August 28, 2021

Crescent Close-Up (NGC 6888) (August 2021)

 

I love using my CFF 290 Classical Cassegrain.  Here is an image taken (at f/8.1, 2350mm) of the brighter half of the Crescent Nebula in Cygnus.  This is a full narrowband image.  I took three hours of H-alpha then spent a night on what I thought was O3 but which turned out to be S2---ouch (slip of the brain when controlling the filter wheel)!  The S2 is blended in here.  I finally caught another 3 hours of O3.  Total time: 8 hours 50 minutes.  The H-a and S2 subs were 20 minutes long; the O3's were 30 minutes each.

After I finished the O3 subs and the Crescent slipped behind the trees, I put a diagonal and eyepiece in the big scope and enjoyed a tour of Cygnus.  Highlights included the Owl Nebula and Phi And (0.5" clean split; truly awesome to see those little diffraction patterns so close together).  As always, the scope performed like a champ.  I started observing at 3:30 a.m. and made myself put it away at 5.  I had to sleep sometime.

August 12, 2021

M27 in H-alpha (Summer 2021)

This data came from AG Optical. It was fun to process.  Things clouded up in the Gulf Coast from May through the end of July this year.  It's been crazy, so I'm glad to have some data to work on.