M8, the Lagoon Nebula (2024)

 

This is data from ATEO-1 at Starbase.  ATEO-1 is a 16" f/3.75 Dream Aerospace Systems astrograph, one of the premier imaging telescopes available.  This is just 170 minutes of data, but it is clean and deep and fun to work with.  This image is Ha-OIII-SII in a modified Hubble palette.

Mineral Moon, New Telescope

This is first light with the TS 102SD f/11.  Thus far, the scope has impressed.  I hope to do a longer review later.  This is the nearly full moon of April 22, 2024, shot with the Canon T3i at 1/4,000 of a second. The image is color-enhanced to show that different parts of our moon reflect light differently. The colors differ because the minerals that make up the moon's surface differ from place to place.

Eclipse of April 2024—Recorded by NOAA Weather Satellites

On eclipse day, I was exhausted from a long trip, so I stayed in Houston and went to work.  The whole area was clouded out.  However, live feeds of the event and NOAA satellite data were quite the show! Three cheers for NOAA satellites! Here's what I saw over Texas, the US, and Earth. Note that the center of the shadow, the umbra, is darker than the borders, the penumbra.

 

 

 

M81 & M82 (May 2023)

 

This is a data set from OMI Astro.  It's 11.4 hours of R-Ha/G/B.  This is actually one of my favorite parts of the sky.  These two galaxies are very bright.  In my 10", they look like a whirlpool and a wave, about of equal size.  I can almost squeeze them in the same field of view with the eyepieces I use.  It's quite a sight to come across these very bright objects.  In the telescope view, they have no color at all because they are so dim, even though they are about as bright as galaxies appear at the eyepiece.  Leave it to the camera to pick up colors. OMI collected the data with a Takahashi TOA 150.  I was hoping to work with data collected with a refractor, and that's a good one.

Busy Sun (2-27-2024)

 

This is 1/4000th of a second with the Canon T3i through the SW80ED with 0.85x flattener/reducer. We are near the peak of the solar cycle.  The big spot upper right is numbered 3590 by those who count.

Eta Carinae Nebula from 2022

 Eta Carinae is the bright star near the center of the frame.  The star formed from this cloud and then (with several other type O and B stars not quite so bright but also extremely hot) lit up the cloud from within.  Eta Carinae itself is unstable and increased sharply in brightness in 1837 before dimming back down.  It's been a constant object of study for astronomers ever since, as is the nebula surrounding it.  Unfortunately, the nebula is too far south for me to see in Texas, so this data came from Martin Pugh Observatories.

Annular Eclipse (Oct. 14, 2023)

 

Here is my take on the annular eclipse. I tried to set up near the center line in Beeville or George West (both Texas towns) but met clouds. With time running out, I drove north and bet on Kenedy, TX's Joe Gulley Park---and then for 40 minutes shot through every break in the (still present) clouds. It was pretty exciting.  These are various exposures through the SWED80 and 0.85x reducer-flattener and my old Canon T3i.  Oddly, perhaps, I am most pleased by the clarity of the sunspot in the second image.  I had very little time to focus and was happy to see that detail.