Activity

Summer is here and so is the summer triangle and one of our favorite Messier objects, M 27 The Dumbbell Nebula. In photo below I used a 3.1 in refractor, the ASI 183MC camera with Orion skyglow filter and 64 5sec live stacked images. I was happy to see good color and the central white dwarf star.

Thanks Josef. Seems like it may be at magnitude 11 based on your links above for May 29. I also wanted to be sure I was pointing to the supernova in my picture so I did a blink comparison with an online photo from Sky and Telescope and show that below.

Great picture of the supernova 2023ixf! Looking at stars around like at Stellarium-web  supernova could be brighter than 12 mag. According to https://www.rochesterastronomy.org/sn2023/sn2023ixf.html it could be around 11 mag.
See also AAVSO chart and labeled stars or brightness reports.

The supernova (arrow) in the Pinwheel galaxy (M 101) is amazingly bright compared to the rest of the galaxy. I finally got a good look and fair image early this am (5-28).

Some sun pictures from last two days. Starblast 4.5 with Orion filter.

New supernova in M 101 now! see https://spaceweathergallery2.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=196139

The Pleiades (M 45) have just come into view on the SOHO C3 camera.

There is just now Kp 7.67 – storm, higher probability to see aurora, see https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/update-g4-storm-observed-sunday-april-23-2023

Thanks Josef. I had quite a bit of edge of fov brightness in the above and I did get separate images of each galaxy. I combined the latter two images in the picture of M81 and M82 below.

Great picture of the M81 and M82 with 80 mm (3.14 inch) aperture with total 16 minutes exposure. Thanks!

An April 12 image of M81 and M82 taken with the AT80ED and ASI 183MC camera. (Minor touch ups of the FITS file, saved as a PNG file and converted to a JPEG in Photoshop Elements). No darkfield taken. About 200 5 second images stacked.

An early morning (April 2nd) photo of globular cluster M3. Scope AT80ED camera ASI 183 MC. Fits file edited with ASI Fits Viewer.

I’m working with the Orion StarSeekerIV mount (Randy provided) and it’s built in WiFi and the Windows version of the SynScan Pro app. Using the Stellarium telescope plug in module it is possible to aim (slew) the AT80ED scope by clicking on the interactive sky map. One has to first define the ‘telescope’ configuration. I did this using the ASC…[Read more]

Luka B. and Mike C. have provided me with great ways to use the AT80ED refractor with my Canon Rebel T5 camera. I had been unable to reach the focal point except with an eyepiece projection technique. This worked but there was a lot of distortion (curving peripheral field) in the images. Luka suggested using a Barlow lens to diverge the light…[Read more]

Yes, the forecasts are saying it will start to cloud up by 9:00, so looks like no Messier Marathon.

Bob, yes, that was the northern lights.  They were pretty good.  They mentioned it on the 10:00 news last night and all they today they have been showing photos that people took last night.

Whoops had a double negative in above post (two ‘nots’ in third line above).  Erase the second ‘not’.  BTW, is there a way to edit our posts (as we had in the legacy forum)?

Was out at 11 pm and the northern skies were bright with what I could not really distinguish between northern lights and thin clouds with falling precip illuminated by Rochester city lights.  Colors were subdued and some areas seem to obscure background stars and so I was not leaning towards the phenomon not being northern lights.  Today my n…[Read more]

Unfortunately it looks like clouds are moving in after 9:00 tonight.