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