While we were all oohing and aahing over the Southern Lights on Saturday night I had my trusty Dwarfii with me. We'd been joined by a middle aged lady with a cellphone and enthusiasm but no knowledge, so between Aurora visits I cast about for an interesting galaxy to show her.
Rob suggested Centaurus A. This amazing celestial spectacle might be a spiral galaxy colliding with a larger elliptical galaxy, and there's a relativistic jet emitting from the supermassive black hole in the middle of it - heady stuff.
What is known for certain, from the party observing on Saturday night was that it looks a lot more like a hamburger than the galaxy nicknamed the Hamburger Galaxy ( NGC 3628 looks more like a hotdog to me) - specifically something from the Hungry Jack's / Burger King stable.
So I'm going to call it the Aussieburger Galaxy. It's possible that the supermassive black hole is the beetroot. We could definitely see the sesame seeds and the pickles.
This image is less than 200 frames, but with a bit of tweaking in Google photos it's acceptable viewing, and a bit of fun. I think the cloud coming in might have halted my stacking. I'd like to revisit this one again soon.
And the nice lady who'd wandered down to get a shot of the aurora with her old iphone? With the help of some advice and my monopod she caught it, and apparently is all fired up to get a Dwarfii of her own, and we have already set a stardate with her this week. Lovely!
A revisit of Antares, from a night or too ago, which I'd previously visited in dark sky country in March. But this is from my driveway. One with, and one without post processing. Post processing care of me thrusting my tablet at @rdm and saying "Have some fun with this" while I was doing something else. Probably Snapseed and Google Photos.
If you have ever used a star map or application, you would have seen many many objects listed as "NGC(some number)" . But what does that mean?
NGC is short for New General Catalogue - or, more properly, "The New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars". It is a catalogue compiled by John Dreyer in 1888 (yes, "new" is relative), and contains about 7800 objects.
You may have also encountered objects listed with an "IC" prefix. These are also part of the New General Catalogue - or more precisely the follow-up supplements called "Index Catalogues" - adding another 5400 objects.
The NGC (and ICs) are sufficienty important that they have been updated, most recently in 2019, and it now contains nearly 14000 objects.
Last night, I imaged one of the IC objects - the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, centering on IC4604.
This is an amazing and beautiful nebula complex, but it took some post processing to really bring it to life.
Got a bit of clearing Monday night and was able to capture Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks on its way out of the inner solar system, not to return for 71 years. SO happy give this was from atop a deck amidst piles of #Seattle light pollution.
2024-04-01
Dwarf II
~ 50 exposures
15 sec each
60 gain
Stacked in Siril
So after I did my moon shots I thought I would target something else. I am aware that photographing during a full moon in the well lit suburbs is not the purist Astro thing but I like to see what I can get under the circumstances. Plus I don't have a pedigree in Astrophotography, I'm just someone with a smart telescope having fun.
It was getting towards bed time so only a hundred frames, no filters. Little bit of Snapseed and I think the Southern Pinwheel didn't put up too bad a show.
I thought I'd do something a little different with the #Moon tonight.
This is a composite of composites. The pinkish tones come from the second shot with the #DwarfII 's #InfraRed filter removed.
So what we have is:
1/160s50@gain 30 with the IR filter active
and
1/320s50@gain 0 with the IR filter removed.
I then stacked the two stacked images in #snapseed in "overlay" mode, and tweeked the opacity.
The result shows regions with differing IR and Visible light reflectivity, indicating differing compositions.
In my youth I never imagined that computer technology would come to this.
I am sitting here, typing this on a computer that I can slip into a (large) jacket pocket. As I do so, another even smaller computer is connected to a third computer just outside my window. This third computer is the size of a hardcover novel, and is using a modified memory array to gather starlight with a level of clarity that would have required a telescope that would have taken two people to handle and hours to set up.
This I set up in minutes, and will have completed gathering the light in about 30 minutes from now. By this time tomorrow, I will have a fully processed image of the Horsehead Nebula.
Sometimes, technology is wonderful and awe inspiring.
I wonder what my astronomer father would have made of all this.
Back in the day, and I mean starting around the turn of last century, you'd hunt for planets by taking photos through your telescope days or weeks apart, and then comparing the two plates.
Today I proved to myself that I have photographed Neptune from my front garden.
Last week, I took this shot with my DwarfII - 10x15s exposures, stacked, and filtered to make everything yellow. In theory, somewhere in this image is Neptune. Good luck working out where!
OK so it's not the greatest version of M31 ever, but I was caught out by surprise clear skies last night, so flung the Dwarf.ii scope up in a matter of minutes and left it overnight.
It shot 511 frames from which I've been able to make this :)
(Also: wow, @Siril_Official is coming along leaps & bounds these days... :) )