astro imaging

Visiting Grove Creek Observatory

An invitation made to subscribers of an Internet mailing list sowed the
seeds for a CCD-imaging expedition Down Under.

y son, Mike, and I were

on the lookout for Australias exotic wildlife as
we drove through the
beautiful Blue Mountains west of Sydney. We were on our way to Grove Creek
Observatory as part of an odyssey that
had begun some months earlier on the
Internet. I subscribe to several astronomy-related mailing lists that featured
frequent contributions from Steven
Williams, the observatorys manager. On
numerous occasions he had invited readers to view the Southern-Hemisphere
skies from his location near Trunkey,
New South Wales. The invitation was too
good to pass up. For a nominal fee observers can use the small, nonprofit, privately owned facility, including its sleep-

By Jack Russell

ing and eating accommodations (details

are available on World Wide Web at
http://gco.apana.org.au/).
From our home in the California
desert we can effectively observe deepsky objects only as far south as declination 30. Nevertheless, I have always
been intrigued by some of the deepsouthern galaxies that I knew only from
pictures in books and magazines. It was

this interest that initiated an e-mail correspondence with Williams and culminated in our journey. We timed the trip
around the August 1996 new Moon,
which is the middle of winter in the
Southern Hemisphere.
As we continued on our drive, the
Blue Mountains gradually gave way to
high, rolling hills that flattened westward. The mountain eucalyptus forests
diminished to grazing land dotted with
sheep and cattle. At the city of Bathurst
we turned south for the 55-kilometer
(34-mile) ride to the observatory. To our

Located near Trunkey, New South Wales,

Grove Creek Observatory grew out of an effort to provide public viewing of Halleys
Comet during the 1980s. The main building,
pictured here, houses eating and sleeping
areas as well as a 14-inch Celestron SchmidtCassegrain telescope. Unless otherwise credited, all photographs are courtesy the author.

1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Sky & Telescope October 1997

109

astro imaging
One of the big reasons the author traveled to Australia was to have firsthand views of such interesting barred spiral galaxies as (left to right)
NGC 1365 and NGC 1097 in Fornax and NGC 1313 in Reticulum. Each was recorded with the SBIG ST-6 CCD camera attached to the 14-inch telescope working at f/7. The fields are about 14 wide. All deep-sky images with this article have north up.

delight, shortly after making the final

turn off the pavement onto a smooth
dirt road, we spotted the first of many
wild kangaroos in an eucalyptus grove.
Five kilometers more and we could see
the observatory buildings on the top of a
grassy hill. We were there!
Williams and Jim Lynch, the observatorys proprietor, were there to greet us.
Grove Creek Observatory was erected in
the mid-1980s to provide public viewing
of Halleys Comet. It is situated on a large
sheep and cattle ranch owned by Lynchs
family. At an elevation of about 1,024
meters (3,360 feet), the observatory has
an unobstructed view in all directions.
In addition to the sleeping quarters,
kitchen, and relaxation areas, the main
building includes a separate room with
a dome housing a 14-inch Celestron
Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope on a massive pier. This scope has a 5-inch Celestron
riding piggyback. There is a large dedicated work area in an adjacent room with a

computer and plenty of desk space. A

CCD camera attached to either Celestron
could easily be operated from this room. It
was a convenient setup. An adjacent building with a sliding roof houses a Meade 10inch LX200 Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope
and a 1212-inch Newtonian. Both scopes
are mounted equatorially.
Winters short days quickly gave way to
darkness, and we got our first breathtaking view of the southern skies. It was incredibly clear. The contrast between the
Milky Way and the blackness of the surrounding sky was by far the finest I had
ever seen. The dark dust lanes and the
prominent Coalsack Nebula were in sharp
relief within the brilliant southern Milky
Way. Our neighboring galaxies, the Large
and Small Magellanic Clouds, were immediately apparent in the gathering darkness. The only artificial light visible was a
bit of skyglow from Sydney in the east.
Lynch gave us a tour of the sky, which
has a decidedly unfamiliar appearance
since we were nearly 70
south of our California
home. It was certainly
strange to be looking at
Sagittarius and Scorpius
near the zenith rather than
low in the southern sky.
Before long I began unpacking the Santa Barbara
Instrument Group (SBIG)
ST-6 CCD camera I had
brought with me. Williams
had encouraged me to
bring it since the observaObservatory manager
Steven Williams readies the
vintage 14-inch Celestron,
which he has extensively
modified for visitors use.
Photograph by Jim Lynch.

110

October 1997 Sky & Telescope

1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

torys arsenal of equipment did not include one. Because my telescope at home
is a Meade LX200, I decided to do my
first imaging at Grove Creek using the
10-inch fitted with an f/6.3 focal reducer.
Before the trip I had prepared a detailed list of deep-sky targets using information in the Caldwell Catalog as well as
from various books and periodicals. The
objects were sorted according to size and
the telescope that would be best suited to
image them. The field of the 10-inch
Meade at f/6.3 with the ST-6 was just
right for recording the galaxies NGC
5128, NGC 4945, and NGC 6744. This
last is a barred spiral with the most delicate arms that I have seen.
Williams and I quickly verified that
the LX200 drive was accurate enough to
make 1-minute unguided exposures with
nice, round star images. This was fine for
using the ST-6s track-and-accumulate
mode, whereby the camera automatically
aligns and adds together a series of short
snapshots to produce a single image
with an effective exposure equal to the
sum of the snapshots. The air temperature was just above freezing, which
meant the ST-6s thermoelectric cooler
could easily maintain the CCD at a temperature of 40 Celsius. The ultraclear
night and cool temperature were ideal
conditions for CCD imaging!
As the night progressed, jet lag got the
better of my son and me. We left the
equipment set up and got some sleep. In
the morning we took flat-field frames
needed for processing the images.
Our targets for the second night were
selected for the field of view of the
LX200 at f/10. Williams pointed out that
the 14-inch Celestron with an f/7 focal
reducer offered essentially the same sky
coverage, so we opted to use the larger
telescope. Furthermore, we could operate

the ST-6 from the warmth of the adjacent computer room. This telescope is a
very early model built by Celestron in
1971. Williams has extensively upgraded
the drive and is still working on improvements. Depending on where in the
sky the telescope was pointed, we could
make 30- to 45-second exposures without star trailing. That was still adequate
for track-and-accumulate operation with
the ST-6 considering that images have a
32-snapshot limit.
The pictures that Williams and I collected this long night included the barred
spirals that had attracted me to Grove
Creek NGC 1097, NGC 1313, and
NGC 1365. Since some of them werent
favorably placed in the sky until the
morning hours, we spent the beginning
of the night shooting other galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters, including the
globular 47 Tucanae.
During the days Lynch and Williams
took us sightseeing around the ranch
and to nearby Abercrombie Caves and
Grove Creek Falls. These sights and the
indigenous plants and brightly colored
birds were by themselves worth the trip
to Australia.

In addition to assisting with the CCD imaging, the authors son, Mike, photographed the sky with
a conventional 35-millimeter camera and 50-mm f/2.8 lens. This 10-minute exposure on Kodak
Royal Gold 1000 film covers a 35 swath of the southern Milky Way from the Coalsack and Southern Cross at left to the bright Eta Carinae Nebula at right.

On our third and final night at the observatory Williams helped my son piggyback his 35-millimeter camera on the 14inch telescope. Using only a 50-mm lens
Mike captured some unforgettable views

of the southern Milky Way.

The next project Williams and I undertook was to use the ST-6 on the 5-inch
Celestron with an f/6.3 focal reducer to
yield a field of view a bit more than 34

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1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Sky & Telescope October 1997

111

astro imaging

Our stay at Grove Creek

was productive, interesting,
and fun. Thats a great
combination. Williams and
Lynch are very knowledgeable and helpful. The facilities are comfortable, and
the assortment of equipment at the observatory
more than met our needs.
It is an ideal place for
Northern Hemisphere amateurs to view the southern
Left: This huge glowing cloud of hydrogen, NGC 2070, popularly known as the Tarantula Nebula, is the most skies.
prominent object within the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was captured with the 14-inch telescope working at
We left Grove Creek and
f/7. The field is 14 wide. Right: NGC 6744 in Pavo is one of the largest barred spiral galaxies in the sky. It was drove farther inland to
recorded with the Meade 10-inch LX200 telescope equipped with an f/6.3 focal reducer. Sixteen 1-minute ex- Coonabarabran and the
posures were automatically added together using the ST-6s track-and-accumulate mode. The field is 14 wide. Anglo-Australian Observatory. This is home to the
across. We had just collected the first im- morning hours of our last night was for- massive 3.9-meter telescope as well as
ages with this setup when our luck with tunate indeed. It turned out that we had many smaller instruments. It was worth
the weather ran out. Clouds began ar- imaged more objects than I had on my the extra travel since the facility is especially designed for accommodating visitors.
riving from the south and rapidly cov- original list.
ered the sky. Months before, when we
All of our computer files were copied Following our visit we made the return to
locked the dates for our visit, we knew onto floppy disks for the trip back to Sydney for an uneventful trip home.
the weather would be a huge gamble. California. I had always planned to do
There was no guarantee it wouldnt be my image processing at home instead of Jack Russell is a retired electronic engineer
overcast for our entire stay. The fact that spending valuable time in Australia sit- in Ridgecrest, California, where he images the
sky with his Meade 12-inch LX200 telescope.
there wasnt a cloud in the sky until the ting behind a computer.

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October 1997 Sky & Telescope

1997 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.