Astronomy Archives - Page 22 of 61

March 21, 2021March 21, 2021

3/20/2021 Lunar Occultations

I was at the River Ridge Observatory under a first quarter Moon. I had one rig shooting with a narrowband filter oblivious to the moonshine. I had a second rig set up for my DSLR but what to shoot with that bright of a Moon in the way?

Occultations! Serendipitously, I found that the leading dark edge of the Moon would occult, or pass in front of, two fairly bright stars at 9:05 PM just 30 minutes away. I set the remote to take continuous one second images starting at about 9:02 and let it run for two or three minutes 9:05 to be safe. I got a total of about six minutes of single one second shots.

I used Lightroom to process and Photoshop to make a video and here is the result at ten frames or ten seconds per second. You can see the Moon creep up on and blot out the two stars almost at the same time.

March 5, 2021March 5, 2021

3/4/2021 The Orion and Running Man Nebulae

The Orion and Running Man Nebulae. Click image for larger view.

On Wednesday, March 3, I had my first chance to do astrophotography in about six weeks. Orion and the Orion nebula moved three hours closer to the Sun in those six weeks so I wanted to work on that while I could.

This is a composite image of the Orion Nebula (M42 and M43) and adjacent Running Man Nebula (NGC 1977) taken with my 11″ SCT (Elf) and ZWO ASI 294MC Pro at the River Ridge Observatory. This is a composite made from 15 120 second, 15 60 second, 30 30 second, and 30 8 second images. Capture was done with SharpCap Pro, stacked with Deep Sky Stacker, and processing done with Photoshop CC.

This image is on its side to fit most monitors better. This is normally roughly vertical when you look at it. Tilt your head to the left for a better look at the Running Man but in this orientation the main attraction looks a bit like a turkey I think.

February 3, 2021February 3, 2021

2/3/2021 NGC 2392

In his most recent The Night Sky blog, Darrell Heath talked about NGC 2392 aka The Lion Nebula so I decided to try to image it with the RRT. It’s small (48 arcseconds) so I figured that system which is a 12″ SCT at prime focus which I think is a 3000mm focal length would be a good fit. The RRT has a monochrome camera so I used its filters to create a color composite. The alignment wasn’t perfect, the stars show some chromatic error, but the image shows the major features of this planetary nebula.