Astronomical Society of Eastern Missouri

Image of the Andromeda galaxy M31 and companion galaxies M32 and NGC205 best viewed in the cropped version on the right, captured from Chesterfield, MO with a Canon 20d DSLR and an 85mm f/1.8 lens on a EQ1 Orion equatorial mount. The FOV of the left image is about 9 degrees with North to the left. Eighty-two 30sec frames at an ISO of 100 were combined with Images Plus 2.80 to produce a 41-minute exposure. The faintest naked-eye star was brighter than 5th magnitude. Thin clouds passed thru during imaging possibly causing the Christmas-like green wreath background with blue and red also visible. I used GradientXterminator that is a plugin to Photoshop and Photoshop Elements(that I have) to remove the color backgrounds in the cropped version. The star colors were  left unchanged. Good seeing.  Jim Melka

The Digital Special Interest Group met on Saturday, November 18 2006 at the Weldon Spring Interpretive Center.  Prior to the formal meeting Kevin and Carol V. brought their new Meade ETX125 to learn how to set up and operate it. 

Jim M. showed recent images of Comet Swan that he took with his new DSLR on a simple tracking mount.    Jim explained his techniques which included creating averaged dark frames and a translucent screen adapted to slip over the camera lens to produce a flat field image.  He also showed a short video of a lecture by Adam Block on the function and use of a histogram display that is available in many image processing programs (Photoshop in this case).
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The regular monthly meeting of the Astronomical Society of Eastern Missouri was held on Saturday, November 11, 2006 at the Interpretive Center in Weldon Spring, Missouri.  There were 23 members and guests present.

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Both images were captured with a Canon 20d DSLR on a clock-driven EQ1 Orion equatorial mount . Each has a field of view of about 4 degrees with North to the rightt. The image on the left was recorded on the evening of Nov. 8th at Bob Judd’s home in Moscow Mills.  Fifty 30sec frames obtained  at f/1.8 at a speed of 200 were combined with Images Plus 2.80 to produce a 25-minute exposure. The image on the right, also a 25-minute exposure was recorded on Nov. 9th at the ASEM site. The comet’s brightness in the left image was measured at magnitude  6.9  based on star charts available at  http://www.shopplaza.nl/astro/comets/comets.htm   Good seeing,  Jim Melka                 

It  was a beautiful day, mostly clear, temperature near 70 deg so we got a great chance to watch the planet Mercury start its move across the face of the Sun (it wouldn’t complete its transit until well after sundown from Weldon Spring, Missouri).  I set up my 8-in Meade SCT at Weldon Spring with a full-aperture solar filter about 12:30 pm CST and noticed a few sunspots, one of which was quite large although much fore shortened by its position on the limb.

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