Crescent Nebula

Mike — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 19:23:01 +0000

I shot this data one night back in August and just got around to processing it. NGC6888 in Cygnus is a shell of gas blown off by the strong stellar winds of the bright Wolf-Rayet star in the center of the nebula. This image also captures a lot of the surrounding nebulosity.

M33 – Galaxy in Triangulum

Mike — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 04:40:32 +0000

I have broken my dry spell with this 21 hour exposure of the face on spiral in Triangulum. This is a much photographed object but it has been many years since I shot it and thought it worthy of revisiting. I did not use the Hydrogen-alpha filter at all in this composite and yet I think the HII regions show up nicely. This was a fun project. Hope you enjoy it!

New Mexico Observatory

Mike — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:48:07 +0000

I’ve been sitting on this news until it was more firm but I’m excited now to let my friends know that I have gone in on a remote observatory partnership in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. I was finally able to go up and visit weekend before last. The site is at the Sacramento Mountains Astronomy Park at 7250 feet elevation in a remote area with great darkness and seeing. I didn’t get to do much imaging while on my short weekend visit but I did manage this whole sky Milkyway shot. The night sky was simply breathtaking. I was able to see many deep sky objects with the naked eye.

The observatory is still under construction. Here is a picture of the structure with the dome on the ground next to it. You can click on the image for more pictures from the trip.

It will probably be a couple more months before we get eveything up and running.

Whale and Hockey Stick

Mike — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:40:00 +0000

The bright spiral galaxies NGC4631 (Whale) and NGC4656 (Hockey Stick) are locked in a cosmic dance about 30 million light years away in the constellation Canes Venatici.

This image was shot without using raw luminace frames at all. There are 2.5 hours of Red, 2.5 hours of Green and 2.5 hours of Blue exposures integrated to make this image.

This will complete the springs “galaxy season” for me and I am very pleased with how the TEC-140 and QSI583 have performed. I’m hoping to move on to some of the traditional summer objects soon and try out some new “toys”. Stay tuned…

NGC4725 in Coma Berenices

Mike — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 05:40:53 +0000

I’ve been trying to find time to process this image for a while. NGC4725 is a very nice super giant spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices. Also visible to the left is the smaller spiral NGC4712 and in the bottom right is the very interesting NGC4747 which shows a tidal stream from collision with another galaxy.

Leo Triplet

Mike — Wed, 19 May 2010 19:16:13 +0000

The weather has not been very good for astrophotography this spring. I managed to get two nights worth of data of the famous triplet of bright galaxies in Leo a couple of weeks ago.

IC434, Horsehead Nebula

Mike — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:24:17 +0000

It’s been a while since I posted. Been busy with other projects. I decided to reorganize my website yet again because I don’t like the limitations of WordPress. I have gone back to script generated static pages for most of the site and the gallery but I have retained the WordPress blog. Enough administrativa, on to the astrophotography…..

I shot this data last month and have finally finished processing. It’s an HaRGB composite from two nights in January.

Wasp-6b Exoplanet Transit

Mike — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:13:29 +0000

For the past two months I have been taking a little divergence from my usual “pretty picture” imaging. I have been helping my daughter with a science fair project. She has been using my scope and camera to collect exoplanet transit data! We imaged 5 separate transits altogether and were able to detect the dimming of the host star with varying degees of success in all 5 cases. Here is one of the best light curves.

And the budding scientist!

M76, The Little Dumbell Nebula in Ha/RGB

Mike — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:03:55 +0000

About a year and a half ago I threw in the towel on long focal length imaging from my home. The seeing in central Texas is rarely better than about 2.5 arcseconds and I was tired of struggling with reflective optics and collimation. That’s when I started my quest for the ultimate refractor which culminated in the purchase of a used TEC-140. This is truly the finest telescope I have ever owned and with the TEC field flattener it is a joy to use. Still, I occasionally yearn to imaging a tiny galaxy or planetary nebula. That was a long way to say that I know that M76 is not the ideal target for my 1010mm focal length imaging rig but I wanted to see how it would do so here is my attempt at the Little Dumbell.

And here you can see the uncropped version,

Regreasing and adjusting mount worm gears

Mike — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 07:30:30 +0000

My can of Jet Lube MP-50 grease came in and I found some time to clean, regrease and adjust the RA and Declination axis worm gears in my mount. Why order grease from the internet you may ask? Well this stuff is amazing. It maintains viscosity over a very wide range of environmental conditions and is rated from -350F to 700F!

After the adjustments I ran PEMPro on my mount a few days later and measured an uncorrected peak-to-peak periodic error of only 2 arcseconds!