From Planets to Nebulas

10-28-2011, Tonight Jupiter is in opposition (closest point) with earth this year so I went out to take a few more pictures.

Not to bad. You can see the Big (aka Great) Red spot just about to disappear around the left side there.


Here is Jupiter's other side. I think this might be the most detail I have managed to get of Jupiter yet.


As usually here is a 3D image so get out those red/blue glasses!


And here is a short little animation I put together with some of the images I took. This probably spans about 10 minutes. Jupiter spins really fast making a complete rotation in just a little less than 10 hours. Maybe one long winter night I will see if I can capture a full rotation.


In between shots of Jupiter I did a little looking around and took a few other images. Here is the Ring Nebula or M57. It is a planetary nebula because some of these look a bit like planets through the telescope.


Next on the planetary nebula list I took a look at the Little Dumbbell Nebula or M76. This picture didn't come out to good but you can make out the core section and just a tiny bit of the fainter outer ring. I'll have to try this one again.


And then I turned the scope to the first planetary nebula I tried to image, the Eskimo Nebula or NGC 2390. This came out a little better than my previous attempts but I'm sure I can do better.


Finally I turned to one of the easiest targets the Orion Nebula or M42. I think this is my best nebula image so far. The thumbnail is a bit blurry because I scaled it up a bit but if you click on it you can see a nicer large version.


Here is a self portrait of me at about 1:30am imaging the Orion Nebula. If you know your constellations you should be able to make out Orion. The 3 stars of his belt are almost right above my head and I'm kind of looking at his sword which are the 3 stars just to the lower right of his belt. The Orion Nebula is the middle star of his sword. If you click on the image to see the larger version you might even notice that middle star glowing which is the nebula. Oh, and how the hell do I fit in my tiny little car?! It's clearly half as big as me or at least that's what the wide angle lens on the ground does. Lucky or unlucky as it was the last people to leave before me happened to turn on their car lights just as I took this picture causing the nice glow and probably screwing up an image or two. But it was all good since the Orion Nebula came out just fine.

I saw Uranus and the big red spot last night

Check it out, it's Uranus. I took a picture of Uranus last night!


And here is Jupiter, it's big red spot and it's 4 of it's moons. The moons are hard to see so click on the image to look at the bigger version where the moons will be easier to see.


I think these are my best images of Jupiter yet!


Here's my telescope and a couple of guys from work, David and Mark, that were hanging out looking at Uranus and the big red spot with me -:]

Deep Space Nailbula

I got this back in December the first night with my new 8" telescope. I just got around to processing all the photos I took of it recently. It's my first nailbula. What is a nailbula you ask?


It's what happens to your nail when it gets stuck between bits of the German Equitorial telescope mount! Ouch! Astronomy is dangerous! I think I end up with a new cut or pulled muscle every time I am out with my telescopes. Who would have thought.


And in 3d because I know you all want to see nailbula in the 3rd dimension!

Darker Skies in Southern Arizona

We went down to southern Arizona where my Mom grew up. She has some friends that had a great place with pretty dark skies and nothing blocking the view in any direction. here are a couple of the pictures from our visit

Andromeda Galaxy aka m31. I tried out a lens that doubles the telescopes field of view so i could see most of Andromeda Galaxy. it causes some distortion on the outer edges of frame.


Orion Nebula (m42) again. Much brighter in dark skies which helps create a lot more contrast. Cant wait to get back out in dark skies again!

Jupiter!

Jupiter and 3 of its moons as seen from Phoenix.

And here are the rest...

...of the things I saw while catching my shooting star.

Jupiter and its moons (nearest to furthest), Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto! I think you might have to click to get the larger image to really see the moons.

And my first semi-successful deep sky image. This is M8 also know as the Lagoon Nebula.

It's a little more blurry than I would like but you can see it!

It's been cloudy and windy..

...and hard to take pictures of things in space from here.

But I did get a slightly better image of Saturn the other day.

Boring Space Stuff

There is a comet out right now, C/2009 R1 a.k.a Comet McNaught, which I decided to try and find. Then I thought I would try and take a picture. It didn't work out so well.

I could see it okay with my telescope but my picture came out pretty bad. I had some major technical difficulties with my astrophotography rig as in I didn't test it at all before heading out. I was mostly just wanting to take my new telescope with tracking head out for a proper test run. It worked really well unlike my photo rig. I saw lots of fun stuff, Comet McNaught, Saturn, Jupiter and a galaxy or two.

I had better luck taking a picture of Jupiter.

It was a lot brighter and played better with my half working photo rig.

These two are the same but with different stack processing (stacking is taking lots of pictures of the same thing then using some fancy computer magic to get a better image).

Not sure which I like better.

Oh, and here is the first test I did a few months back trying to get a picture of Saturn.

You can sort of see it. Once I get my setup working correctly I should be able to get much better images but it's pretty exciting to get anything right now.