Category: Astronomy

Last Friday night/Saturday morning, I took some pictures of the Eagle Nebula (Messier 16) i n the constellation Serpens (the serpent). This was with my 11″ SCT & Hyperstar with my ZWO ASI294MC Pro. It needs more time, I only have 30 64 second images here, but I like how it turned out. Click the image for a close up.

According to Wikipedia, “The Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611, and also known as the Star Queen Nebula and The Spire) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745–46. Both the “Eagle” and the “Star Queen” refer to visual impressions of the dark silhouette near the center of the nebula, an area made famous as the “Pillars of Creation” imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the aforementioned Pillars of Creation.”

It’s been a week since I shot this but on July 24/25, a hot dew laden and chigger ridden night, I shot M33 the Triangulum Galaxy with my C11, Hyperstar, and ZWO ASI 294MC Pro. This image was made from 30 individual 60 second frames. Stacked and processed with the Starizona Action Pack plus other techniques. The core might be a little overdone but I like it.

According to Wikipedia, “The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy 2.73 million light-years (ly) from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. It is catalogued as Messier 33 or NGC 598. The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, behind the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. It is one of the most distant permanent objects that can be viewed with the naked eye.”

During the evening, my Canon EOS 800D somehow got switched from shooting raw and jpeg to just jpeg. Of course, raw has much greater depth so I didn’t expect much from this. This image was made from 38 jpegs, each 60 seconds long at 75mm focal length and ISO 800. I was tracking with my AVX mount. It turned out better than I expected. I processed them in Lightroom and then used that tool’s photo merge option to create this HDR image. Comparing JPEG to RAW might be worth doing even if it is counter intuitive.

The bright stars in the lower right are the stinger of the Scorpion. Messier 7 is the cluster of stars close to the middle and somewhat obscured by the Milky Way while Messier 6 is smaller but in a darker area above and to the right.

Messier 7 was first described by Ptolemy, that Ptolemy, and is visible to the naked eye. It’s among the closer open star clusters at about 1000 light years and contains about 80 stars. Messier 6 wasn’t discovered until the mid-1600s and is about 50% farther away and contains about 50% more stars.