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DSOs and Two Quasars
Another clear night with the little scope! This includes my first quasar observations, billions of light years away.
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Supernova!
While looking up M108 to see if there were any interesting facts about it I learned that there was a supernova detected in it just last month! So I went back to my photo and found it. The red glow doesn’t appear in older high-quality photos but the star-forming region just below it does, so…
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Two More Galaxies
I observed M106 and M108, two spiral galaxies. It was a full moon and partly cloudy so it was a tough night. I also experimented with wide-field shots with a point-and-shoot, but the small glass and 15 second exposure limit led to grainy results. It doesn’t support external power so stacking images for a longer…
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DSOs at 70mm
I decided to stick to my little scope again while learning my new mount, and managed to capture several objects. I think I’ve got it figured out well enough to move back to my big scope next time. With the light polluted skies here 70mm isn’t enough to get much out of fainter targets.
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Awful scope on a nice mount
I just picked up a new mount but don’t have the dovetail rail for my SCT yet, so I just figured out how to clamp my $60 refractor onto it to learn how it works. I captured the Pleiades and a random bit of sky that happened to be full of faint stars.
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Whirlpool Galaxy
Got about 20 minutes of exposure for M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. About 31 million light-years away. M51 is the big spiral galaxy, and M51b is the smaller galaxy interacting with it. I’m very excited about the amount of detail in the spirals and the different color visible in the cores.
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M46, NGC 2438 and M42
This is only a small portion of open cluster M46, and it contains planetary nebula NGC 2438 (which is much closer, and only in M46 by coincidence) in the shot. And another shot of M42 because it’s big and bright and pretty.
