Science Daily: Mars
- Surprising insights about debris flows on Mars March 14, 2024
- Giant volcano discovered on Mars March 13, 2024
Science Daily: Uranus
- New images reveal what Neptune and Uranus really look like January 5, 2024
- Ringing in the holidays with ringed planet Uranus December 19, 2023
Science Daily: Pluto
- How Pluto got its heart April 15, 2024
- Evidence of geothermal activity within icy dwarf planets February 15, 2024
Science Daily: Kuiper Belt
- How Pluto got its heart April 15, 2024
- Evidence of geothermal activity within icy dwarf planets February 15, 2024
Orion Mosaic
Well, not much of a mosaic, just two panels stitched side-by-side and they had a lot more overlap than was necessary. My main goal was to simply get a good image of Orion. I had one attempt more than 10 years ago, taken on a very cold night in Narrowsburg, NY (-5F!) with film. It …
Taurus Region
Another one from Cherry Springs, this time centered on Taurus. I realize the orientation is a bit odd, but it’s part of the meandering set of frames I hope to eventually turn into a mosaic. Rigel is the bright star in the lower right, with the nebulosity around Orion’s “head” of Sharpless 264 showing clearly. …
Capricornus from Cherry Springs
This was taken early in the evening and at the start of the exposure there were some trees in the lower left corner of the frame which, after processing, have left some “interesting” colors. But I was reluctant to crop the image to remove this as there are other things happening due to a bit …
Lacerta from Cherry Springs
This was supposed to be Lacerta. Well, it is Lacerta, but the constellation is lost in the Milky Way. The North America nebula (NGC7000) can be seen in the lower left, Cepheus is in the center to lower right with the circular H-alpha region containing the Elephant’s Trunk nebula (IC1396) marking the left end of …
Auriga
I’m going to need to start a new constellation portrait section to organize these, and the problem is my ability to get good data has outstripped my ability to process them into good images. I spent October 13, 2020 at Cherry Springs (PA) and while it was not as clear as the night I spent …
943 Begonia Occultation Measurement
Well, I figured out a way of doing the analysis. I need to find a proper tutorial, or write one for myself to remember in the future, but some of the tools are misbehaving, possible because they use Python and I think I have some version skew, using Python 3.8 when they were written for …
First IOTA Result
The International Occultation Timing Associate is a group of amateur astronomers that measure timing and location of asteroid “shadows” that fall on earth. Sometimes the orbit of Earth and an asteroid line up to block a star that is visible in low-light video cameras through telescopes. Coupling this with a video time inserter that itself …
Heart and Soul
The Heart and Soul nebulae (IC 1805 and IC 1848) are in Cassiopeia and are high enough above the horizon to start shooting relatively early in the evening, so I set up and shot 51 x 5 min for 255 minutes of total exposure. Object IC 1805, IC 1848, NGC 1027 Camera Hap Griffin Modified …
M31, more from Cherry Springs
I really should have spent more time per image, but I was so intoxicated with the dark skies that I jumped from object to object. My “neighbors” for the week were Bruce and Jill with Bruce being the imager, and he tended to do imaging of no more than two objects each night. But the …
M8, M20, and More…
Another shot from Cherry Springs State Park, this image has a few flaws starting with a failure on my part to check the focus very well. It doesn’t show in this 25% scaled down image, but yeah, it was out of focus. With a background near the galactic core in Sagittarius, these almost get lost …
