A November Dark Skies Night at Starry Meadows
Again Mother Nature vetoed our planned November dark skies trip. So, in a last-minute desperate move to get at least one night in dark skies – I went to CSASTRO’s property near Gardner, Colorado for a single night of imaging on 4Nov2023 – “sleeping” in the Expedition in between attending to the Southern Cross who captured two DSO’s and the Canon 5DSR on the star tracker that captured the Milky Way.
Eclipse night DSO imaging
After letting two clear, dark sky nights pass me by, I WAS going to image during our last night in Los Alamos for the annular solar eclipse. I imaged two targets, but the data from the second (NGC1909 Witch Head Nebula) wasn’t enough to stand on its own. But not to fret…you’ll be seeing it soon!)
October Front Patio Imaging
I’m running a little (okay, a lot – over a month) behind on processing the images I captured from the front patio during a string of clear nights in early October 2023 before we departed for our trip to Los Alamos, New Mexico for the annular solar eclipse. I used Big Bertha, since she wasn’t going along on the eclipse trip and because I had finally done correctly calculated the back focus needed for the field flattener to actually correct coma in the images, rather than exacerbate it. I wanted to give the correctly assembled ASI2400-BB-FF-LeX imaging train a test run.
The Heart finally has its Soul Nebula
I have attempted to image IC1848 a few times in the past, but never ended up with an image worth sharing. Having figured out the field flattener back-focus “issue” I was having with Big Bertha and the ASI2400MC, I was able to capture data to produce this 4-tile mosaic image of the Soul Nebula, allowing it to join its soul-mate the Heart Nebula in the gallery!
Happy Halloween – the Ghosts of Cassiopeia
I have been collecting data on IC59&IC63 Ghosts of Cassiopeia for over a year – all from the front patio, with mixed results (mostly bad!). This image is comprised of data collected over two sessions in 2022 (2Sep2022, 2Dec2022) with Big Zeus – which seemed to exacerbate the halos from Navi with its open – and three (of four) sessions in 2023 (8Sep23, 16Sep23, 9Oct23).
Butterfly…placeholder #2
This version of the IC1318 Gamma Cygni Nebula (a.k.a (one of the several) Butterfly Nebula) was captured on two nights from the front patio during during the Southern Cross “framing validation” captures leading up to our annular solar eclipse and dark skies trip to Los Alamos. No…this didn’t get captured in dark skies…yet!
Letting go of an obsession, for now…
SH2-129 Flying Bat (the Ha (red) region) and OU-4 Giant Squid (the OIII (blue) region) have been an obsession for me to capture for over a year, with the obsession really kicking in this summer. This image is comprised of data from seven (7) separate imaging sessions (and no including the data from a couple of others!)…it still needs work, but I’m setting it down for now to move on to other tasks (obsessions?)
Capturing the Annular Solar Eclipse
We traveled to Los Alamos, NM to capture the annular solar eclipse.
Catching up on Front Patio image processing
Our September dark skies trip was cancelled due to storms, rain, and clouds at every dark sky location within a 400 mile radius. But in true form, Mother Nature has filled the rest of the month with clear skies – not all that dark, but we’ll take what we can get!
Butterfly…placeholder!
IC1318 Gamma Cygni Nebula (a.k.a (one of the several) Butterfly Nebula) was captured from the front patio during a dual-setup, only clear night between the rain and business travel data collection frenzy. Definitely a placeholder waiting for the opportunity to capture this image in dark skies to see what the colors really are!