Dust Lanes in Outer Space

Excellent transparency last night.  

I took advantage of it despite the bone chilling cold.  It was 26 degrees Fahrenheit -- not all that cold, really.  I'm just not acclimated yet to Winter temperatures.

The number one object on my observing list was Comet 46P/Wirtanen.  It should be easily visible with my SkyWatcher dobsonian. 10 inches of aperture gathers a lot of light.

At the time of observation, 46P should have been 20 degrees above the horizon. 

I did a local alignment on the stars of the nearby constellation, Fornax, to no avail.  46P was nowhere to be found.  Fornax was barely visible, too.  That should have been my clue.  

46P is still too dim for me to see when it is this low in the sky.

I'll keep trying over the next month as it gets higher and brighter in the sky.  Stay tuned.

With that disappointment, I spent some time looking at a brighter object in the sky, the Andromeda Galaxy.

The Andromeda Galaxy is huge and bright.  It's apparent size is about 6 full moon widths in the sky.

Its size and brightness make it a challenge to capture images with my equipment.

Andromeda, Big And Bright

The bright nucleus blows out the image.

What I usually do with objects like this is place the bright portion out of the field of view and then image the periphery.

Here are some of the captures:

Hello Deep Space Objects, Goodbye Mars

Clear dark sky last night.

Transparency was not great, but the Milky Way was visible.

I planned ahead and created an observation list for SkySafari via LiveSky.

Here are a couple of deep space objects from my list.  Not astrophotography, per se, but actual image captures made using electronically assisted astronomy techniques.  

NGC 1514

Also known as the Crystal Ball Nebula, this is a planetary nebula discovered by William Herschel in 1790.  Last night was the first time for me.  I'll keep it on my list to revisit on another dark night when the transparency is better.

NGC 1514, A giant crystal ball in space

NGC 1514 is basically a binary star illuminating a cloud of gas that is expanding away from the dying larger of the two.  The smaller star is a white dwarf and is not visible here.

It's Red and Round and Going in a Box

More tinkering with astronomy gear this weekend.  

Perhaps that is what is causing the bad astronomy weather.  Usually, it's the purchase of new equipment that invokes the cloudy sky curse.

This is an update to my "It's Round and Red" blog post.

Joystick Prototype Circuitry

Mars, Brightly Shining

With Mars long past opposition and zooming further and farther away from us, you'd think it would cease being an interesting sight in the sky.

Not so!

This image was taken in the backyard with my cell phone camera last week.

Hello, Mars!  Shoo, clouds.  Image is from October 17th, 2018.

It shows Mars near the crescent Moon shortly after sunset.  They are separated by about six degrees.

They make a beautiful pair.

Everyone can enjoy the night time sky.  It is just a matter of going outside and looking up.  No fancy telescope or camera needed.

Racing Clouds!

Last night's observing session started out nicely.

Mars was going to cross the meridian early in the night, so I started dragging the equipment out shortly after sunset.  I wanted to give the OTA plenty of time to thermally equalize before trying to image Mars.

The sky was gloriously clear.

Astrospheric, my go to site for astronomy weather predictions, claimed that it was going to cloud over in a couple of hours.

"Nah, that can't be right," I thought.  The sky was gorgeous.  The Milky Way was brightly overhead.

As I connected the imager to the laptop, I looked over to the western horizon and saw a wisp of a cloud bank very low in the sky.

I pointed the telescope at Mars, attached the imager, and started FireCapture.  After getting Mars into focus, I took another peek at the western horizon.  "Hmmm.  That is a fast moving bank of clouds." 

FireCapture and Mars

Racing Clouds Bonus Image

With Mars playing peek-a-boo through the clouds . . . 

(See this post)

I looked at the sky and decided to try finding a DSO in the small remaining hole in the clouds.

This DSO was in my observing list and was in just the right part of the sky.

NGC 7479 

This image is a result of live stacking via SharpCap.  It was merely nineteen stacked frames with four second exposures.  Gain was set to 506.

I wanted to improve the capture, but after creating a dark image to apply to the next live stacking, the clouds had finishing closing out the sky.

NGC 7479 certainly is a "spirally" spiral galaxy, isn't it?

It's Red and Round

It's red and round.  And it's Mars inspired.  Sort of.

Another weekend approaching and the weather (again) doesn't look conducive for astronomy.

Rather than pout about it, I'm going to spend some more time tinkering on an astronomy related project.

Red and Round

How is this an astronomy related project?  And what is it?