Here is an image of the open star cluster Messier 46 in the constellation of Canis Major (the big dog) taken in early March. Not sure why it took me almost four months to do something with it. Look closely. See that circular object just above the center? That is a planetary nebula known as NGC 2438. Sadly, it was recently confirmed that NGC 2438 is not really in M46 but in front of it. Still cool though.
Here is the Lagoon Nebula, aka Messier 8 and other aliases, a star factory in the constellation of Sagittarius. I shot this object last year but hopefully my skills are better this year. This is 75 minutes total integration, 3 minutes at a time. I used my 11″ SCT at f/1.9 and my dual narrowband L’eNhance filter. Taken Friday night at the River Ridge Observatory.
What do you do on a rainy Sunday afternoon when you finished the chores that you agreed to do? Try to improve your Photoshop skills of course. I’m no blackbelt when it comes to Photoshop. I do some curves and levels and vibrance and sharpening and call it good. Today in the overcast low light afternoon I noticed that the coneflower was looking pretty so I took a shot of it with my phone to see what I could do with it. The first image is the original after cropping. In the second image, I enhanced the petals and the cones, separately, then desaturated the background. Then I looked in the default PS filters and clicked one after the other until I found “watercolor” and I really liked that one.
