I had a tough time last weekend with my cheap Celestron tracking motor, so I thought I would piece together something beefier. Well, after wasting one and a half nights on that, I dug the old Celestron motor out of the garbage and reinstalled it. Tracking was much better with… Continue Reading... "Getting my tracking groove back with IC 5146"
The thing that has probably blown my mind the most about all of this equipment is the Bahtinov mask. Invented by an amateur astronomer, it completely trivializes focusing. You just place this over the aperture of your telescope, point it at a bright star, and adjust focus until the three… Continue Reading... "Bahtinov Masks"
After getting a little used to my new guidescope and camera, and with the planets pretty much behind the trees for the year, I decided to try another deep sky target. Looking around in Stellarium, I noticed the wizard nebula that seemed to perfectly fit in frame. Seeing was not… Continue Reading... "NGC 7380, the Wizard"
Excited to play with a new guidescope that I purchased to try to bring more accuracy to my manual tracking, I decided to try the setup out by finding the hardest galaxy I’ve done yet. Great idea. This is IC 10, also known as the “Starburst galaxy.” The galaxy is… Continue Reading... "Learning from mistakes with IC 10"
Another success with my UHC filter, the Bubble nebula turned out terrific! It wasn’t too bad to find, but as soon as I landed on it, I knew it was it. The distinct circular shape came through perfectly, and there was so much more present in the stacked image that… Continue Reading... "Pop the bubble!"
I figured I would take a shot at a large nebula that is much larger than my field of view. Although I didn’t expect to capture much of it given my f ratio, I was pleasantly surprised when I processed subframes that didn’t look like much of anything. This is… Continue Reading... "A pleasant surprise, the Iris"
On a mission to do a nearby nebula, I couldn’t help but get M37, the Salt and Pepper Cluster. I’ve recently been delighted with clusters, and plan to do many more if the conditions allow. This took about 30 frames of 15 seconds at 1000 ISO. Continue Reading... "Spice up your space!"
One of the biggest challenges of amateur astronomy is the effect called atmospheric seeing. It can be a problem with wide-frame deep sky shots, but it is especially a problem when using a high magnification to image a planet. The atmosphere is turbulent and can distort the light rays entering… Continue Reading... "Atmosperic “seeing”"
When I was about to call it a night, I glanced around one more time in Stellarium, and behold, I found a small nebula that could actually fit in my field of view! The Ring nebula was super easy to find, and my new Baader UHC filter worked a treat… Continue Reading... "A cute summertime nebula, the Ring"
Right next to the Fireworks galaxy is the Ghost Bush cluster. Seeing as I hadn’t done a cluster yet, I figured, why not? As soon as I planted on it, the tracking was perfect, and I snapped away about 75 shots at 1000 ISO at 15 seconds. Continue Reading... "First cluster, the “Ghost Bush”"
