Activity

Good conditions last night. Took some backyard pictures with the Orion 6.3 mpixel camera and 60 mm guide scope. I’m still a novice at deep sky photography but am amazed at what a short time exposure can do (15 to 60 seconds). M 22 and M 31 are below.

Big CMEs too!

Great C3 SOHO video of Mercury swinging around an active sun in the last 4 days

Thanks Jim!

good one Bob 🙂

An early morning (around 1 am on 7-14-2022) photo of Saturn. Sky conditions were good. Saturn’s rings are ‘closing’ compared to last year but the Cassini division is clearly visible. The image below has been processed by Registax6 (350 frames) and Photoshop Elements. The scope was my 10 inch SCT and the camera was the Orion 6.3 Mpixel camera.

anyone have the durn passcode for the meeting?

BTW I misspelled that double star; should be Albireo!

Some recent Starblast 4.5 in. telescope – Orion 6.3 megapixel images. The small inset (lower right) image is the colorful double star Alberio in Cygnus.

Weather is looking good for tonight. “Should” be clear until 2am.

Anyone up for Observing tonight?

CME (on L) from earlier today (6-26) courtesy the SOHO LASCO C3 camera https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime-images.html. The CME source is possibly the large sunspot group 3038. The background stars of the SOHO image, when compared to a Stellarium view at the time (R), show the sun’s position in Gemini near Castor’s left foot!

The sun continues to be active and interesting.  Below is image from today (6/20/2022) taken with the 4.5 inch Starblast reflector (with Orion sun filter) and the Orion 6.3 Mpixel camera.

Thanks for the insight, I actually think I’ll get the 41mm panoptic for my first addition.

And I see it weighs just over 2 lbs. so I’m pretty sure you’re right about the counterweight.

Colin, it would be a great eyepiece, but it is not small.  You may need to put some wait on the back to balance the scope.

panoptics are great eps. andromeda galaxy and m42 would look sweet in that!
clear skies, jim

Anyone else thinking of heading out to Root River — assuming the clouds cooperate later this evening?

I’m going to head out there. It looks like it might clear up later. We will see!

We’ve cancelled our public event at Root River tonight. Between the 28% cloud cover and high winds, we felt that the night could be disappointing for the public if we are not able to find deeper sky objects to look at. If things improve, I might still head out.