9/27/2024 WR-134 in Cygnus

This is my first attempt at the Wolf-Rayet star WR-134 in Cygnus. These are very large, very hot stars that correspondingly large stellar wind. It is not obvious here but the blue-green bow shock of that wind is visible in the upper right. Divide the picture into a rule of thirds, or tic-tac-toe, grid. There are four line intersections in that grid and the arc is visible in the upper right intersection of the lines. All of the other gas is reddish but this is not.

Now, for a more fanciful description, I see a face looking to the right. The face has a mouth and nose and is wearing steampunk style glasses. His left eyeglass frame is that bow shock.  He also has a laser pointer strapped to the other side of his glasses because he’s a steampunk/Borg crossover cosplayer.

This was made from four hours of five-minute subs, with my Samyang 135mm and ZWO ASI294 MC Pro on my AVX mount using an Antlia Quadband light pollution filter.

The aforementioned laser pointer is actually the Tulip Nebula and in the lower right is the Crescent Nebula. There are also two open star clusters near the center but how would you tell?

Shot Thursday night from the River Ridge Observatory. I can see now that I need to try this again with my Hyperstar C11 which has 3x plus the focal length and it would be a good match for that scope.  

9/22/2024 First Sunrise of Fall

Stout’s Point on Petit Jean Mountain is a favorite of many people. I don’t think I’ve ever been there alone. As I neared the mountain, I saw fog and got hopeful. I was more interested in shooting the fog than the sunrise. After you watch the video, scroll down.

Now look at these two pictures. Notice the “false” Sun. It was very circular but I knew it wasn’t the actual Sun. There are several phenomena that can cause this, I don’t know which it was.

Finally, my new friend Adam Sullivan took this picture of me taking pictures of the sunrise. I wish he had a better model for his composition.

LinkedIn
LinkedIn
Share