Rain, rain, go away.....

Originally written November 9, 2015 published November 18, 2015, but I've been busy :)

I heard the weatherman on one of the local TV stations say tonight that it has rained 15 out of the past 16 days. Why he didn't say it has rained the past 15 days and left it at that I don't know, but... it has been rainy and cloudy for a while. Fortunately, I took advantage of the few dry days before hand to gather some images and do some experimenting, which I like to do. As you would expect, some efforts were better than others.

Let's start with the NGC7380, The Wizard Nebula. 

NGC7380

I originally thought I might publish this as a Halloween “present”, but things didn't work out that way. The images was taken on the night of October 8^th. Credit for discovery is given to Caroline Herschel who found it in 1787. It is said to be extremely difficult to see visually. I find it interesting that NGC 7380 refers to the open cluster of stars within the nebula. NGC 7380 is located in the constellation of Cephus and is about 8000 light years (ly) away. As with many objects in astronomy, I don't see the namesake. Do you see a wizard?

M31, The Andromeda Galaxy

M31 Parts 1 an 2

This galaxy is said to be very similar to the Milky Way. It's a giant, spiral galaxy. It's bright enough to be seen naked eye under only modestly dark skies; I've seen it from Starlight naked eye several times. It's an easy target for binoculars from almost anywhere. It's about 2 million ly away and headed this way (or we're headed that way, take your choice; it's all relative). The reason for two images is that it's so big, it won't fit in one. Actually, this is one of my experiments. I knew it wouldn't fit in one frame, so I wanted to see if I could “stitch” the two images together. One image was taken the night of October 18^th and the other October 19^th. I made them as nearly identical as I could, but the area where the images join is extremely obvious. I haven't found a solution to this problem as of yet, so I let the two images separate for now. By the way, that little "fuzzy dot" in the lower left hand corner of the bottom image is actually another galaxy, M32.

M57, The Ring Nebula

M57

This is a perennial favorite. M57 is the ionized gas that was ejected, it you will, from a red giant star as the star collapsed into a white dwarf star (in the center of the ring). It's about 2300 ly away in the constellation of Lyra. Unlike the Wizard Nebula, this one is easily visible in at least a 20cm (8”) telescope. As with almost all deep sky objects, it will most likely be gray vs. the color you see here. Some people report they can see some color (shades of green, I think) if they have a large scope and are viewing under very dark skies.

And finally Rx And

Rx And

Rx Andromeda is the name of a variable star in the constellation of Andromeda, not a prescription for a star pill. However it is a prescription for fun. The star shown below (with the arrow pointing at it, of course) is Rx And. So far the variation has been measurable, but slight. It would be best to measure the variation on a consistent basis, like every night. With the rain we have had lately, I'm lucky to measure it once a week, and so far I haven't been able to do even that. Oh, well. Hopefully, I will be able to image it more often soon, and be able to show the variation here. We'll see.