M51 with new astro camera!

 

Messier 51 aka the Whirlpool Galaxy

(Click for a little larger image)

Taken April 24, 2025 from my observatory

with the Daystar 480mm f/6 telescope

ZWO ASI585MC cooled camera

2 hours of 2 minute subs

Stacked with Siril and post processed with GIMP

I am really enjoying this new (to me) camera!

 

Here is another portion of the nebula known as IC1318 (see previous post). Since learning how to image remotely I can know image for longer periods of time from the comfort of my living room! Woohoo ! No more bugs to bother me and I can doze on and off at my leisure!

This is a stack of 84 two-minute images

Total time: 2 hours 48 minutes worth of exposure time

Stacked in Siril

Daystar 480mm f/6 refractor

ZWO ASI585MC cooled camera

SVBony Quad band filter

Final post-processing in GIMP

M13 globular star cluster

 

This is Messier 13 (M13) in the constellation Hercules. It is about 22,000 light years from us and is about 84 light-years in diameter. M13 is composed of several hundred thousand stars and it is possible to see it with binoculars in the night sky.

Notice the color of the stars...blue stars are much hotter than yellow or orange colored stars, just like as gas stove's blue flame is much hotter than a candle's yellow/orange flame.

Notice that in the upper right hand corner is NGC 6207, a dim 12th-magnitude edge-on galaxy which is about 30 million light-years from Earth.

I took this image this past week with a 480mm f/6 refractor telescope.

Click on the image for an enlarged view!

The Gamma Sygni region near the central star of the "Northern Cross" aka "The Swan"

 

I was out late last night and captured a region of the summer night sky that is known as the "Northern Cross" or "The Swan".

This is a small portion of the very dim diffuse emission nebula known as  IC 1318 or the Gamma Cygni Nebula) The area imaged here is nearest to Sadr, Gamma Cygni and it the star at the far left. This star is at the center of Cygnus's cross, aka "The Northern Cross."

Data-

Scope: Daystar refractor 480mm focal lenght at f/6

Filter: SVBONY SV260 Telescope Filter, 2'' quad multi-bandpass

Camera: ZWO 585mc cooled

Exposure: 68subs @ 30sec each, Bin 1, gain 252

Stacked with Siril 1.2.4

Post processed in Gimp 2.10

The Copernicus Region of the Moon

The Copernicus region of the Moon has many interesting features.

What unusual or unexpected features do you see?

Image taken February 6, 2025 at 8:15 pm MST

Taken with:

Orion Apex 127mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope, 

2X Barlow lens

ZWO ASI585MC Pro camera. 

Post-processed video with ZWO software to acquire the best 20% of the frames

Post-processed resulting image with Luminar 2018 and Preview.

 

Io's Shadow Transit of Jupiter this evening

 

Io is one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter that obits closer than the others.

As a result, when the Sun causes Io's shadow to fall on Jupiter it creates a moving black dot on the surface of the cloud belts of Jupiter.

This image is inverted (left to right) and Io itself is too dim to capture simultaneously in this image.

I noticed the black dot shadow while imaging but didn't know it belonged to Io until I checked after the fact!

Taken with an Orion Apex 127mm Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope, 2X Barlow lens and a ZWO ASI585MC Pro camera. Post-processed with ZWO software and Irfanview.

Fox Fur Nebula and the Cone Nebula

 

Windy again last night but not enough to stop me from capturing the "Fox Fur Nebula" and the "Cone Nebula"! About 2 1/4 hours of 4-minute sub-exposures with a ZWO ASI585MC Pro camera on an AVX mount using a Daystar 80mm f/6 refractor.

My first effort at capturing (even if only a wide field view of it). With this new camera I hope to do a tighter view of it in the future. One "mistake" was though it took 4 minutes for each "sub" I forgot that exposures that long would "blow-out" the stars (making them BIG and white). As such they really distract from the nebulas themselves. I should have taken just a few "subs" at about 1 or 2 minutes each and used those as the "starmask" which would have controlled not only the size of the stars but also captured the colors of the stars better. Oh well... next time!