I came back to my image of the Deer Lick Group and Stephan’s Quintet from last year due to the JWST reveal. While my original take on the image was not terrible for the tools and knowledge I had available at the time, I wanted to give the original integration… Continue Reading... "Reprocessing the Deer Lick and Stephan’s Quintet"
I finally had a run of clear skies on a new Moon! I took advantage by imaging NGC 5566 at the beginning of each of the six mostly clear nights. This galaxy is the prominent one in the middle of the image, and it lies about 65 million light years… Continue Reading... "NGC 5566 and friends"
I recently learned about this rarely imaged target just a few weeks ago. In addition to the Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way visible only from the southern hemisphere, there are many other satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. One of these is an elliptical dwarf that… Continue Reading... "Ursa Minor Dwarf Galaxy"
I had a few hours of clear, moonless sky last night before the moon rose around midnight. I decided to take a short tour of galaxies around Ursa Major, Virgo, Leo, and Coma Berenices. I used SharpCap to live stack ten to fifteen minutes on each target. A little post… Continue Reading... "A tour of the Virgo cluster"
With the imaging rig fixed up and back in service, I spent a few nights taking data on the small galaxy cluster Holmberg 124. The first night had some terrible seeing, so I had to toss a lot of that data. Overall, the equipment ran well for me, and I… Continue Reading... "Holmberg 124"
I finally put back together my wide-field setup based on my SkyWatcher 72ED and Nikon D5300. I wanted to give it a quick test last night, since the sky was actually clear for once. It was running nice and smooth until after I fell asleep, when a cable snagged and… Continue Reading... "A quick wide-field of M101"
NGC 2403 is a less popular circumpolar galaxy that lies about eight million light years from us. It was the first target that I attempted to do multiple nights of, and it seems to be bad luck for me over all. This integration had a terrible background, hence my previous… Continue Reading... "NGC 2403"
This was a target that I did last year, but I was not happy with it for several reasons. I decided to re-image it from scratch. I began imaging it at the end of September, and October was nothing but clouds each and every night. I was finally able to… Continue Reading... "Deer Lick Group and Stephan’s Quintet"
Abell 2151 is a cluster of over 200 galaxies. I’ve spent the last three weeks collecting over 32 hours of data on this cluster. There were some problems with neighborhood light pollution, so I had a nasty background to contend with. Luckily, I was able to mostly fix it up.… Continue Reading... "Hercules Galaxy Cluster"
You know it couldn’t be spring without revisiting my favorite galaxy, Messier 51. As I’ve learned, I was patient with this project, taking three weeks to collect 25 hours throughout the cloudy nights and storms. The patience paid off by revealing the dim halo around these colliding galaxies. I’d think… Continue Reading... "M51"
