Field #1 at RA=11h43m13s DEC=-01°34'57'' [Virgo]
The goal of this set of pages is to provide fields recorded with large telescopes to check out how faint you can reach with your own telescope and CCD. This refers to the experience which has been developed in Sky&Telescope, in January 1984 "Finding your telescope's magnitude". This paper showed limiting magnitude star fields of 20, which is nowadays insufficient, because of the use of CCDs. These pages aims at showing small fields showing magnitude 23 stars using the 2.2ESO+WFI telescope, or 26-27 with the VLT+FORS.
FIELD #1
Telescope : 2.2m ESO/MPG, La Silla Observatory
Camera : WFI 8x8K EEV backside illuminated
Exposure time : 400s (6m40s) Single exposure
Focal length : 12910 mm
F/D: 5.86
Date of observation : 2000-02-12 at 07h45m17.490s
Image size : 2048 x 4096 pixels
Field size : 8' x 16'
Sampling : 0.23"/pixel
Star PSF (measured throughout the image) : 0.7"
Image limiting magnitude : 23 at SNR=3
Moon Elevation : -55° (Set)
Best to be observed : Late winter or Spring
Magnitude Plot versus SNR for all the stars extracted (761), using the USNO
A2 catalog as reference.
Filter : Rc/162, #844 (i.e. R filter)
Finding charts :
This finding chart shows the field : a single 2x4K CCD outline of the
ESO 2.2m has been drawn.
Finding chart : large view of the field (note : the date and the observing
place does not match with the ESO 2.2m field !!)
Piece of 3.28' x 3.46' of the field, centered at : 11h43m18s -01°30'45''
Image without any label, and full of anonymous galaxies, the three brightest
stars have R magnitude between 12-13. There is more remote galaxies than stars
belonging to our galaxy !
Same field as above, including R magnitude labels
- Get here the whole 2x4K image (1a) without magnitude labels (negative image)
- Get here the whole 2x4K image (1b) with magnitude labels (positive image), if the labels are too small do non hesitate to zoom on the selected area.
- Get here the whole 2x4K image (1c) with magnitude labels (negative image), if the labels are too small do non hesitate to zoom on the selected area.
- Get the list of extracted stars with the corresponding magnitude, the coordinates refers to the image 1a,1b and 1c, where X=1, Y=1 is located at the bottom right of the image (cartesian convention).