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"
With the moon out in full all night long, my only realistic targets were clusters. I imaged a pair of clusters at the end of the night, and, little did I know, it went behind a big tree half way through. Guiding was also being weird half of the time,… Continue Reading... "“Possible Binary Cluster,” NGC 6755 and 6756"
Even though the moon was out and quite bright, I decided to image. There weren’t many good targets to choose from, so I chose a triplet of galaxies, including NGC 5981, 5982, and 5985. These galaxies are a decent ways away, at between 140 and 200 million light years. Things… Continue Reading... "Draco Trio"
For the first test of my new ZWO ASI2600MC camera, I needed a somewhat easy target. With all of the famous galaxies done already for the year, I picked M100, the “Blowdryer galaxy.” Not too dim or large, it turned out really well. The colored rings problem I had been… Continue Reading... "M100, the Blowdryer galaxy"
I needed to waste a couple hours before the sun came up and after my last target went over the trees, so I picked the open cluster NGC 6819. 40 exposures of four minutes each led to a rich star field. Continue Reading... "The Foxhead, an open cluster"
I purchased a ZWO ASI178MM camera to use as my guide camera. It worked for a little bit one night and then just wouldn’t ever connect again. I just got a ZWO ASI2600MC in the mail. I tried to test them by hooking them through the USB 3.0 hub in… Continue Reading... "USB woes with a Hewlett Packard laptop"
