Deep Sky Image By Axel Canicio (M51)
Axel Canicio - the winner of the Astronomy Cameras Competition in March - has submitted a first light image, which he captured with his new DMK 21AU04.AS astronomy camera.
Below is a photo of M51, which he captured on April 26, 2008 (click to zoom);
According to Axel’s e-mail, the photo was captured using the following hardware and settings:
C11 + F/3.3 Meade reducer, Skywatcher EQ6 GOTO, Skywatcher ED80 for tracking.
Photo camera : DMK 21AU04.AS
Tracking camera : DMK 31AF03.AS
15 frames at 10 seconds, 20 frames at 30 seconds, 20 frames at 60 seconds, 25 frames at 120 seconds.
Axel is the chief programmer of the software Astrosnap and is currently testing the professional version of his application with The Imaging Source astronomy cameras.
A great thanks goes out to Axel for this exceptional image!
Axel said,
May 7, 2008 @ 10:49
“the winner of the Astronomy Cameras Competition in March [..] is currently testing the professional version of his application with The Imaging Source astronomy cameras.”
And you want us to believe this is “coincidental”?
Jonathan Maron said,
May 7, 2008 @ 11:29
What can I say? Axel participated in the competition and was drawn as the winner.
The “drawing” of the winner is done by a small script completely at random. If you must know: it uses the PHP function “rand” - see http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.rand.php for details.
We are very grateful that Axel took the time to send us some of the images he captured with his prize. We always ask our winners to send us images and he took us up on our offer.
Joe Dempsey said,
May 7, 2008 @ 21:47
Well I am very impressed.
I hope I can get images as detailed as that with my 10″ Meade.
Only prolem for me is my suburban sky is light polluted.
But what a great image though.
Sunflower Galaxy Captured With DMK 31AF03.AS / Astronomy Cameras Blog said,
May 29, 2008 @ 06:08
[...] The Sunflower Galaxy is part of the M51 Group, a group of galaxies that also includes the Whirlpool Galaxy [...]