youtube.com)

Clear Skies and nebulae

On Tuesday I took Astrosoc out to the University of Birmingham Observatory at Wast Hills for a BBQ (pictures from the social side later) and a night of observing. It was a fantastic night with probably the most clear skies I’ve ever seen at Wast Hills, for the visual observers they claim to have had the best view of the Milky Way ever at Wast Hills (to even see it is a almost a shock given we aren’t too far out of the city).

Since the title of the post includes nebulae lets start with them. We managed to get some decent images of some lovely nebulous regions. We started off the night, well it was still fairly light when we got this image, with the Ring Nebula (M57, 2x30s BRV):

We also observed the Lagoon nebula - M8 ( 2x10s BRV ) is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as an H II region.

The Veil Nebula, also known as the Cygnus Loop or the Witch’s Broom Nebula, is a large, relatively faint supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus (2x30s in BVR).

We took a quick view of IC5070 - Pelican Nebula (30s BRV) - I’m pretty sure we can do much better than this quick snapshot but it does show some nice dense gas clouds:

M97 - Owl Nebula (30s BRV) showing the eyes and maybe a bit more - slightly deeper required:

M27 - Dumbbell Nebula (30s BRV):

IC 5146 - Cocoon Nebula (30s BRV):

A close second to the Veil nebula in my favourite image of the night, M20 - the Trifid Nebula is an H II region located in Sagittarius (2x30s BRV):

We weren’t so successful with the North American Nebula, NGC7000 - North American Nebula (30s BRV) taken at Wast Hills - clearly no nebulosity can be seen (thus we either didn’t observe deep enough or in the wrong patch of the nebula as it is fairly large):

Star Clusters:

Wild Duck cluster (M11; 30s BVR)

NGC6760 - a globular cluster in the constellation Aquila (30s BRV):

Galaxies:

Moving a bit further away… M63 - the Sunflower Galaxy (30s BVR):

M108 (30s BRV):

Stephan’s quintet - 4 of which are part of a compact galaxy group (30s R):

M31 - the centre of the Andromeda Galaxy (30s BRV)

M51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy (2x30s BRV):

NGC 6822 - Barnard’s Galaxy is in this field though not very clear, it is probably the faint nebulous region (30s BRV):