Okay, I realize that Charles didn’t have the advantage of quality telescope optics such as those we have available to us today. I can even accept the difficulty of differentiating a globular cluster from a comet in his day. But Charles come on! Turn the focus knob or have a little less wine with your cheese already!!!

Seriously, Messier 29 through most any telescope available today is easily seen as a fairly course open cluster. It lies in a dense region of the milky way near Gamma Cygni. Grab your binoculars or low power eyepiece for this one.

I captured M29 using a 12.5 inch f/9 RCOS Ritchey-Chrétien telescope with an SBIG ST10XME and AO7. The image is a combination of 48 – 10 second exposures.

Had a great time down in Nashville, Arkansas at the first ever Ark-La-Tex Star Party. Roy, Tim, Kevin and all the members of the Red River Astronomy Club did a great job putting the event together. The weather was great, the skies were clear and the food was excellent. What more could you ask for?

I was one of six speakers at the event. Topics ranged from photometry and spectrometry to collimation, planetary imaging and everything in between. I spoke on “The Imaging Process” and as usual rambled on way longer than I intended to. Click here to download a PDF file of my presentation.

Hope to see you there next year!

The past weekend was an imaging bonanza!

I imaged more in the past weekend than I believe I have in the past 2 years. I’m continuing to work my way through the Messier List – geeze there are a ton of star clusters in that catalog. I managed to capture 5 more objects, 4 globulars and a nebula. Tonight I processed M57, the lone object that wasn’t a globular.

M57 the famous Ring Nebula in Lyra is thought of as a benchmark example of a planetary nebula. It was discovered by Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix in 1779 and lies some 2,300 light years from Earth.

I captured M57 using a 12.5 inch f/9 RCOS Ritchey-Chrétien telescope with an SBIG ST10XME and AO7. The image is a combination of 6 – 10 minute exposures.

I’ve moved down the list from Messier 102 to Messier 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy. M101 was discovered in 1781 by Pierre Méchain and added as one of the last entries in Charles Messier’s famous catalog. There is a bit of controversy over the possibility of Messier 101 and Messier 102 being duplicate entries. As I mentioned in my M102 post, M102 is commonly accepted today to be the Lenticular Galaxy NGC 5866.

I captured M101 using a 12.5 inch f/9 RCOS Ritchey-Chrétien telescope with an SBIG ST10XME and AO7. The image is a combination of 12 – 10 minute exposures.

According to SEDS, M102 is a rather controversial object. Evidently good old Charles included the object in his catalog based on an observation of his friend, Pierre Méchain. Problem is Charles didn’t verify the observation before publication and the published position is wrong – opps. Today M102 is commonly accepted to be the Lenticular Galaxy NGC 5866 in Draco, also sometimes called the Spindle Galaxy.

I captured M102 using a 12.5 inch f/9 RCOS Ritchey-Chrétien telescope with an SBIG ST10XME and AO7. The image is a combination of 6 – 10 minute exposures.

The truth of the matter is my observatory is ridden with light pollution. I literally have a parking lot lit in all it’s glory feet from my backyard. Mix that in with city lights, limited clear nights and mediocre skies and it just equals an uphill battle for color imaging.

I’m not saying it can’t be done – I have managed to pull a couple rabbits out of the hat. The return just isn’t worth the effort for me in my current situation. Some day I will return but today I embrace all that is gray.

We stopped off for lunch at the infamous McClard’s Bar-B-Q before heading out to the observatory. We spent the afternoon checking out what Jim and Jack have been up to and admiring their impressive facilities. Keep up the good work guys!

It seems a coronal mass ejection swept past Earth and sparked bright auroras over large portions of the United States – even as far south as Arkansas! This is one of two times I have seen aurora – both from the middle of town. This aurora was a bright blue/green fading in and out of site dancing to and fro. It must have been amazing from a dark site.

The source of the activity is a group of three big sunspots. All three of these sunspots are mega active so more auroral activity is possible. Keep and eye on the NOAA Auroral Activity Site for possible upcoming aurora.

UPDATE! – Danny Flippo was able to nab a few shots of last nights auroral activity from the River Ridge Observatory. Visit Danny’s Gallery to see what all the excitement was about.

The camera was mounted on top of Danny’s C8 using the club’s AP800 mount. The combination of the 135mm lens and the ST10 yeilded a field of view approximately 4 x 6 degrees! Since Cygnus was well placed we aimed just shy of Denub and shot 12 x 10 minute exposures of the North American and Pelican nebulae using an 11 nm HAlpha filter.

» Click here to see the final image