A Not-As-Deep HDF

While at a dark site in NM I took my deepest image ever. Naturally, I aimed at the Ursa Major location of the "Hubble Deep Field" image. Using my NP101is 4" refractor and ST-8300M camera I took 12 subexposures of 6 minutes each for 72 minutes of total exposure time.

The image is very cool for what it shows. I've annotated several very dim galaxies that are as faint at 18th magnitude. I could find distances for some of them... as much as 1.7 Gly away! There are dozens of additional faint fuzzies in the picture that I haven't identified yet.

But the image is even more amazing for what it doesn't show. As deep an image as it is, the HDF area is still virtually blank. The Hubble Space Telescope and its team are truly amazing.

Rick Young
June 24, 2011

Supernova in M51

The last few nights have been cloudy here in NM but it cleared out last night so I took a picture of Supernova SN 2011dh in M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. The supernova was first detected on May 31st, so it was already a week old by the time I took this picture. M51 is about 37 million light years away and SN 2011dh is as bright as the foreground stars in our own galaxy. Now that's bright!

Last night's picture is a monochrome image taken with my NP101is 4" refractor and ST8300M camera using just an IR/UV blocking filter. It's a stack of thirteen 3-minute images for 39 minutes of total exposure. Since I had taken a color image of M51 a few months ago I made this composite picture showing the new and old images of M51 so they can be compared easily.

Rick Young
June 8, 2011