?  M51

 SAC's Mads Fredslund Andersen in 2015 won the IFA IDEAS competition with a suggestion to install a camera equipped 6" telescope mounted piggyback on the remotely controlled Hertzprung SONG telescope on Tenerife.

At a lecture for a group of amateur astronomers from Midtjysk Astronomiforening at Silkeborg Højskole on Wednesday 15 March 2017 Mads obtained 'first light' with the camera, on a target selected by the amateurs: The Orion Nebula M42.

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                                                      The Orion Nebula

The camera and telescope were remotely controlled directly from Mads' laptop and the filtered black-and-white images were later combined into this fine colour image.

The new SONG facility opens a lot of new opportunities for fast response sky photography and for outreach using the camera and telescope also when it is not in use for serious astronomical work

 Each black-and-white exposure took only 30 seconds.

The image of the Whirlpool Galaxy M51 is a test image obtained a few days earlier by exposing three black and white images each for 10 minutes.

 Sunset while the SONG telescope awaits a night's work. In the background the volcano Teide, and somewhat further away the planet Venus. Photo: Mads F. Andersen