Category: Astronomy

The last object of Saturday night/Sunday morning was Messier 15, the Great Pegasus Star Cluster. This was shot with my C11 at f/6.3 for 90 minutes.

Per Wikipedia: M 15 is about 35,700 light-years from Earth, and 175 light-years in diameter. It has an absolute magnitude of −9.2, which translates to a total luminosity of 360,000 times that of the Sun. Messier 15 is one of the most densely packed globulars known in the Milky Way galaxy. Its core has undergone a contraction known as “core collapse” and it has a central density cusp with an enormous number of stars surrounding what may be a central black hole.

Saturday night was a good night at the River Ridge Observatory, good and warm and humid. Several of us were there. Everyone’s cooled cameras were struggling to stay cool.

I decided to shoot the Flying Bat Nebula, aka SH2-129, in Cepheus. This is four hours with my Samyang 135 and an L-Enhance F2 filter. I think I can barely make out the “Squid Nebula” inside the bat, almost exactly in the center. It is a faint green nebula that looks more like a squid than this looks like a bat. After this success, I think I will attempt to shoot this over several nights to build up the signal.