Clouds and Old Data

Another cloudy night. Or, it seems, if it's clear, I'm working late. I'm starting to chew on old data. Here's a re-process of just seven minutes of M31 taken last summer as a test. Anxious to try this again when I hit dark skies in the Rocky Mountains again in August. Taken with the Canon XTi through the AT66ED. The image has been shrunken considerably to hide the poor signal to noise ratio. We can't expect too much out of just seven minutes.

M37

Tonight I arrived home late. The sky was wonderfully clear. It was too late to set up for imaging. I took the 6" achromat out and wandered through Auriga and southern Gemini. Conclusion: It's hard to describe how beautiful M37 is. The other local clusters---M38, M36, M35---don't hold a candle to it. Yes, M38 has NGC 1907 nearby, and M35 has NGC 2158, but M37 doesn't need these crutches. It is stunning on its own in the 6" at 35x, where it fills the middle half of the view with sparkling gemstones on purple velvet. Whoa!

NGC 2362, the Tau Canis Majoris Cluster

I have been enamoured of this cluster ever since I spotted it through binoculars from a dry lake bed east of Reno, Nevada, many years ago. The striking thing about it, in a telescope, is the bright star in the center, Tau Canis Majoris, and the sparkling lights huddling around it. I've tried my best to capture the romance of it, but nothing is quite so striking as the real thing.

Imaging Scope: AT66ED (f/6)
Imager: Atik 16
Exposure: L: 21x1', R: 10x1', G: 11x1', B: 12x1'
Filter(s): Astrodon Gen II LRGB
Capture Software: Nebulosity 2
Mount: Takahashi EM-10, unguided
Date: February 6, 2010
Location: The Woodlands, TX
Processed with Nebulosity 2, Maxim DL, & PSCS3

Here is the luminance frame alone:

Christmas Tree & Cone Nebulas

This is a fresh attempt at the Cone Nebula. My first attempt was rather pathetic (here), and this is a big improvement.

Imaging Scope: TMB80CF (80/504)
Imager: Atik 16
Exposure: 21x8'
Filter(s): Astronomik Ha (+NII)
Capture Software: Nebulosity 2
Mount: Takahashi EM-10
Guiding Camera: DSI Pro
Guiding Software: PHD
Guiding Scope: AT66ED
Date: January 24, 2010
Location: The Woodlands, TX
Processed with Nebulosity 2 & PSCS3 & false color version with PS Elements 7 and Carboni actions

Another Horsehead

This image is real first light with the TMB80CF. (The earlier Horsehead in such lousy conditions was just a practice run.) The false color version shows more detail in the nebula, I think.

Imaging Scope: TMB80CF (80/504)
Imager: Atik 16
Exposure: 13x8'
Filter(s): Astronomik Ha (+NII)
Capture Software: Nebulosity 2
Mount: Takahashi EM-10
Guiding Camera: DSI Pro
Guiding Software: PHD
Guiding Scope: AT66ED
Date: January 24, 2010
Location: The Woodlands, TX
Processed with Nebulosity 2 & PSCS3 & the false color version done in PS Elements 7 with Carboni actions

Horsehead Again Under Lousy Conditions

Haze mocked my attempts to record faint hydrogen emissions.

Horsehead Nebula

Today I saw the Horsehead Nebula as I've never seen it, courtesy of an image from the ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA. Here's a link to January 12, 2010's APOD: Horsehead (and Flame). The focus of this image is the Flame Nebula and the cluster of stars in its center, but the Horsehead is stunning. It is basically the reverse of what we normally see. In visible light, the Horsehead is dark and the background lit up around it, as here (and also below). In the APOD image, the head is lit up, and the background is dark except for the stars. The glowing hydrogen that usually frames the dust making up the horse head is invisible in infrared. With the infrared dust glowing against the background, one sees the head for what it is, not its silhouette!

The images below illustrate the point. I've been trying to catch a new image of the Horsehead, and I'm not entirely satisfied with what I have as of yet, but I can use the H-alpha image that I have taken and combine it with the ESO's Horsehead (used here with permission). This allows both visible and H-alpha in one image. The infrared colors are all imaginary, of course, because the infrared lies outside the visible spectrum. H-alpha, on the other hand, lies in the red part of the visible spectrum and is colored red in this image:
In black and white, the image would look like this:
Without the infrared, the Ha shows a much less interesting Horsehead:
Thanks and congratulations to the ESO and collaborators for providing a beautiful image of what would otherwise be an invisible cloud of dust!