Alnitak, Horsehead, Flame, NGC 2023 (November 2013)

Full resolution image here.

I've admired this scene many times.  I've always wanted to try this myself.  This is two nights' work.  It could easily take many more nights.  What a stunning area of the sky!  Orion holds wonders!  This image is shrunk about 25% from original.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT65EDQ and TeleVue NPR-1073 (eff. at f/5.2)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C (26x480" & 31x420"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: IDAS LPS-P2
Guiding: Meade DSI Pro and Hutech 50mm
Mount: Takahashi EM-10
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3, Carboni Actions
Location: The Woodlands, TX  

M45, the Pleiades, again (November 29, 2013)

 Full resolution image here.

I seem to shoot this cluster every year.  It's not an obsession, though it would be easy to become obsessed with such a wonderful cluster.  You should have seen it last night in the SV80ED and the 35mm Ultrascopic eyepiece!  Wow!  I've never shot the cluster with this scope, though, for what it's worth.  This image is shrunk about 25% from original.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT65EDQ and TeleVue NPR-1073 (eff. at f/5.2)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C (18x480"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: IDAS LPS-P2
Guiding: Meade DSI Pro and Hutech 50mm
Mount: Takahashi EM-10
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3, Carboni Actions
Location: The Woodlands, TX  

M38 and NGC 1907 (Nov. 27, 2013)

 Full resolution image here.

Here is M38 and the nearby NGC 1907.  Both are about 5,900 light years away in the constellation Auriga.  The two clusters have similar ages, but a study of their motions through the sky suggests that they are merely flying by each other.

I shot this while waiting for the Alnitak to make it over the trees; the M38 data came out well enough.  This image is shrunk about 25% from original.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT65EDQ and TeleVue NPR-1073 (eff. at f/5.2)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C (11x240"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: IDAS LPS-P2
Guiding: Meade DSI Pro and Hutech 50mm
Mount: Takahashi EM-10
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3, Carboni Actions
Location: The Woodlands, TX  

Comet Lovejoy (a single, 2-minute sub), Nov. 20, 2013

Lovejoy was well-positioned for imaging through a break in the trees in my backyard.  Clouds were not due till 7 am.
So I set up an imaging rig: wide field, color camera, and guidescope so I could try guiding on the comet.
I took some test images late evening, got some sleep, then woke up at 2:45.  Everything looked great!
I slewed to Procyon to focus, then over to the comet's location.  The comet was bright in the "find and focus" camera mode!  I was excited!
Guide calibration took five minutes.  I punched up 35 2-minute sub-frames and hit "go!"
A few seconds later I checked the guiding program and saw ... what's that?  Trees?  Am I into the trees?  I dashed outside.
Clouds!  Not just a few puffy trailblazers.  The whole sky was full!  Aargh!
There was a small break just south of the comet.  The clouds were moving nearly straight north.  I dashed back in, re-started the 2-minute frames, then hoped the break would last long enough for one.  It did!
I have one cloudless sub-frame of Lovejoy.  That was it.  The clouds never broke after that.  Fifteen minutes later I broke down the rig and pulled everything inside.
Lots of work for a two-minute sub.
Would I do it again?  Of course.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT65EDQ and TeleVue NPR-1073 (eff. at f/5.2)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C (1x120"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: IDAS LPS-P2
Guiding: Meade DSI Pro and Hutech 50mm
Mount: Takahashi EM-10
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX 

Melotte 15 and IC 1805's Heart, Early Fall 2013

Full resolution image here.

Here is a slightly modified Hubble palette version of the cluster Melotte 15 and the heart of IC 1805.  To the bi-color I've added Sulfur II emission.  Now SII = Red, Ha+NII = Green, and OIII = Blue, though the colors have been shifted somewhat to emphasize the contrasts between them.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (Ha+NII:23x1200"; OIII:17x1200"; SII:18x1200"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik Ha+NII, OIII, SII
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Registar, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

IC 1805 & Melotte 15, Bi-Color (Sept. & Oct. 2013)

Full resolution image here.

This is the brightest part of IC1805 in eastern Cassiopeia.  The star cluster to the right is Melotte 15.  What is stunning about this area is how the ionization fronts twist and turn next to the star cluster.

This is a bi-color image, but Ha[+NII] dominates the scene.  The OIII is present nearly everywhere the Ha exists, but is dimmer.  I've included both monochrome frames below, Ha then OIII.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (Ha+NII:23x1200"; OIII:17x1200"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik Ha+NII & OIII
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Registar, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

M27 Bi-Color Narrowband (Sept. & Oct. 2013)

 

Full resolution image here.

M27 again.  Early in the summer I took some OIII of this object, but the frames had a guiding error.  They looked cool, though, so I've wanted to come back for more.  Also, I observed M27 from Bear Lake, Utah, this summer through my SV80ED.  It was stunning, a big cotton ball in the sky.  Too bad the imaging had to wait until late September, when M27 is only available for a few hours from my backyard.

This is a bi-color image, which in this case means that I concocted a synthetic green channel out of the OIII (80%) and Ha (20%) frames.  I opted to show OIII in blue rather than green (OIII is more green than blue) because red and blue look nicer to me than red and green.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (Ha+NII:13x1200"; OIII:9x1200"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik Ha+NII & OIII
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Registar, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

Cassiopeia A or Cas A (October 8, 2013)

Cas A is a supernova remnant very near the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) and M52 in Cassiopeia.  Astronomers estimate that Cas A blew up around 300 years ago.  There is no certain historical record of the event, though one celestial cartographer recorded a star near this location that does not appear there now.

I have always wanted to see this object, and I was encouraged by Sue French's column in the November 2013 Sky & Telescope.  Ms. French said the remnant was visible in her 10-inch scope, so I thought it would be visible with my refractor and camera.  And here it is.  I was unable to find many amateur images of Cas A, but Ken Crawford's is spectacular.  The Chandra X-ray Observatory also has great material on Cas A, including a movie showing the movement of material in the nebula over a relatively few years.  The movie appears to show a central star that may be the neutron star left after the explosion.

This is not a pretty picture, just an observation.  I took only a few hours through a narrowband OIII filter, and the object is very dim.  I had to take an exposure of a few minutes just to find it.  But it's exciting to look at such an object and imagine the tremendous forces that created it and continue to operate there.  The remnant is roughly 11,000 light years away.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (OIII: 8x600"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik OIII
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

Train up a Child ... (Feb. 2013)

 

Gotta love this image.  My boy was four at the time.

NGC 7635, the Bubble Nebula (Sept. 24, 2013)

Full resolution image here.

OK, I've shot this before, but I needed a target after M27 set and before my next target came up.  Here it is.  This is the Bubble Nebula, or NGC 7635, in Cassiopeia.  It is a strange and wonderful object.  A very large, bright star is blasting the bubble out of a cloud of gas.  The star sits in what appears to be the upper right of the bubble.  Just below it is a knot of gas that the star is slowly blowing away with ultraviolet radiation.  The head of the knot glows like a star because it absorbs so much energy.  All the glowing gas you see here is ionized hydrogen and nitrogen, as the filter I used catches only those two.  The gas is glowing from radiation emanating from the same star.  It's such a dramatic scene!

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (Ha-NII: 7x1200"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik Ha-NII
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

Dumbbell Nebula, M27, in OIII (Sept. 24, 2013)

Full resolution image here.

Finally, clear skies again.  I took a few images of M27 through an OIII filter in June and have wanted to go back to it.  This nebula is so dramatic in the light of ionized oxygen!  In fact, this nebula is quite a sight no matter how you look at it.  This summer while observing the excellent skies near Bear Lake, Utah, I glimpsed M27 in a low-power eyepiece through my SV80ED.  The nebula looked like a cotton ball, round and puffy, floating in the Milky Way!  M27 lies roughly 1,300 lights years distant in the constellation Vulpecula.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (OIII: 9x1200"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik OIII
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

Observing with the C8 (August 29, 2013)

So many cloudy nights!  Summer is like that here, but last night the sky cleared in the evening until very early morning.  Desperate for finely focused starlight, I set up the C8 on the EM-10 and had a look.  I jumped back and forth between 67x and 200x.

Best sight of the night? I'd say it was a tie between Epsilon Lyrae and NGC 6826, the blinking planetary.  The C8 pulls in a respectable number of photons, and "seeing" was decent at 200x last night.  I don't usually look at the Double Double with a large scope.  It's a whole new view at 200x, a much closer view than I can see in my little SV80ED.  NGC 6826 blinked for sure at 67x, showing brightly with averted vision but nearly disappearing when directly viewed.  At 200x, the little blue circle of light held steady.  I was surprised how bright the central star shone.

What was really fun was letting the Samsung tablet do the work.  The SkySafari app connects via bluetooth to a Firefly serial-to-bluetooth adapter on the telescope.  I just tell the app where I want to go, and scope moves right along.  To this long-time starhopper, the ease of moving almost made viewing too fast.  I must have viewed thirty open clusters last night.  Most of them looked great in the C8, framed nicely with the 2-inch, 30mm, 80-degree eyepiece.

A great evening of observing!

Pluto and Palomar 8 (July 10, 2013)

 

 (Click on pictures for larger images.)

Here is Pluto!  See it?  It is just to the east (left) and a little south of the obscure globular cluster Palomar 8.  (You will have to click on the image, at least.)  Palomar 8 is about 42,000 light years away, which is not that far for a globular, but we see it through the mid-section of our own Milky Way galaxy.  That is why there are so many stars in this image.  Lots of gas and dust also block the view, especially obscuring blue light.  That is why the cluster is just a dusty bit of reddish fluff near the middle of the image.

The real treat here is the planet's juxtaposition with the globular.  But Pluto is hard to see!  The dimmest stars in this image are about magnitude 16.  Pluto is around magnitude 14, but quite a few magnitude 14 stars shine here.  How to find Pluto?  Well, I used two resources: the chart on pages 52-53 of the June 2013 Sky & Telescope, and sky-map.org, which plots planet locations against the DSS2 All Sky Survey.  Pluto is the only magnitude 14 object at the location, and I can see stars in the image two magnitudes deeper.  I am confident I have the planet here.  Care to find it in the above image?  If not, here is the same image with pointers:

Want a closer look?  Here is the pixelated, enlarged view.  Some star magnitudes are labeled so that you can more easily spot the planet.  You might compare this view with the survey view on sky-map.org.  Search for "palomar 8."  For a few weeks right now, the sign for Pluto will be very nearby.

There is a time warp in this image.  The light from Pluto has been traveling from the Sun (roundtrip to Pluto and back to us) for about 8 hours 37 minutes.  Light from Pluto itself (sunlight bouncing back) traveled about 4 hours 22 minutes.  Light from Palomar 8 has traveled from the other side of the galaxy for 42,000 years.  We are literally looking back in time.  Light from the Sun reaches the earth in a bit more than 8 minutes.  Pluto's relative distance from the Sun, as compared to ours, is understandable in light minutes: 8 minutes v. 262 minutes.  It's easy to see why the diminutive ball of rock is so cold.

I call Pluto a planet in this post.  Some would prefer it be designated something else.  I have no interest in that debate.

I used the AT65EDQ for this image.  I wanted to see how deep the scope and color camera combination would go.  Partly I wanted to "observe" Pluto with a 65mm scope.  I think it's amazing that such a small scope will allow me to see such a dim object.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT65EDQ and TeleVue NPR-1073 (eff. at f/5.2)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C (39x240"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: IDAS LPS-P2
Guiding: Meade DSI Pro and Hutech 50mm
Mount: Takahashi EM-10
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

NGC 6910, Sadr, and IC 1318 (July 2013)

 Full resolution image here.

The star cluster in the upper left is NGC 6910.  I took a close-up image of it a couple of years ago with the 10" Newtonian, here, but I wanted to go back for a view of the larger context.


The bright star to the right of the cluster is Sadr, or Gamma Cygni.  It is the heart of (the constellation) Cygnus, the Swan.

The nebulosity throughout the image is known as IC 1318, though this is not all of it.  IC 1318 covers an area all around Sadr.

This is second light with the AT65EDQ.  This image is also a test of the TeleVue focal reducer NPR-1073.  The 65EDQ's only obvious drawback is its speed.  TeleVue's 0.8x reducer takes the 65EDQ down to f/5.2, plenty fast for my purposes.  Star images are not perfect in this image, but they are certainly close enough for me (and I'm not sure where the fault lies, at this point).

The image has been reduced slightly to lessen the effect of lingering noise in the image.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT65EDQ and TeleVue NPR-1073 (eff. at f/5.2)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C (35x480"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: IDAS LPS-P2
Guiding: Meade DSI Pro and Hutech 50mm
Mount: Takahashi EM-10
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3 (one Carboni action)
Location: The Woodlands, TX

Abell 39, PN G047.0+42.4 (Spring 2013)

 Full resolution image here.

This is Abell 39, a planetary nebula in the constellation Hercules.  The nebula fascinates because it is almost perfectly spherical.  Like all planetary nebulae, Abell 39 is the remains of a dying star.  The dying star is the central star within the nebula.  The sphere glows primarily in the light of oxygen excited by the radiation from the central star.  Here is a close crop of the nebula:

 Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (OIII: 31x1200" and combined in RGB with R (14x300"), G (15x300" + 90% OIII), B (15x300" + 20% OIII)), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik RGB & OIII
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3 (one Carboni action), Registar
Location: The Woodlands, TX

Astronomy Merit Badge, June 17-21

The last few weeks have been busy astronomically, though no images resulted.  I took my C8 and EM-10 to scout camp for a week and taught the Astronomy merit badge to a whole bunch of scouts.  I also took the Orion 80mm f/5 shorttube on a simple alt-az mount.   And I carried with me that absolute necessity for public outreach, the laser pointer.  For fun, I took the AT65EDQ with a solar filter for some solar viewing.

The first night, I had over 40 in the class.  The next night just 26.  The class went four nights for about 1.5 hours per class.  About ten boys ended up with the merit badge, including my son.  The rest earned important parts of it.  Even better, many young men were introduced to astronomy with quality views through good, working equipment.  One night I saw Saturn and 6 moons.  The moon was phenomenal through the C8.  We also looked at M13 one night, though only a couple of scouts stayed for that.  Three scouts came by for solar viewing; I counted over 20 sunspots each day we looked at the sun.

For the merit badge, we did a star party at which each scout had to use the 80mm achromat to show things around the sky.  Saturn and the Moon were prominent, but Venus and Mercury were also viewable.  Some boys also showed Polaris, Regulus, or Vega.  The boys had to learn ten constellations, eight bright stars, phases of the Moon and why they occur, and a bunch of other useful things.

Planetary Alignment, May 27, 2013

  Higher resolution image here.

 

Higher resolution image here.

Here is Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter, starting at the top and moving clockwise, on the evening of May 27, 2013.  Of course, both images show better at higher resolution.  Canon T3i, 50mm f/1.8 II.

M3 (April 19, 2013)

Full resolution image here.

This globular cluster, known as M3 or Messier 3, brightens the sky in the constellation Canes Venatici.  It is roughly 33- to 39,000 light years away.  Globs are interesting, and they become more interesting the deeper one can see into them.  They contain so many stars that no telescope from earth could see them all.  One can always go deeper!  Yet deeper images and larger telescopes make the objects fascinating.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (RGB: 6:6:6 x 300" (1.5 hours)), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik RGB
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3, Registar
Location: The Woodlands, TX

AT65EDQ Test Image (April 20, 2013)

Here is a test image taken through a new AT65EDQ.  This image was taken with the SXVF-H9C, a one-shot-color camera; you can see the color correction of the lens system is excellent.  I'm still trying to determine whether to swap out the stock focuser.  It held the equipment well but does not have the precision I'm used to.  Focus was a bit less snappy than I'm used to, too, and I'm not sure why.  But the image looks promising.

This is a bit over an hour (23x180").  Clouds were rolling in, and the moon was out.  The cluster is M13, of course.  I was anxious to see how stars looked in the corners of the full frame (small though this chip is), so I did not even bother to center the cluster.

Full resolution image here.

NGC 4631, the Whale Galaxy and the Remora (March & April, 2013)

Full resolution image here.

This asymmetrical galaxy is 13-25 million light years away in the constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs).  The shape reminds some of a whale.  I'd say it's a baleen whale, almost certainly a gray, especially given the mottled appearance.

The galaxy immediately above the Whale is NGC 4627.  Probably the two are interacting gravitationally, and this may explain the asymmetrical appearance of each.  Together they are cataloged as #281 in Halton Arp's Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies.  I'd say if NGC 4631 is the Whale Galaxy then NGC 4627 is the Remora.

The image itself has a peculiar shape.  I took two sets of sub-frames, one in March and one in April.  The camera was placed at a slightly different angle with respect to the telescope in March than in April.  So I had edge lines in the final image.  Normally, I would crop all those out, but I wanted to show all of the little galaxies floating about in this part of the sky, especially the irregular galaxies, so I selected around all of them, then added a darker layer outside of the selection.  Exploring in this image is pretty fun.  You might compare the full resolution image to what is shown for this area in sky-map.org, linked at right. The dimmest stars in this image are magnitude +18.5.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (104x480" (13.86 hours)), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

NGC 3628 (Dec. 2012 - Feb. 2013)

 Full resolution image here.

This galaxy appears in the constellation Leo and sits 35±14 million light years away.  Its asymmetries are thought attributable to interactions with nearby galaxies.  NGC 3628 is renowned for looking like a ham sandwich.  Here the sandwich is upside-down, and the toothpick is sticking out of the bottom—the toothpick is the small satellite galaxy or ripped-off piece of NGC 3628 that appears just below it in this image.

My best visual view of the galaxy was through an 8" Newtonian reflector from a dark site at 40x magnification.  The galaxy was a long, ghostly glow with a dark lane down the center—quite a stunning sight!  This image is just luminance.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (108x480" (14.4 hours)), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

M109 (March 11 and 12, 2013)

Full resolution image here.

M109 is very roughly 81 million light years away, give or take 24 million.  We find it in Ursa Major very near one of the stars in the Big Dipper's bowl.  M109 is classed as a barred spiral.  It is the largest of a group of galaxies called, with affection, the M109 Group.  I've always found M109 fascinating.  This is my second image of it. Other galaxies are readily visible in the image.  The brightest of these are UGC 6923 (PGC 37553), on the left; UGC 6940, about 9:30 from M109; and UGC 6969 (PGC 37700), above and right of M109.  Some or none of these might be satellite galaxies of M109, but some folks think each of them is.  This image is shrunken slightly for noise reduction.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (24x900" for M109 and 17x900" for everything else---I had some sort of glow in 7 frames that did not cover the galaxy), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: SHSU Observatory near Huntsville, TX; Starry Nights Bed and Breakfast near Wimberley, TX 

M81 (March 11 & 12, 2013)

Full resolution image here.

M81 is roughly 12 million light years away.  We see it in the constellation Ursa Major.  In fact, it sits just west of the Big Dipper's bowl.  M81 is the largest of a group of nearby galaxies called, with affection, the M81 group.  The galaxy just below (west of) M81 in the image is PGC 28757 or Holmberg IX, an irregular dwarf satellite galaxy of M81.  There are other, more distant galaxies in the image, too, but I have no idea what names they carry, or if they do.

This image was taken from skies darker than my normal location.   Distant galaxies are always better seen from darker skies.  The image is shrunken slightly for noise reduction.

If you look closely at the image above, you will see there are clouds to the left of M81 running from the top to the bottom of the image.  These are probably clouds of gas and dust within our own galaxy and have earned the name "Galactic Cirrus."  See here and here.  These clouds are very dimly lit.  They are more easily seen in this inverted version:

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (29x900"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: SHSU Observatory near Huntsville, TX; Starry Nights Bed and Breakfast near Wimberley, TX

A Short M51 (Jan. & Feb. 2013)

 Full resolution image here.

How many images of M51 can a fellow have?  This was taken while I still had night left after my real target had set behind the trees.  Size reduced a bit to handle noise in the background.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics AFR-IV (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (23x480"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik CLS
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

Star Party (Feb. 28, 2013)

Last week I ran a star party for an honors club from our local high school. I have never seen such an inquisitive group. I answered questions about, for example, star formation (its conditions and causes), star life, and star death (in all its forms), neutron stars and white dwarfs, the difference between globular and open clusters, what is visible in amateur scopes, how autoguiding works, what kinds of cameras are used for astrophotography, and "what app do you use to talk to your telescope." The group stayed for nearly two hours under a clear sky in a local park. They saw Jupiter and its four largest moons, M42 and the Trapezium, Gamma Leonis, and the Pleiades. Three of them saw Sirius B, and five of them M66.

For a telescope, I used the relatively new metallic orange C8. I am continually delighted with the quality of its optics, and it has held collimation since I tweaked it when it was new nine months ago. It sits on the mount at just the right height for a standing person of average height. It is large enough to show interesting things but small enough to carry fifty yards into the park to set up without trouble. After it cools down, the views are fantastic. I keep dew off with a dew heater around the skyward end.

The C8 was mounted on a Tak EM-10 equipped with a form of Temma 2 goto. The mount's serial cable ends in a Firefly-BP Bluetooth adapter. The Firefly pairs with my Samsung tablet, and the telescope is controlled with SkySafari. This works wirelessly and beautifully. Having a star party wait while one finds something to look at is a real downer, especially if it's cold outside. Between the Goto and the finderscope, the crowd stayed happy. Also essential was a green laser pointer, the best tool I've ever seen for public discussion of the sky.

All in all it was a wonderful night!

M67,Twice (12-2012 to 2-2013)

 Full resolution image here.

There is a time during the night in December through February when bright targets are not too plentiful.  This one, M67, is one of the few.  In between working on dimmer targets, I took some frames of M67.  We see M67 in the constellation Cancer.

M67 is an open cluster of stars that is between 2,500 and 3,000 light years away.  Its age is between 3.5 and 5 billion years.  Our Sun is about 5 billion years old, we believe.  The Sun and M67 are moving in the same general direction through space in our Milky Way Galaxy.  Some have speculated that our Sun was once a member of the cluster, though later studies (such as here) make this seem unlikely.

Regardless, M67 is a beautiful open cluster in a telescope.  No image really captures the beauty of the stars, but these remind me of the cluster.

The first was taken with the AT111EDT, a refractor.  The spikes were placed on the stars with software.  I think they are subtle and give the stars a bit of sparkle.  That image leads the three because it most nicely frames the cluster.  Here is the same image without the spikes:

Full resolution image here.

And here is one taken through the Orion 254mm f/4.7 Newtonian.  In this image, the spikes are part of the star shapes created by the telescope.  The color for the Newtonian image comes from the Palomar and AAO Digital Sky Survey II, publicly available on the web.  Thanks to Dick Locke for generously sharing a color-balanced sample image.

Full resolution image here.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics P-FLAT4 (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C; L (15x180"), R (6x300"), G (7x300"), B (7x300"); Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik CLS and RGB filters
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Registar, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX 

Telescope: Orion 254mm f/4.7 Newtonian and RCC I
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9 (L: 9x240"), T-shirt flats
Filter: IDAS LPS-P2
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Registar, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

NGC 2244 & the Rosette Nebula Center, Bi-Color (Dec. & Jan, 2012-13)

Link to full resolution image.

Here is my recent NGC 2244 and Rosette data arranged as a bi-color.  In this rendition, I have mixed the Ha [+NII] data with SII at a 2:1 ratio.  These wavelengths, which fall in the red part of the spectrum, became Red.  Blue in this image comprises OIII and Ha data mixed at 4:1, and Green comprises OIII and SII data mixed at 4:1.  The color strengths were adjusted after combination to emphasize the difference between red and blue, so the contrast visible here is between Ha, NII, and SII, on the one hand, and OIII on the other, red v. blue-green.  Capture data for this image appears in the Hubble palette post for this object, dated February 4, 2013.  The telescope used was the AT111EDT, the camera the SXVF-H9.

NGC 2244 and the Rosette Nebula Center (Dec. & Jan. 2012-13)

Link to a full resolution image.

This is the center of the Rosette Nebula, a fascinating place.  The squall line of dust and gas clouds in the upper left (northwest) is being slowing washed away by stellar winds from the brilliant O stars in the cluster NGC 2244, which occupies the middle of the image.  In fact, the cluster has blown a hole in the middle of the cloud, which is why the background in the middle of the image is dimmer than the surrounding sky.  And the loops and filaments throughout the image add intrigue and color.  Also, notice some stars here appear distinctly yellow.  In this color scheme, those stars glow far more brightly in ionized sulphur than in ionized hydrogen or oxygen, and that in itself is a cool fact.

The Rosette is also famous for harboring Herbig-Haro objects.  The most famous of these is just to the left (north) of the brightest star in my image, and faintly visible, but more visible in this brightened and more contrasty cut from the Ha [+NII] image:

My image is processed roughly in the Hubble palette, which means green for Ha, blue for OIII, and red for SII.  I've modified the weighting of the colors slightly to boost contrast and (I hope) aesthetics.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics P-FLAT4 (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C; Ha [+NII] 10x15', OIII 11x20', SII 12x20'; Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik 12nm narrowband filters
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Registar, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX

IC 410 (Jan. 6, 2013)

Link to the full resolution image.

This just 6x20'.  I was waiting for something else to come up over the trees.  I have to admit I do like this nebula and cluster, though.  The cluster's stars appear in loops or banks of stars moving away from a roughly central point.  I'd bet this is a leftover from some facet of the cluster's formation.  I also like the tadpoles, of course.  And I enjoy thinking how much hydrogen (and nitrogen, perhaps) is glowing here, certainly more than I can frame with this system.

Telescope: Astro-Tech AT111EDT and William Optics P-FLAT4 (eff. at f/5.6)
Camera and Exposure: SXVF-H9C (6x1200"), Alnitak Flat-man flats
Filter: Astronomik 12nm Ha [+NII]
Guiding: SX Lodestar and SX OAG
Mount: Takahashi NJP
Software: Nebulosity, Maxim DL, Photoshop CS3
Location: The Woodlands, TX