Cookbook CCD Camera Image Archive

• Deep-Sky Portfolio by Rob West
• Southern Sky Portfolio by Steve Lee (Australia)
• Great Galaxy Portfolio by Al Kelly
• Deep-Sky Mosaics Portfolio by Allen Gilchrist
• Deep Sky Image Portfolio by Jim Edlin and Jim Hannon
• Small Telescope Portfolio by Richard Berry

Image Samplers

• Josepf Schaefer
• H. J. Leue
• Waldemar Skorupa
• Claude Boivin
• Job Oostindie
• Dave Petherick
• Rick Colman
• Tybee Evans
• Mel Bartels
• Many observers...

Special subjects...

• Comet Hyakutake by many Cookbook builders
• Comet Hale-Bopp by many Cookbook builders
• Biological images with a microscope from Rafael Muller

• Messier 13, the Hercules cluster, made from nine frames each of 4 minutes integration.
• Messier 17, taken through an Orion light pollution filter to increase contrast.
• Messier 27 is Rob's favorite image, and was taken as seven frames of 2 minutes each.
• Messier 51 This sharply detailed image of M51 taken as eight 4-minute integrations.
• Messier 74 a sprawling spiral galaxy.
• Messier 101 Made with 15 4-minute frames at f/6.3.
• Messier 106 made from nine frames of 4 minutes integration.
• NGC 891 one of the finest edge-on galaxies.
• NGC 4565 six frames of 4 minutes each.
• NGC 7331 a spiral galaxy with many faint nearby companions.

From his home in upstate New York, Rob West has been perfecting his CCD imaging techniques. "The Cookbook is a great camera," writes West, "and I hope that you like these. Most of the images were calibrated with 8 averaged dark frames and stacked using Multi245 software. I do the processing with CB245 and add the final touches with PhotoStyler." For more information on Rob's imaging techniques, visit Rob West's Web Page.

• Tricolor Trifid showing extensive faint nebulosity and very nice color.
• R Coronae Australis a magnificent reflection nebula.
• Messier 83, a fine southern spiral.
• NGC 5128 is a giant but strange elliptical galaxy and also the radio source Centaurus A.
• NGC 4945 a large spiral in Centaurus.
• Tarantula Nebula, NGC 2070, is in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
• 47 Tucanae is a globular cluster near the Small Magellanic Cloud.
• Comet SW-3 with Globular Cluster. A fantastic shot!
• M46 contains the bright planetary nebula, NGC 2438.

Steve took these images with his 8-inch f/4.5 Newtonian, under the clear, dark skies of Coonabarabran, NSW, in Australia, with integrations up to about ten minutes.

• NGC 628 (M74) Sc(s)I galaxy, 270 seconds, 32-inch f/4
• NGC 1232 Sc(rs)I galaxy, 415 seconds, 32-inch f/4
• NGC 1365 SBbc(s)I galaxy, 240 seconds, 32-inch f/4
• NGC 1398 SBab(r)I galaxy, 375 seconds, 32-inch f/4
• NGC 2280 Sc(s)I.2 galaxy, 375 seconds, 32-inch f/4
• NGC 3344 Sbc(rs)I.2 galaxy, 405 seconds, 32-inch f/4
• NGC 3368 (M96) Sab(s)II galaxy, 235 seconds, 32-inch f/4
• NGC 4303 (M61) Sc(s)I.2 galaxy, 390 seconds, 32-inch f/4
• NGC 7606 Sb(r)I galaxy, 480 seconds, 32-inch f/4
• Stephan's Quintet various types, 180 seconds, 32-inch f/4

Al took these images with his 32-inch f/4 Newtonian. Individual integrations were 15 seconds; Al summed as many as 32 using Multi245 and the total integration is shown. Don't miss Al's Web page. Classifications from the Revised Shapley-Ames Catalog.

• M17 mosaic shows that the Cookbook camera can do incredible stuff! Allen made this image by combining seven frames each a stack of four 60 second integrations.
• M16 mosaic another truly fine example of high-resolution Cookbook imaging.
• M33 mosaic four frames combined for a wider view of this class Sc spiral galaxy.
• The Helix , NGC 7293, is a mosaic made from four individual overlapping images.
• NGC 246 , a.k.a., the "Pacman Nebula," six integrations of 120 seconds each.
• The Owl Nebula , M 97, four integrations of 120 seconds each.
• The Little Dumbbell , M 76, in 240 seconds.
• The Dumbbell Nebula , M 27, in 120 seconds, with Tom Arnold.
• Messier 81 a nice regular spiral galaxy in Ursa Major.
• Messier 82 a "distressed" galaxy in Ursa Major, right next to M81.

All of these images were taken with Allen's C14 with an f/7 focal reducer, and all have annotations at the bottom of the images giving technical information.

• NGC 6946 was made by Jim Hannon from 22 30-second integrations combined using Multi245 software.
• The Cocoon Nebula in northern Cygnus received a total of 600 seconds integration in 20 exposures at the focus of Jim Hannon's 16-inch reflector.
• The Bubble Nebula is a collaborative effort by the two Jims, using 20 integrations of 30 seconds each with Hannon's 16-inch reflector.
• M20 with the C-14 at f/7.
• M31 Overview is a Jim Edlin mosaic made from six images each made of twelve 30-second integrations. This image has been "false colored" for a more realistic appearance.
• NGC 891 two images made with the C-14 joined to show the full span of this edge-on spiral.
• The Horsehead combines twenty images of 30-seconds integration; with the C-14 at f/7.
• Jupiter sequence shows the motion of a nearby satellite and the rotation of the planet.
• Asteroid 1996 JA1 On June 18, 1996, Phil Keubler and Jim Edlin collaborated to capture ten images with Phil's a 10-inch f/6 telescope.
• Pluto is shown on three separate nights against the same star field.

Jim Edlin and Jim Hannon sometimes shoot images together and sometimes shoot them separately. Edlin takes his images from his home in Connecticut using his Cookbook camera on his C-14 with an f/7 focal reducer for close-up detail or on a 4-inch f/4 Newtonian for a wide field of view. Jim Hannon takes his images with a 16-inch f/4.5 Newtonian with his Cookbook 245.

• The Horsehead Nebula Reveals a lot of faint structure. (58 x 60sec)
• NGC 1977 Another image that reveals lots of faint structure. (61 x 60sec)
• The Merope Nebula is in the Plieades. This nebula envelops the entire cluster. (55 x 60sec)
• M16 in H-alpha taken at Full Moon. The H-alpha filter cutsbackground light. (10 x 60sec)
• M17 in H-alpha aken at Full Moon with a h-alpha filter. (10 x 60sec)
• Coccoon Nebula a faint emission and reflection nebula in northern Cygnus. (33 x 60sec)
• Mosaic Image of NGC 6992/6995 This mosaic made with a 4-inch f/5 Genesis refractor.
• M51: Deep Image Shows faint material surrounding M51, made from 102 frames with a 4-inch f/5 Genesis refractor. (102 x 60sec)
• Four Guys imaged by starlight at the Oregon Star Party. 15 seconds with an 18mm f/3.2 lens.
• Sagittarius taken with an 18mm f/3.2 wide-angle lens; 5 x 60sec integrations through red, green, and blue color filters.

These images are track-and-stacks taken with a Cookbook 245 LDC and composited using Multi245. The telescope has a 4-inch f/5 Genesis refractor and a 6-inch f/5 Newtonian mounted on a Byers 812, the same system shown in The CCD Camera Cookbook.

• Hyakutake March 23 from 23:40 to 23:44 UT. 50 mm f/1.4 Canon FD lens, 4 integrations of 45 seconds each with Cookbook 245.
• Abschied (Farewell) to Hyakutake April 16 from 21:27 UT. Cookbook 245 with 24 mm f/2.8 Canon FD lens, 45 second integration.

• The Flame Nebula in color, made with single integrations. The red image is 30 seconds, the green is 60 seconds, and the blue is 150 seconds, with a 6-inch f/5 Newtonian reflector. Combined using Color245.
• Orion Nebula by H.J.Leue shows clear structural detail over a wide range of brightness.
• Horsehead Nebula in a delicate monochrome rendition.

Mr. Leue's images are taken with a 4.5-inch f/5, 6-inch f/5, 12-inch f/5 and a Cookbook 245 CCD camera. When he shoots color, Mr Leue uses Baader's Red RG-610, Light-Green 540nm, and Blue #80a with a KG-5 infrared blocking filter. He has been using exposure ratios of R:G:B::1:2:4.

• NGC 6946
• Comet Hale-Bopp

The telescopes Waldemar uses with his Cookbook camera are the 10-inch f/20 Schiefspiegler and the 10-inch RC-Cassegrain with f/8 and f/15 foc at the public observatory in Hagen, Germany. Check out Waldmar's Home Page for more information.

• M100 galaxy in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies.
• NGC 2903 galaxy in Leo.

A newcomer to CCD imaging, Claude Boivin has been shooting his images with an LX5. He uses multiple imaging to overcome the mounting's tracking errors, and has produced his first suite of CCD images.

• Owl Nebula was made from twenty integrations of 120 seconds each.
• Andromeda Galaxy a mosaic of images each 32 integrations of 30 seconds each.

Using a 110 millimeter f/5 Newtonian telescope for deep-sky images and a high-performance 110 mm f/26 Kutter Schiefspiegler TCT for lunar images, Netherland amateur Job Oostindie exploits the small-aperture end of the CCD spectrum.

• Messier 17 in Color When Al sent this image, he wrote, "I think I am going to get hooked on this tricolor stuff and it will be all your fault!" This image was taken with Al's 8-inch SCT. NGC 6781 posed for a Cookbook camera mounted atop Al Kelly's 32-inch f/4 platform-mounted alt-azimuth reflector.
• NGC 7331 and friends with Al's 32-inch f/4 Newtonian.
• NGC 7606 Al calls this edge-on spiral "my little brown dust-obscured galaxy."

Al Kelly has recently been keeping the 32-inch telescope busy shooting RGB tri-color images at the Houston group's Danciger observing site. Individual images assembled using Multi245 and composed into color using Color245 software. Check out Al's Web Site when you get a chance.

• Full Moon Mosaic composed of 15 images taken through dense filtration of the f/8 focus of Dave's 8-inch d/8 Newtonian. This is a 95kb JPEG.
• Gassendi on the shore of Mare Humorum taken using eyepiece projection at f/20.

• Comet 116 P/Wild4
• Comet 67 P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Tybee's images were taken with single 120-second integrations using a 12" f/6.3 LX200 SCT and a Cookbook 245 CCD camera

• The Trifid 80 seconds.
• The Lagoon 90 seconds.
• The Whirlpool 120 seconds.
• Mel's Telescope was shot in late twilight, while Mel and Nick Liepins were setting up. 18mm f/3.2 lens, integration time of 1 second.

Mel Bartels runs his 20-inch alt-azimuth telescope entirely under computer control. For each image, 15 integrations of 10 seconds each were made, and the sharpest frames composited. The total integration time is given.

• Triton Occults a Star Walter Wild, John Briggs, and Bill Drish captured this sequence of Neptune's satellite Triton occulting a background star using a Cookbook 245 on the 41-inch reflector at Yerkes Observatory.
• Bix Chewing this image, taken in full daylight, shows that it is possible to make "regular" pictures with the Cookbook camera. Richard Berry made this image with a #5 welder's glass with an 18mm lens at f/8 and an integration of 30 milliseconds.
• Mars by Don Parker and taken with Richard Berry's Cookbook 245, with a 200 millisecond integration at f/52 on Don's 16-inch f/6 Newtonian reflector.
• Comet P/SW 3 by Johan J van Dorp with his CG-11 SCT at f/5.5. It is a stack of eight 30-second exposures taken on 10/25/96, 19:00 PDT through the muck from his porch in Bakersfield, CA.
• M57 by Rick Colman. See more images on Rick's Web site. Rick uses the 22-inch f/8 - f/16 Kuhn telescope at the Anza Observatory run by the Orange County Astronomers.

• April 10 This composite contains three images taken with a 55 mm focus lens by Jim Edlin. He writes, "The tail images are 10 of 30 seconds each and the head is a composite of 20 of 15 seconds, but because of bad blooming I also did the head with 20 of 2 seconds."
• April 1 (processed) Holger Rendelman made this revealing image. He produced a synthetic coma mask with an elliptical shape and subtracted 95% of the mask from the original, and then Laplacian-filtered and negative log-scaled the image for display.
• April 1 "This was an attempt to capture the whole comet," writes Jim Edlin of this six-image mosaic taken April 1 with a 135 mm telephoto lens." Note many fine streamers in dust tail. All at 378 x 242 with LDC mode on.
• March 23 Jim Hannon took this mosaic of five images with an 80mm Ultrascan (Orion) refractor working at f/6.25. The rank processing shows dd looking streamers in the tail. The last section of the tail was completed just as the sky began to brighten.
• March 19 (enhanced color) Here is a heavily processed tricolor from RGB images Al Kelly made through his C-8 at f/10. The images were stretched, rank-ordered, and unsharp-masked to bring out the "shock front" structure near the nucleus.
• March 9 (numerous jets) Taken by Jim Hannon and Jim Edlin with Hannon's 16-inch f/4.5 reflector on March 9th at 5 am. It is a total of 20 x 0.5 second integrations combined using Multi245 and then heavily rank processed. Numerous jets and envelopes are visible.
• March 7 Jim Edlin writes, "I count about 10 arcs of material in coma. They are all slightly off center from the nucleus and are also not parallel with the strong tail. These arcs are visible in telescope, but not as many."
• February 23 Using a 1000mm f/10 Russian MTO lens, Richard Berry captured the comet with a series of ten 5-second integrations. After processing the image in several different ways, the images were recombined to make this pseudocolor image.
• October 9 Al Kelly shot this true-color image using his 32-inch f/4 reflector from Houston group's Danciger observing site. At this image scale and rotational orientation of the nucleus, the comet demonstrates its "starfish" profile.
• October 7 Comet Hale-Bopp has a tiny, star-like nuclear region, a roughly elliptical coma, and a long gently curving tail. The jets, of which three are large and several more are small, appear as low contrast features. The inset shows the jets. Image by Richard Berry.

• Hyakutake April 14 by H. J. Leue, shows lots of detail in the streamers.
• Hyakutake March 28 (color) by H. J. Leue. Made from multiple integrations in each color; red was 4 x 5 sec; green, 5 x 10 sec; and blue, 4 x 25 sec with a 6-inch f/5 Newtonian reflector. Combined using Multi245 and Color245.
• Hyakutake March 26 by H. J. Leue, with the 4.5-inch f/5 Newtonian, 6 x 15 sec. "You can see dust fountains and a disconnection event down right of the outer core region. A streamer is drifting backward into the outer part of the tail..." in this highly processed image.
• March 25 Sequence by Richard Berry. Made March 25 between 4:40 and 9:25 UT, using a 200mm telephoto lens. The tail begins with a "<"-shaped fork that gradually collapses to a thin strand, then two new strands form and converge on the axis of the comet.
• March 23 Nuclear Jets by Charles Hayden, is a processed stack of 64 x 15sec made with an 8-inch f/6.3 SCT. The median-filtered stack was processed by rotating the image +3 and -3 degrees and differencing to obtain a radial bas-relief effect, highlighting the nuclear jets.
• March 22 Tail by Don Parker, is an unsharp-masked stack of 78 x 10sec integrations made with a short-focus lens.
• March 22 Nuclear Jets by Jim Edlin, is a rank-processed stack of ten 30-second integrations made with a 4-inch f/5 telescope.
• March 21 Sequence by Richard Berry. Nine frames show the comet every 15 minutes or so. The tail streamers fold back in the most dynamic way. Made from a sequence of 137 images shot the morning of March 21 with a 4" f/5 Genesis refractor. The field of view is 44' x 29'.

• Chatoceros is a zooplankton from the Fajardo Lagoon on the northeastern coast of Puerto Rico. Collage of three images by Jessica Soto using integration times of 1.5 seconds.
• Diatom frustrule details from water samples taken in the San Jose Lagoon . This is a 1.5-second integration by Adriana Toro.
• Cross-section of a fern root captured in RGB color by Alexis Negron and Victor Irizarry. Integration times of 0.8 seconds used for R and G, and 1.6 seconds for B.
• Strand of genetic material from the salivary glands of a Drosphilia (fruit fly) specimen. Composite of two images made with 2-second integrations. Images by Jessica Soto.
• Cookbook 245 on the microscope used to take the images above. The rectangular housing in the background is the power supply salvaged from an ancient IBM 360 computer.

These images were taken by members of the biology department at the University of Puerto Rico, Humancao Campus, using a Cookbook 245 CCD camera attached to a microscope. Dr. Rafael Muller of the UPR Physics Department built the camera and sent these images.