I recently purchased a cheap 50mm f/1.8 lens for my Nikon D5300. The poor camera has just been sitting in a case for almost a year, I figured it needed something to do. I hope to start doing wide-field images with it when a mount that I ordered comes in.… Continue Reading... "First timelapse"
Can you believe it? I got almost an entire clear night to actually image this winter. Well, it dipped down to 9°F last night, and I broke off a little piece of my dome while freezing my fingers off closing up. But I was able to get a little over… Continue Reading... "One night on M42"
With nothing else to do with the endless cloudy skies, most of my astronomy has lately consisted of looking at other peoples’ images. My favorite part of this hobby is the creativity you can use while post processing your images. Some people prefer the blue-orange of the Hubble palette, others… Continue Reading... "Enhanced Triangulum"
The Ohio skies have been unforgiving so far this winter. There have been so few clear nights lately that I haven’t even bothered starting a new imaging project. Tonight was not forecast to be great, but it did end up giving me a few hours of clear skies to play… Continue Reading... "A relaxing night of EAA"
This was a tag along sequence after the Triangulum went over the trees. A couple nights of data were ruined from the moon, but I ended up with a little over 8 hours on M36. There are a couple of weird diffraction effects on the right side, no idea what… Continue Reading... "Pinwheel Cluster"
By far my most ambitious project yet, it took me three weeks to get 42 hours of data on the Triangulum Galaxy, our fourth closest neighbor after the Andromeda galaxy. The moon and clouds fought me the entire way, but it was worth it getting this much data on this… Continue Reading... "Triangulum Galaxy"
The moon is still being a pain in my ass, so I again had to take a break from imaging the Triangulum galaxy after meridian. I wanted to do something a little farther north to see if I could get away from the moon, and I only had about 6… Continue Reading... "Jolly Roger Cluster"
A misadventure in framing, I tacked on the Shoebuckle Cluster after the sequence of my current project, the Triangulum galaxy. A quick search of the eastern sky around 3:00 AM in Stellarium showed the Shoebuckle being a prominent feature, so I quickly added it as a sequence without regard for… Continue Reading... "Shoebuckle cluster"
The first target with my new NexDome observatory was Andromeda. Given that it is so close to us and so large in the sky, I only did a small part of it. My field of view is only about 1 degree, while Andromeda is over three degrees long. If you’re… Continue Reading... "Andromeda Galaxy"
After getting my new NexDome set up and mostly configured, I had to wait almost two weeks for a clear night. Isn’t that how it goes. I first tried to use the ASCOM Dome Control program as the device hub, but it wouldn’t allow SharpCap to slew. The next choice… Continue Reading... "First light with the NexDome, and some EAA"
