Views of the Universe

What Can I Say????

It's been a busy summer. Not very clear either, at least at night. On the few nights I have had so far, I've concentrated on Messier objects, mainly globular clusters. Since they are “just stars”, meaning no nebulosity (well one is a nebula), mostly I imaged only in the luminance channel. Saturn and Jupiter were visible, so I imaged them on a few nights. I even got a couple of craters on the moon to almost complete imaging the Astronomical League's Lunar List. I also was able to get another look at NGC6946, the galaxy with the nova. Last, but not least, I attended the total solar eclipse, but didn't do any imaging. Fortunately, a good friend, Max Armstrong, did get a few good pictures, which he has agreed to allow me to post. Because of being such a busy summer, I think I will just post and identify the images, with little comment. There is a total of 23 of them. Group by date sound good? (It may take a couple of days to get everything uploaded.)

July 11. High cloudiness which shows up in the images. Images are of Jupiter and Io (moon), and two globular clusters M80 and M107. M80 is located in the constellation of Ophiuchus, M107 is in Scorpius.

Jupiter and Io just above the center line, to the right of Jupiter

M80, a globular cluster in Ophiuchus

M107 in Scorpius. The light scattering off the clouds is evident in the lower half of the image.

July 22. These are globular clusters and open clusters. It will probably be obvious which is which, just by looking at the density of stars in the image. All are located in the same general area, around Scorpius and Ophiuchus.