Here’s another widefield shot I took this evening. In this case, I was able to also use flat field images to really create a much nicer picture. With the 200mm lens, I can just point it at my laptop (with the screen white) and it gives a nice flat field. With my 10″ telescope, I don’t have as good of a target. Perhaps I need to make a light box…
July 30, 2011
July 29, 2011
M8, M20 and More on 7/29/11
I piggybacked my Nikon D50 onto my scope and hooked up the f/4 200mm lens I picked up off of eBay (~$20). I then pointed it at the lagoon nebula (M8, seen near the middle of the image). The nebula (along with M20, the Trifid Nebula) are found near the teapot of Saggittarius. This is along the middle section of the Milky Way and you can see the dust lanes, clouds and uncountable stars found in this region.
I haven’t been blogging much over the past couple months because I’ve been swamped with work and there really haven’t been that many nice nights for imaging or viewing. It’s nice to start getting out again.
June 26, 2011
M6 – Butterfly Cluster on 6/26/11
The Butterfly Cluster (M6) is aptly named – this open cluster really does have a kind of butterfly shape, particularly through the eyepiece. It also has a lot of nice color variety among its stars.
M5 on 6/25/11
It’s a bit humid out, but I’m out here imaging some Messier’s with the wider field of my D50. I’m sort of thinking about trying to do all 110 of them again, but this time with a wider field setup.
March 20, 2011
And I’m done
Tonight, it was a bit too windy to do an imaging, but I set up the scope and did some old fashioned visual observation. And after observing 8 Messier objects, I finished with M93, a smallish open cluster in the constellation Puppis. This means that I have now logged all 110 Messier Objects and will present my logs at the next Barnard Astronomical Society meeting and I will have completed my Messier Pin (which will also be an Honorary one since I’ve finished all of them) from the Astronomical League. Somewhere around 2500 people have earned this since they started it in 1967 (though I believe that Charles Messier was technically #1 having finished sometime before 1817). Anyway, I’m rather excited to be done. I started back in June of 2009, using SkyTools software to log my observing (great software by the way, I totally recommend it). I had actually finished imaging all of the Messier Objects back in August of 2008, but since I didn’t log my observations (I wasn’t aware of the program at the time) I had to redo the observations visually and log them appropriately. It actually has been a lot of fun and has helped me learn how to better observe visually.
January 29, 2011
M42-The Orion Nebula on 1/28/10
I haven’t been out with the scope since last year – with the snow, clouds and really cold weather – but tonight was too nice to resist. It was cold, but not windy and so I wheeled out the scope. I’ve gotten a new laptop and so I spent the first hour or so getting all of the drivers installed and when I was done I realized that my USB-Serial Port drivers weren’t working, so I couldn’t autoguide. My alignment was good, though and I was able to stack a bunch of one minute subs of the Orion Nebula.
September 15, 2010
M8-Lagoon Nebula on 9/13/10 (reprocess)
I did some reprocessing with flats and other things and was able to pull a lot more data out of my M8 image. I also have an offer from a flickr user to reprocess using my raw images so I’ll let you know how that goes. If they do a good job, I’m hoping I can learn some new processing techniques.
September 14, 2010
M8-Lagoon Nebula on 9/13/10
Last night was just about as nice as Sunday night and I was out again, this time imaging M8, the Lagoon Nebula. I also took some flats that I was able to subtract out in Photoshop which helped keep the center from being blown out. This image is a composite of an hour and I’m thinking that I might try to do a long term Messier Marathon where I image all of the Messiers for an hour of 4 minute exposures to do a longer term version of my 2008 messier project.
September 13, 2010
M13-Great Globular Cluster in Hercules on 9/12/10
I got 5 good frames of M13 in before my camera’s battery died (I actually had 2 bad frames, first of the night – they weren’t horrible, just a little bit of movement). It was actually starting to get a bit chilly outside, so I was fine with going in. Overall a nice night with a lot of success with my new equipment.
September 12, 2010
M20-Trifid Nebula on 9/12/10
Here’s an hour’s worth of the Trifid Nebula. I need to figure out a way to do flat frames with this scope because I believe with a flat frame, this would look way better. I really had to work to try to reduce the vignetting. That said, I’m really happy with the way it looks. The PHD Guiding on the LX200 was so good I was able to use every single frame I took. I’m loving this scope…
