Good onya redwhine!

Bookmarked.

redwhine wrote:2010 March 2 - M78 and Reflecting Dust Clouds in Orion

Stunning! (Click the image to see it at full resolution.)

My new background!

redwhine wrote:2010 March 4 - NGC 4565: Galaxy on Edge

Interesting telescope setup Dietmar has there. The big scope of the three looks like one of the late Thomas M Back's folded APO refractor designs made by LZOS in Russia with German made tubes and mechanics. Exquisite optics and big bucks there. Very sad that Thomas passed away at such a young age three years ago. He was a particularly talented optical designer. I always thought it was a shame too that he had a falling out with another talented designer in the APO field, Roland Christen. A pity they didn't sort out their differences before Thomas' demise.

The credits list Dietmar has 'Processing' rather than 'Acquisition'.

Pretty, pretty Mira...



I saw (read "had on in the background") a documentary about Mira, and from what i recall the tail is approximately 13ly long and is produced as a result of Mira's enormous velocity. As happens with any fast moving object (that isn't in a perfect vacuum), Mira has a bow shock, which results in the luminous (in UV) long tail. Also, if humans could see in UV, the tail would be easily visable to us with the naked eye.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070817.html

Made of Stars wrote:The credits list Dietmar has 'Processing' rather than 'Acquisition'.

Here's the full credit from the stargazer observatory site:

Stagazer Observatory wrote:Image acquisition by Torsten Grossmann; image-processing by Stargazer-Observatory.
Date: Summer 2009 - seeing 6-(7)/10; transp. 8/10
Scope: 7" TMB Apo f/7
CCD: Sbig 4020: 2,0 hours - luminance (10x12 min 1x1 binned) + synthetic lum drawn from RGB; 2.25 hours R,G,B (45 min each channel 2x2 binned. (dark calibration for RGB only, no flats)
Software: CCD Soft image acqu. guiding. Maxim DL CCD Stackpreprocessing

Processing: postprocess. PS CS4, Registax and Pix InSight LE

Looks like they didn't use the 9" TMB folded refractor for this image but rather a 7" TMB APO, which I think is the middle sized one of Dietmar's three refractors, or maybe Torsten has one in his own observatory.. I presume they are saying that Torsten actually snapped the images using the scope and SBIG CCD Camera and Dietmar did the stacking and other processing using the listed software

2010 March 8 - Mars Over the Allalinhorn

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H6GK79dLqs[/youtube]

2010 March 9 - Galaxies Beyond the Heart: Maffei 1 and 2

Just when you thought it couldn't get any better...

There's no DIGG!

redwhine wrote:2010 March 12 - JWST: Mirrors and Masked Men

After the HST debacle, I suspect they don't want to find that their mirror is a lemon once it gets into orbit. There wont be any service missions to JWST as it will be out at the Sun-Earth L2 point, well beyond the Lunar orbit. They have to get it right.

Earlier today SOHO caught another comet plunging into the sun. The movie shows Mercury, a CME and finally the comet. It's not expected to reappear later...
http://soho.esac.esa.int/data/LATEST/current_c3.mpg

redwhine wrote:2010 March 14 - Binary Black Hole in 3C 75

And some people like to go on about how hospitable to life the universe is.