Still on a kick revisiting the popular targets that I tried last year, I did a few nights on the Wizard Nebula. These were three of the most humid nights of the summer so far, but my new dew heaters seemed to work pretty well. The third night was half… Continue Reading... "The Wizard, again"
This was one of those projects where nothing was going to go right. Between dew problems on my primary mirror, un-forecast clouds, and Windows deciding to update right after I started imaging and went to bed, three nights turned into barely 12 hours of data. And the flats didn’t work… Continue Reading... "Deer Lick Group and Stephan’s Quintet"
My next target was another that I did last summer, the Bubble Nebula. I imaged it for four nights, but clouds and dew ruined a bit of the data. Overall, I got about 24 hours worth of data. I muddled about considering more nights, but I didn’t think it would… Continue Reading... "The Bubble Nebula"
Taking a break from the summertime nebulae, I focused on the Fireworks Galaxy for three nights. I had to work through some issues with astigmatism that I found out was due to my secondary dew heater. So one night’s data wasn’t superb, but it all averaged out in the end.… Continue Reading... "Fireworks Galaxy"
What a week! The skies graced me with five clear nights in a row. I decided to go “deep” on a single target, choosing the Tulip‘s neighbor, the Crescent Nebula. I captured over 25 hours of data on this target, mostly during a bright moon. The Baader UHC filter makes… Continue Reading... "The Crescent"
Pretty much everyone has seen the famous Hubble image of the towers of gas within the Eagle nebula. With great results with my last nebula project, I definitely wanted to do another nebula, and Messier 16 was at the perfect part of the sky. A little work was required first,… Continue Reading... "Pillars of Creation"
Well, it’s finally nebula season! My first nebula with the new telescope and mount is the Tulip. This isn’t a super bright nebula, but with 15 hours of exposures over three nights, I was able to bring out some incredible detail. I used my Baader UHC filter to kill the… Continue Reading... "The Tulip"
Over two nights, I decided to go hard on M92, mostly since the moon was out each night. The first night didn’t last long before clouds filled the sky. I got about six hours on it. Continue Reading... "M92"
I have really been looking for something to make my own “Hubble deep field” style image. As probably everyone does, I just love those galaxy-dense images that show us a multitude of worlds that are mighty old. And what luck: given the poor weather for the last three weeks, I… Continue Reading... "Hercules Cluster"
I wanted to try to do a mosaic of M53 and its neighbor NGC 5053, but it turns out I can’t since I have some field curvature, and things just won’t line up for me when stitching the panels. So, here is M53 again. Continue Reading... "M53"
