Category: Astrophotography

It was a short night at the River Ridge Observatory. I planned to stay until the Moon rose after midnight but the forecast mild winds turned into frequent moderate gusts the gave my telescope a case of the jitters. My target object needed to climb out of the muck so I started with this globular cluster in Sagittarius called M22. If you saw my image of M13 from the night before you will immediately notice that this one is less compact. Although globular clusters are all just big balls of stars, they don’t all look alike. In fact, there are nine classifications for them from less to more dense. This picture was just 20 or so two minute subs as the wind picked up toward the end.

It was a great night at the River Ridge Observatory last night. There was some haze from west coast forest fires but other than that it was clear with little wind and mild temperatures. I might have heard a coyote. I set up my 11″ SCT with a 0.63 focal reducer and broadband light pollution filter. I started with the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, aka M13. This was followed by the Ring Nebula, or M57, as filler. Truth be told it is a little small for this scale but I wanted to wait for my next object to get past the meridian and be in the western part of the sky. That third object was the Dumbbell Nebula, aka M27. The Moon rose a little after 11PM so I packed it up and went home to a half-night’s sleep. I’m planning to go again tonight.

Last night I did some astrophotography at the River Ridge Observatory before the Moon came up. This is the Cocoon Nebula aka IC5146 in Cygnus. This was shot with an IDAS NBZ UHS dual narrowband filter that lets Hydrogen Alpha and Oxygen III light through and little else. The former is red, the latter green. The blue channel was almost nonexistent. This was almost two hours of five minute shots with my 11″ SCT at f/6.3 and ZWO ASO 294MC Pro.