3 Juno
After finishing two long imaging projects, a 60% moon made a good night to do some minor planet hunting. 3 Juno is a large asteroid in the asteroid belt. It is about the size of Indiana, and weighs as much 3,300 Mount Everests. It was pretty low in the sky… Continue Reading... "3 Juno"
Cocoon Nebula
The Cocoon Nebula, Caldwell 19, is a bright emission and reflection nebula in Cygnus. It is around 2,500 light years away. In addition to the Hydrogen emission and other reflections, there is a beautiful cloud of dark interstellar dust surrounding the object. This is an active star forming region. Here… Continue Reading... "Cocoon Nebula"
Bright meteor spotted
I was browsing through the archives of my allsky camera and noticed something strange in one of the star trails images, Airplanes are the dotted lines throughout the image, and satellites are the very thin solid lines. The wide object in the upper right is Saturn. The very wide and… Continue Reading... "Bright meteor spotted"
Andromeda Galaxy
The nearest proper galaxy to us, the Andromeda Galaxy, is a very large and bright object in the autumn sky. It’s visible with the naked eye outside of the city, and it spans about 2.8 degrees in the sky, making it appear six times larger than the full moon. It… Continue Reading... "Andromeda Galaxy"
Sonifying my astro images
I frequently see posts and headlines like “You won’t believe what Jupiter sounds like!” and “The sounds of a black hole are TERRIFYING!” While many of these are some interpretation of radio data and are not actual sound, you can sonify just about anything in many different creative ways. I… Continue Reading... "Sonifying my astro images"
Allsky camera features
If you haven’t checked out the live allsky camera on my website, you have missed out on some of the cool features that the software provides. In addition to live images being displayed at all times of day, it also processes data from each night to create three different ways… Continue Reading... "Allsky camera features"
The Double Cluster
Been a while, hasn’t it? My wide-field setup consisting of an EQM-35 and Evostar 72ED has been nothing but trouble. While I am very pleased with the telescope itself, which seems quite well corrected for being so cheap, the mount has been a nightmare. I finally dismantled the entire thing,… Continue Reading... "The Double Cluster"
New Live Feeds
I’ve finally had a bit of a break in the clouds and have started a new imaging project. I’ve been looking for ways to somehow stream the imaging process as it happens at night. I’ve found lightweight solutions to this by adding auto-updating screenshots of the imaging laptop along with… Continue Reading... "New Live Feeds"
Fixing saturated stars in PixInsight
I’ve been struggling for some time now to find a decent method to fix the brightest stars in my images. Since some stars are so much brighter than the deep space objects I am imaging, they become saturated due to the limited well depth of cameras. This means that information… Continue Reading... "Fixing saturated stars in PixInsight"
