M101 (Pinwheel Galaxy)

 

This beautiful face-on pinwheel galaxy is number 101 in Messier's list, but was discovered in 1781 by Pierre Mechain.  Also known as a "grand design spiral", it spans about 184,000 light years across (twice as large as our own Milky Way!) and the light captured in this photo is over 22 million years old.  Astronomers estimate the number of stars in this behemoth at over 1 trillion!  Some of the brighter spots along the spiral arms are active star forming regions, while three supernovae (think stellar death) have been observed in this massive galaxy.  

Photo Details

June 8, 2024

Orion 8" Astrograph on Celestron AVX Mount

SBIG STF-8300C Camera

Skyglow filter

21 subframes at 3 minutes/frame

Total Exposure Time = 1 hour 3 minutes
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop

First Solar Time Lapse

This is my first attempt at a Solar time lapse.  It covers about an hour on the morning of March 30, 2024.  Images were captured 15 seconds apart with a Lunt solar scope in double-stacked mode.  Batch processing was done in Autostakkert, followed by aligning and curve adjustment in ImPPG.  Final processing and converting to video was done in Photoshop.

 

Springtime Bees and Easter Eggs

 

While bees are pollinating springtime flowers on Earth, it's a great time to see the Beehive Cluster (Messier 44) and go hunting for eggs (Messier 1 - Crab Nebula).  Both these objects have a long history.  The Beehive has been observed since antiquity, though it wasn't until Galileo looked through his telescope that it was recognized as a cluster of stars rather than a single object.  The earliest record of the Crab Nebula came in July of 1054 when a bright object appeared near the Sun and was even observed in the daytime through the end of that month.  It was observable with the naked eye at night for the next two years.  Though considered a bad omen when it was first observed, we now understand it as a supernova remnant and has a beautiful structure that has an overall egg shape.  The Beehive is only about 610 light years from Earth though there's about two dozen stars that dominate the image, astronomers have attributed about 200 stars to this open cluster.

Photo Details

April 29, 2024

M44 (Beehive)

AstroTech 65Q on Celestron AVX Mount

SBIG STF-8300C Camera

Skyglow filter

15 subframes at 3 minutes/frame

Total Exposure Time = 45 minutes
Image Acquisition in CCDOps
Image Stacking in Deep Sky Tracker
Image Processing in PhotoShop

M1 (Crab Nebula)

Seestar S50

Total Exposure Time = 34 minutes

Image Processing in Photoshop

Sol from September 23

 

We are 15 days from the North American Total Solar Eclipse.  It should be a fantastic show given the level of solar activity...now, we just need clear skies.  

Photo Details

September 4, 2023
Lunt Ha 60mm double-stacked solar telescope

ZWO ASI178MM 
SharpCap - 8 Bit Mono
Image Stacking in AutoStakkert
Adjustments in ImPPG
Final Adjustments in Photoshop