These earthly godfathers of Heaven's lights, that give a name to every fixed star, have no more profit of their shining nights than those that walk and know not what they are.

— William Shakespeare

Astrophotography

The dark side of photography. Deep space and planetary imaging. Occasionally some day light pictures of the Sun.

M81 last night

Just checking out the new Tak-130. First image through it. Thirty minutes total exposure.

M81 last night

M81 first light

This is a one hour image composite, 60 x 1 min exposures thru the new Astro-Tech 6" Ritchey Chretien telescope mounted on the Vixen GPD.  I expected more but when you go from 3" ED scope to a 6" RC detail needs longer exposures.  However I did an automatic processing in AIP for Windows and then experimented with additional processing manually.  I will need to get 3-5 hours exposure or more to get more detail.  And experiment with AIP. And I used a diagonal which is a boo boo !

 M81  first light

Sombrero II

Enhanced in Registax, looks more like other internet images.  Cropped image.

Sombrero II

M104_Sombrero Galaxy

Joe Marzullo, Matthew McCuen and myself took a trip 20 minutes south of Whiting to Coyle Field in Woodland, NJ. The location is used for the US Army paratroopers training, looks like a very large field as in airport! To the south the trees are miles away making the horizon look treeless, no buildings, nothing to obstruct your view. The location is flat, and sandy, also used by model airplane flying. To the east and North there are normal trees but did not interfere with alignment. The clouds came in during the afternoon, and slowly hung around until late evening.

M104_Sombrero Galaxy

Blackeye Galaxy

This is a 20 minute exposure of the Black Eye Galaxy, aka M64 Coma Berenices 8.5 magnitude, taken thru Orion 80ED.  Will attempt a two hour exposure next time out.  This particular night was extremely clear, dark skies here in Whiting.

Blackeye Galaxy

Saturn

This is when Saturn looks really beautiful and most appreciated.  Too many objections to the way it appears today, round object, a slim thin line crossing left to right or vise versa, unappreciated.  Can't wait for the ring & planet to tilt.  Juptier early in the morning looks much better.  This is a 10x .03 sec exposure.

Saturn

VDB 142

VDB142 (Elephant trunk) Part of IC1396 emission nebula complex in Cepheus.

VDB 142

Moon/mountain?

This image was taken when I first started imaging thru my 10" Meade LX200 about 7 years ago.   That was when I would try anything (and most of the time it was experimental) to get an image.  Joe Marzullo will back me up.   I usually try the "impossible" or "not likely to work" trial and error routine when it comes to imaging.   For example:  to take this image of a mountain inside a crater along the terminator of a 3 day new Moon,I added a tele-extender with an eyepiece placed inside, add this to my Pentax K1000 35mm camera, place this setup into

Moon/mountain?

m37

M 37 almost overhead this time of year, in Auriga.

m37

m35

M35 in Gemini, looks much better in the eyepiece than it does in pictures.

m35