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Sky-Watcher Australia

13 hours ago

Adam Lundie from Eaton Hill Observatory posted his image to the Sky-Watcher Facebook Australia of globular cluster, M 15. It was taken using a Sky-Watcher EvoStar 80ED refractor and a Sky-Watcher EQ8 mount.

M 15 is a very old and tightly packed home to over 100,000 stars. It is 33,600 light years from Earth, and is visible to the naked eye in areas with little light pollution. It's also a globular cluster that's undergone "core collapse" and this indicates the possibility of a medium size, "Intermediate-mass black hole". While we have a good understanding of stellar mass black holes and super-massive black holes at the centre of galaxies, the origins of the middle sized black holes are still open to debate.

Image details:

49x 300s Luminance
40x 120s Luminance
20x 300s Red
12x 120s Red
15x 300s Green
15x 120s Green
19x 300s Blue
15x 120s Blue

Total integration 11 hours, 19 minutes.

Hardware:

Skywatcher Black Diamond 80ED
Skywatcher EQ8 Pro mount
QSI 683-ws8 Camera @ -15°C
Astronomik deep sky RGB filters
Starlight Xpress Lodestar X2 Autoguider
Innovations Foresight ONAG
Starlight Instruments Feather Touch Focuser

Thanks again Adam!

#skywatchertelescope #skywatcheraustralia #ed80 #astro #astrophotography #m15 #globularcluster #astronomik #eq8 #deepspace #nebula #blackhole ... See MoreSee Less

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Sky-Watcher Australia

3 days ago

Brendan from @astronomy_academy getting up and personal with one of our massive Sky-Watcher StarGate Dobsonians at his local Sky-Watcher dealer, Binocentral in Perth.

Amazingly this entire computer controlled GOTO telescope collapses and can be transported in normal sedan or hatchback.

Available in 18" and 20" diameter main mirror.

Yes you can put a half metre telescope in a Toyota Corolla. 😀

#skywatchertelescope #dobsonian #telescope #bigdob #skywatcheraustralia #telescope #astro #astronomy #universetoday #deepspace ... See MoreSee Less

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Sky-Watcher Australia

5 days ago

Saturn taken byTrevor Taylor and posted to the Sky-Watcher Australia Facebook group. Trevor used a Sky-Watcher 300mm (12") Newtonian telescope on a Sky-Watcher EQ6 mount. Camera was a GStar EX3 colour and it captured 6,500 frames. 3,200 of them were stacked in AutoStakkert! 3 and sharpened in RegiStax. A few final tweaks were made in Photoshop. It's interesting to compare this image taken with a 12" telescope with a couple of those we posted a few weeks ago taken with 8" Sky-Watcher telescopes. You can see the extra details in this image which are you result of the additional resolving power the additional aperture brings.

This image was captured from suburban Burwood in Melbourne, Victoria. Trevor originally captured the data that forms this image back in 2018 and only recently processed it. Astrophotographers will often re-process old images when they learn new techniques or when new tools are available. Or when it's cloudy.

Thanks for sharing this image Trevor. One of the better ones we've seen.

#skywatchertelescope
#skywatcheraustralia
#saturn #solarsystem #astro #telescope #astrophotography #astronomy #universetoday #space #registax #registax6 #autostakkert #eq6 ... See MoreSee Less

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Sky-Watcher Australia

6 days ago

Another great image of a galaxy captured with a small Sky-Watcher refractor. This is NGC 253 or The Sculptor Galaxy by Matt Williams from Brisbane - @taketotheskies_astrowho - who used a Sky-Watcher EVOSTAR ED80 and also a Canon 600D DSLR camera. The mount was a Sky-Watcher HEQ5 Pro and the image is result of some 7.5 hours exposure.

The reason for the long is exposure is distance. NCG 253 is some 11 million light years away and fainter than closer galaxies like M 31. Despite the distance it's easily spotted in small telescopes or even binoculars. In 8" and above telescopes it's spiral, edge-on structure becomes more apparent. After The Andromeda Galaxy M 31 it's probably the easiest to observe distant galaxy.

NCG 253 is also a "Starburst Galaxy". This means it's undergoing rapid star formation compared other galaxies such as the Milky Way. You can spot the purple/magenta regions in the galaxy's spiral arms in Matt's photo. These are denser regions of hydrogen gas shining due to newly formed stars. Amazing what you can capture with a Sky-Watcher 80mm telescope and a Canon DSLR camera.

Thanks for sharing this Matt!

#skywatcheraustralia #skywatchertelescope #astro #astrophotography #ed80 #galaxy #canondslr #canon600d #deepspace #ncg253 #starburst #heq5pro #universetoday #cosmos @canonaustralia ... See MoreSee Less

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