all that jazz

james' blog about scala and all that jazz

Pavo Galaxy

Pavo Galaxy

This is the Pavo Galaxy, also known as NGC 6477. It’s a galaxy in the constellation of Pavo (Peacock), roughly 23 million lightyears away. It’s notable for being a Milky Way mirror, it’s very similar in structure to the Milky Way, though it does have twice the diameter of the Milky Way. Faintly visible in the top left is NGC 6477A, a satellite galaxy of NGC 6477, similar to the Magellanic Clouds.

Significant lopsided nebulosity is due to significant gradients caused the object being fairly close to the full moon.

  • Telescope: Skywatcher Classic 250P 10" Dobsonian 1200 FL
  • Tracking: Home built 2 circle segment equatorial platform
  • Camera: ZWO ASI533MM Pro, CMOS monochrome 3008x3008 3.76μm pixels, 200 gain
  • Integration: 92x10s luminance, 10x30s luminance, 52x10s red, 49x10s green, 63x10s blue
  • Calibration: 42x30s darks, 90x10s darks, 104 biases
  • Image capture: OpenLiveStacker on Android phone.
  • Stacking: Siril
  • Post-processing: Gimp
  • Skies: Almost full moon, in an area that otherwise has Bortle 4 skies (Tharwa)

Dumbbell Nebula

Dumbbell Nebula

This is the Dumbbell Nebula, also known as Messier 27, or NGC 6853. It’s a planetary nebula roughly 1360 lightyears away. At its centre is a hot white dwarf, which is showering the gasses it shed while it was a red giant with UV rays. This causes the gasses to ionise, and subsequently glow.

  • Telescope: Skywatcher Classic 250P 10" Dobsonian 1200 FL
  • Tracking: Home built 2 circle segment equatorial platform
  • Camera: ZWO ASI533MM Pro, CMOS monochrome 3008x3008 3.76μm pixels, 200 gain
  • Integration: 63x8s red, 50x8s green, 63x8s blue, 49x8s luminance
  • Calibration: 78x8s darks, 104 biases
  • Image capture: OpenLiveStacker on Android phone.
  • Stacking: Siril
  • Post-processing: Gimp
  • Skies: Bortle 5 over suburban Canberra

About

Hi! My name is James Roper, and I am a software developer with a particular interest in open source development and trying new things. I program in Scala, Java, Go, PHP, Python and Javascript, and I work for Lightbend as the architect of Kalix. I also have a full life outside the world of IT, enjoy playing a variety of musical instruments and sports, and currently I live in Canberra.