SUPER FAINT STAR WITH 66 mm REFRACTOR

[Dan S]

Hello All,

So what is the faintest object you can image with a 66 mm refractor? How’s about a blue star at 19.25 magnitude!!! To accomplish this feat I took my 6 hour and 33 minute image of the Pleiades and then greatly enhanced it. As a result the bright stars and nebulosity of the Pleiades merge into the big black blob that dominates the center of the image. I then went to the cool website sky-map.org and checked out an image of the Pleiades from a DSS survey. In that DSS image you can find many super faint objects. Some of these objects have listed magnitudes from the USNO down to 19.5 or so. In my image I could only inspect the edges of the field away from the dark blob. In my image I found I had better luck in finding faint blue objects than reddish ones. This is probably due to the fact that the unmodified DSLR is more sensitive to the blue end of the spectrum? All and all not bad for 66mm refractor with a not so sensitive unmodified DSLR with a built in CMOS chip on a Sirius mount with exposures only lasting 50 seconds each and from light polluted skies!!!!!!!

To Educate and Inspire,

Commander Cosmos

[BobSikes]

Fantastic Dan!

You really push the envelope of signal to noise with your image stacking stacking. So 472 stacked images? All on one night?

BobS

[bruce d]

That's amazing Dan! You should write up a short article and submit it to the astro magazines, I think a lot of people would be interested and amazed. That truly is as Bob say "pushing the envelope"

[Paul D]

DAN!!!!!

Thats incredible.. and with a 66MM refractor. Thats the Mag that Pete is reaching with his scope and you are blowing it out of the water with a 66mm refractor.. GREAT JOB!!!!!

[petep]

And I felt really great reaching 19th mag with my 14" This is truly amazing Dan. And it should be published.

The GSC magnitudes were all based upon CCD scanning of photographic plates, and even the latest and greatest UCAC3 survey contains fields where images were collected on what were not necessarily photometric nights.

FWIW, the USNO B1.0 catalog that I use most frequently lists this star as being 19.4 magnitude! Kudos to Commander Cosmos.

Pete

[WCGucfa]

Hey Dan,

Amazing work!!! Bruce is right, submit an article/image to one of the magazines. Astronomy mag just put out a call for out-of-the-ordinary photos instead of just the same old stuff. Your work qualifies!

Bill G.