So.... It's Been A While

About 3 months, more or less. Things have been busy around here. And the skies have been cloudy, mostly. However, I have managed a few nights imaging. Three, I think. But on those nights, I have managed about 25 target images, Jupiter and Saturn, the moon, and a “nightscape” sequence, which I'll put at the end. It's a movie (.avi) file, and the 1^st on of those I've tried of this type. What do you think of it?

Planets first. 

Jupiter with moons just visible, 1 on left, 2 on right.

Saturn

Unfortunately, there was enough high cloudiness that clear images just weren't going to happen, but fun to take anyway.

Next, we'll go to the moon.

Virtual Moon Atlas showing area around Tycho.

My image showing the same area

The bottom image is my image of the area around the crater Tycho. For identification purposes, I've included a screen shot of the program Virtual Moon Atlas (which I recommend; it's free and VERY good) identifying craters and features in the general area. Tycho is “naked eye” at full moon with the crater ejecta basically pointing to it.

Now to a few deep sky images. Over the course of 2 nights, I managed to image about 25 target galaxies. By that, I mean that I imaged not only the galaxy I wanted to image, but several other galaxies as well. For instance, in the image below, the “target” is identified as NGC3729. But there are 6 other galaxies in the image as well. I've included a screen shot from the program Megastar 5 that shows all the galaxies. The group around Hickson 56 is, of course, small and dim in my image, but I'm using a small telescope to get these images.

Megastar 5 screen shot of area around NGC3729.

My image of NGC3729 and 6 other galaxies.

All of the galaxy “targets” are on the Herschel 400 list and a lot of them are elliptical galaxies. These typically show up a elongated “smudges”.

NGC3610

Some of the galaxies conform to the common image of a galaxy.

NGC3938. Arrow points to another galaxy.

Lastly, I have tried taking a “movie”, actually about 200 separate images, of the motion of the night sky. In this case, we are watching the constellations of Orion and Canis Major as they are setting. I thought it turned out pretty well, all things considered.