NGC 1398 - Isolated barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation of Fornax. Image by Muir Evenden. |
The real fun part comes, however, when the results from our testing give us little surprises and reconfirm just how good an imaging platform the ATEO telescope really is. A case in point occurred about a week ago as we were testing the cooling capabilities of the FLI camera; after we got the camera down to -46° Celsius we decided to image a number of galaxies that were relatively low in the sky (< 30° above the horizon) for one single 15-minute exposure each... The only image reduction done was by applying darks. As the few sample images from that session shown below attest to, we got some quite stunning images; aside from some slight guiding errors and potentially some focus improvements, we were quite pleased!
NGC 1232 - the Intermediate spiral galaxy in the constellation Eridanus. Image by Muir Evenden. |
The wide field of this scope has also proven to be a real treat as well - it is fun to identify all the additional galaxies and other objects that appear in addition to our primary target. Who thought testing would be so much fun?
No comments:
Post a Comment