While waiting for the Perseid meteor shower to kick into high gear, we decided to take advantage of the miraculously clear skies to shoot Messier 29. M29 was discovered by Charles Messier on July 29th, 1764. The five brightest stars of M29 are blue super giants. Some observers say that M29 looks like a smaller version of the Pleides. One of the amazing things about looking at this cluster is the star field it sits within. There are something like 600 individual stars in this photo, which makes it kind of hard to make out M29 in the middle, but it is there!
The Perseid meteor shower is an annual celestial event. It is regular in its timing and has a decent viewing window spread over a few nights. It's named after the constellation Perseus since many of the meteors seem to originate here, but the meteors actually come from the comet Swift-Tuttle. Each year, we pass through the debris cloud of this comet and are treated with a light show. The kids each invited over a friend and we had a small star party. Everyone got to see a few meteors, but we failed to catch any photographically. We made it to midnight before tiredness, incredible humidity and bugs drove us into the tents. The incredible humidity drove everyone inside soon after that!
Photo Details
Messier 29
August 11, 2013
Orion 8" Astrograph on VX Mount
Nikon D3100 Camera
30 sub frames at 30"/frame
Total Exposure Time = 15 minutes
Image stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image processing in Fitswork
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