Views of the Universe

A Finale, Of Sorts

On the evening of August 27^th, 2018, I finished a project started in 2014, although I didn't formally make it a project until, maybe, 2016. That project was to photograph all 110 of the Messier objects. The entire series serves to goals : 1) to prove that I have “seen” all of the objects (more on that later), and 2) to document the progress I have made in photographing the night sky. The equipment underwent only one change in that time, which was a change from a Starlight Express M516 camera to a QSI 683 camera. Many of the images taken are on this blog.

Why “seen” in quotes? Two reasons. First, my eyes are getting quite old and don't see dim things in the night sky very well. All of the objects in the Messier catalog would be considered dim. Second, the sky quality at the observatory has deteriorated significantly, mostly due to light pollution, making seeing dim objects that much harder. For me, photographing was the only way to go.

So, which one was the last one? M73, an open star cluster in the constellation of Aquarius. I circled the four brightest stars. If you follow the progression of things, Charles Messier first thought this might be a comet; enough so that he made a note that this was something to be avoided in his search for comets. Later, it was decided that this was a loosely associated open cluster. Then, it was decided that it wasn't an open cluster at all, but just four stars that made an asterism. It wasn't until 2002, when M. Odenkirchen and C. Soubiran finally demonstrated that this is just an asterism.

M73, Messier catalogue complete!

Finally, for this installment of the blog, a few images of the sun. Since I image primarily in shade of gray, I' showing the images after processing, but before colorizing, except for the red one which was shot in color.

There was a prominence visible that was imaged in the normal configuration for the solar scope and one with the scope using a 3x Barlow lens to magnify it. There was also something (a filament) that was barely visibly visually, so much so that I wasn't sure it was really there. As shown in the gray image, it was difficult to see even with the camera. The red image is essentially the same as the gray image, but color enhanced to increase the contrast. I'm not sure why it was so difficult to see, except that there has been a lot of high cloudiness this summer...... a LOT. Even the image of M73 was shot through high cloudiness. When focusing, a halo was seen around the star I was focusing on (the halo presumably from the clouds).