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Comet Stuff!

Recently I have been conbritubting many hours of photography to the global effort of documenting and characterizing the comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring). This comet will be passing very close to Mars in October. Observations of this comet are useful to agencies such as NASA who have hardware orbiting Mars. Today I published a fun little video of images from just one night, the 24th August. You can see it at Vimeo below.

More of info and pictures of C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) – click here.

Comet C2013 A1 Siding Spring from Roger Groom on Vimeo.

Object: Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) Date of Observation UT: 2014-08-22 Time of Observation UT: 15:00 Observer Name: Roger Groom Location of Observation: Perth, Western Australia (-31o54'S, 116o09'E) Camera: SBIG ST8-XME (bin 1x1) Filter: Red Astronomik Type II (not Type IIc) Exposure Time: 67 x 300 sec (mean combine) Plate Scale: 0.84 arc sec/pixel Position Angle: 0 degrees 26 minutes from North Axes: North-up, East-left Processing notes: Mean combined 67 exposures with sigma reject to assist with removal of stars.
Object: Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring)
Date of Observation UT: 2014-08-22
Time of Observation UT: 15:00
Observer Name: Roger Groom
Location of Observation: Perth, Western Australia (-31o54’S, 116o09’E)
Camera: SBIG ST8-XME (bin 1×1)
Filter: Red Astronomik Type II (not Type IIc)
Exposure Time: 67 x 300 sec (mean combine)
Plate Scale: 0.84 arc sec/pixel
Position Angle: 0 degrees 26 minutes from North
Axes: North-up, East-left
Processing notes: Mean combined 67 exposures with sigma reject to assist with removal of stars.
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NGC 1532 (spiral galaxy)

NGC 1532 (galaxy in the constellation of Fornax). 22 x 300s clear + 30 x 180s blue + 30 x 180s green + 30 x 180s red. ST8-XME, 12" SCT @ ~2200mm (0.84"/pixel).
NGC 1532 (galaxy in the constellation of Fornax). 22 x 300s clear + 30 x 180s blue + 30 x 180s green + 30 x 180s red. ST8-XME, 12″ SCT @ ~2200mm (0.84″/pixel).

See this and more galaxies in my galaxy gallery. This is probably one of my better LRGB galaxies to date, not something I do very often (LRGB imaging). To view a plate-sovle of this image which shows the objects in it (when you hover your mouse over the image) see it on my astrobin account: http://www.astrobin.com/113009/. It will also show you where in the sky this galaxy is located.

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Sunspots – August 9, 2014

Sunspots - August 9, 2014
Sunspots – August 9, 2014

There are some nice sunspots with extra surface detail surrounding, today. This photograph was taken using my Megrez 90 APO telescope, Canon 6D, Tamron 2x teleconverter, Kenko extension tubes (between 2x and 6D body). It’s a stack of 470 frames recorded using Backyard EOS. A Baader white light filter was used (never look at or photograph directly at he sun without a safe filter).