Month: June 2015

Triangular stars

Maybe someone with a Newtonian telescope experienced the same problem as I did. After cleaning the primary mirror of my newt, BTW here is a nice tutorial on how to do it, I noticed that the brighter stars have a triangular shape. After some googling, I found the indications that I have pinched the primary mirror. Fortunately, it was just elastically deformed by the rubber clamps. When I placed the mirror back I overtightened the screws, therefore the mirror was not reflecting brighter stars properly.

Triangles

By loosening the screws everything went back to normal, so the solution is quite simple.

IMG_5801
IMG_5808

M51 Whirlpool galaxy

Probably the most photogenic galaxy is called Whirlpool galaxy, located in the constellation Canes Venatici, close to the Big Dipper. It’s approximately 23 million light years from the Earth and its spirals have 43 thousand light years in diameter, which makes it 1/3 of a size of Milky Way. Whirlpool galaxy is accompanied by dwarf galaxy M51b or NGC5195, which is located at the end of the longest spiral.

As usual, I made my first picture of this galaxy by DSLR and I was not quite happy with the quality, therefore I waited one year and repeated with cooled astro-camera and here it is:

M51_2015_06_24_30C_28LPS_300s__18RGB_200s_bin2x2_SQM20_pixi