With the imaging rig fixed up and back in service, I spent a few nights taking data on the small galaxy cluster Holmberg 124. The first night had some terrible seeing, so I had to toss a lot of that data. Overall, the equipment ran well for me, and I… Continue Reading... "Holmberg 124"
I finally put back together my wide-field setup based on my SkyWatcher 72ED and Nikon D5300. I wanted to give it a quick test last night, since the sky was actually clear for once. It was running nice and smooth until after I fell asleep, when a cable snagged and… Continue Reading... "A quick wide-field of M101"
I’ve finally gotten around to trying the new version of NINA, my preferred deep sky imaging software. The current major version is still in beta, but I am loving it so far. The biggest advancement is what they call their “advanced sequencer.” And advanced it is! The new sequencer allows… Continue Reading... "NINA 2.0"
The brightest emission nebula in the sky, Messier 42, was a great target to test extended object spectroscopy with my new ALPY 600. I set the telescope to track the core, just off the Trapezium, and the science camera to take 12 exposures of 100 seconds each. Emission nebulae are… Continue Reading... "Emission Nebula Spectrum"
I tell ya, astronomy is just one of those quicksand hobbies that you just can’t escape! I have begun my journey in astronomical spectroscopy. I recently acquired a Shelyak ALPY 600 with guiding module. I was graced with a very clear night a few nights ago. The moon was almost… Continue Reading... "The Spectra of Notable Brumal Stars"
Unless you have been living on Mercury the last few years, you have probably heard of the James Webb Space Telescope. It was successfully launched on Christmas day from French Guyana. It was delayed several years due to the complexity of its deployment. We didn’t want another HST debacle, did… Continue Reading... "James Webb Space Telescope"
It’s been a very long, cloudy winter. I hadn’t even had a chance to use my telescope since early November! We got a few clears nights in the last week, and wouldn’t you know it, I had a bunch of problems with the equipment. My focuser had developed some rust… Continue Reading... "71% Moon in horrendous seeing"
NGC 2403 is a less popular circumpolar galaxy that lies about eight million light years from us. It was the first target that I attempted to do multiple nights of, and it seems to be bad luck for me over all. This integration had a terrible background, hence my previous… Continue Reading... "NGC 2403"
Depending on where a target is, I can have terrible gradients and mottled backgrounds in my images due to sky and local light pollution. I struggle each time to try to salvage bad images when simple background elimination doesn’t work well enough. Here, I’d like to outline a new idea… Continue Reading... "A method to remove light pollution background problems"
This was a target that I did last year, but I was not happy with it for several reasons. I decided to re-image it from scratch. I began imaging it at the end of September, and October was nothing but clouds each and every night. I was finally able to… Continue Reading... "Deer Lick Group and Stephan’s Quintet"
