Aqua Maiden Voyage England

 Memories from London and South Hampton

Visiting Goshawk

 Backyard visitor - small beak large talons - all pinch no bark... This goshawk is small compared to the usual Redtail or Harris hawks we usually see.

Backyard Deer

Backyard buddies decided to pay us a visit yesterday

 

Total Lunar Eclipse Weather Permitted

 Last night the weather parted and left a clearing right on the Moon at about 1/4th into the eclipse. That clearing grew as the eclipse progressed. nearing the end of the eclipse the clouds started to come back - surreal.

M 78 (NGC 2068) Casper the Friendly Ghost

Well I finally gave up and accepted this is the best I can do... Probably not... This nebula is going to haunt me forever! (Pun intended) Messier 78, also know as  Casper the Friendly (not so friendly to me) Ghost, or NGC 2068, literally tested me like no other nebula. The cloud formation in the middle is supposed to be blue and I struggled over five nights and 1,326 light subs and could never draw it out. I was able to pull out the marble countertop look that the Spitzer Space Telescope got obviously without the great detail that telescope has! It was the toughest nebula yet. M78 belongs to the Orion B molecular cloud complex and is about 1,350 light-years distant from Earth. I absolutely appreciate the chunks of dark dust lanes throughout.

Fish Head Nebula (IC1795)

 The Fish Head Nebula is also known as the Northern Bear Nebula, is a star nursery where stars are "born". I really like it because it has some very dark thick dust lanes running throughout the nebula. The light emitted from the nebula takes 6,000 years to reach us - a simpler way of saying the distance to IC 1795 is 6K LY's. The young stars in this system are emitting high amounts of Ultraviolet (UV) light which causes the nebula to glow brightly (kind of like when we sunburn 😁). So I was "fishing" for a target to photograph (pun intended) a couple of nights ago and came across this fish. I liked it so much I stayed with it all night taking 854 sub photos to stack. 697 subs survived the "blurry" test and were ultimately stacked with 60 flats and 60 darks for noise reduction. 81% survival rate tells me the "seeing" (atmospheric steadiness) was pretty good over 7 hours of exposure time. Enjoy this beautiful creation!

Spider & Fly Nebula IC417 & NGC 1931)

 Well these two kind of look like their title - a spider and closing in a fly... This photo is a culmination of 242 sub exposures of which 186 panned out for 77% which is not bad seeing conditions (60 Flats and 60 Darks make up the rest of the stack you see below.  Not my favorite but this is my first attempt on this nebula pair. The magnitude of the two are both about 10 (10 and higher numbers are actually dimmer and smaller and negative numbers are brighter).

The spider is 2,707.5 lights years from my telescope, while the fly is actually 8,155 light years from earth so it is only perspective that appear close to each other and that spider has quite a trip in front of it to catch that fly...

Monkey Head NGC 2174

 So last night I was just searching around and stumbled on this gem of a nebula, perfect composition for my light train and enough of a light emitter that it only took two hours of exposure. Trouble is I did not start on this until midnight... I ended up with 234 sub-exposures (lights) and 153 keepers of them were keepers. I thought I would be able to keep more than 63% but oh well.

So NGC 2174 the Monkey Head Nebula is shining through a star cluster, NGC 2175 which crowds the nebula with a lot of stars. I had to be careful not to over crowd the nebula and still be authentic to the massive star count. The nebula is thought to be 6,400 light years from my telescope. BTW I have no idea how they came up with monkey head (well if you go sideways maybe just maybe)...

Mars Occulted by the Moon

 Stack of the Moon passing in front of Mars (occultation) Starting the first stack at 1:46 UTC (6:46 PM MST) and the final stack at 3:06 UTC (8:06 PM MST) The Moon was in front of Mars from my location for approximately 59 minutes and 20 seconds. You can see there are 8 layers and each layer is comprised of 50 stacks (400 photos stacked on top of each other to diminish blurriness from temperature waves in the atmosphere).

Christmas Tree Nebula (NGC 2264 & my new Favorite)

The Christmas Tree Nebula is very aptly named. NGC 2264 is the location where the Cone Nebula, the Stellar Snowflake Cluster and the Christmas Tree Cluster have formed in this emission nebula. The Snowflake Cluster was granted its name due to its unmistakable pinwheel-like shape and its assortment of bright colors. The Christmas Tree star formation consists of young stars obscured by heavy layers of dust clouds. These dust clouds, along with hydrogen and helium are producing luminous new stars. The combination of dense clouds and an array of colors creates a color map filled with varying wavelengths. Of course I have to reveal it's distance from my telescope and camera, 2,350 light years. 228 FITS (RAW) and 189 stacked with 60 FLATS for photo below.

 

Soul Nebula (IC1848)

The Soul nebula (IC 1848)The Soul Nebula is approximately 6,500 light-years away and spans about 100 light-years in size. It is a star-forming region containing several small open clusters. I took 82 photos each of 30 second duration and kept 73 for stacking (105 Gain, 60 Flats for imperfection elimination and zero darks).

 

Seagull Nebula (Seagull's Head)

This interesting reflection nebula is under 2000 light years from my camera. The worm like dust lane kind of outlines a gull winged bird. If I had gotten the entire nebula you could barely see a head and set of wings. 2025-01-03 I captured 206 frames and kept 156 for the stack, with 60 flat frames and zero darks at 30 seconds each and a gain of 105 at 12 bits

 

The Golden Hour in New York for a Cruise Departure

In photography, the golden hour is the period of daytime shortly after sunrise or just before sunset, during which daylight is redder and softer than when the sun is higher in the sky. The golden hour is also sometimes called the magic hour, by photographers. Our cruise was delayed and that pushed the departure right in the Golden Hour for New York City's skyline and of course the Statue of Liberty. Having a waxing Moon hanging in the sky just above the skyline did not hurt either... Taking the photos from a rocking boat presented some challenges. However, challenges are what make successes sweeter. The moment was incredible. Sit back and hopefully you enjoy it at least half as much as we did.

The sunset in the west is reflecting perfectly off the windows of the buildings...

The new World Trade Center giving us a peak of the last bit of sunset.

Hello Moon and last bit of sunset

Hello Moon, Lady Liberty and tiniest touch of sunset

They warned us the torch did not light up very well... wrong tonight!

Goodbye Golden Hour and New York City

The Seven Sisters Star Cluster - Pleiades Nebula

 Messier 45 the Seven Sisters star cluster and Pleiades Nebula (NGC 1432) is the best know star cluster in the world, with much folk lore surrounding it. It is said it can be used as an eye test or light pollution test. If you can see seven (realistically five or six) individual stars your eyes are good, and the light pollution is not that bad. The cluster is only 444 light years away, however the radius of the cluster is 20 light years. 

In this one purposely left the stars in and processed them together - I wanted them big and brilliant. Normally I grab out the stars from the nebula, so they don't get overexposed as I stretch out the nebula in the histogram. Then I would normally process the stars separately and finally put them back in for the final photograph.

Bonus tip the starburst pattern you see in the stars is caused by the starlight getting diffracted as it strikes both the power cable and the USB cable of my astro-camera getting concentrated into spikes. If I had done a better job of curving the cables the light would have dispersed instead of "spiked".

Comet 2023 C3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS

 Took this comet shot last month. The anti-tail is barely visible in front of the comet. The comet at the time of the photos (25 shots of 4.02 seconds, total integration 100.5 seconds stacked) was 0.52 AU (Astronomical Units, 1 AU equals the average distance from the Sun to the Earth, in other words the comet was 46,477,905 miles away). The magnitude or brightness of the comet was 3.53 so technically it was visible to the naked eye but it's proximity to the horizon made really hard to see. This photo(s) was taken with my 9.25 inch diameter lens telescope. Bonus Tip: What is an anti-tail? As the comet speeds away from the Sun dust and ice are burned/fanned off the comet and form the coma and tail opposite the sun. Since the tail is formed directly opposite the Sun and now the comet is travelling away from the Sun the remaining dust is still lit up even though the comet has travelled past it in it's orbital plane.

In this second photo one day later you can no longer see the anti-tail but the ion tail is barely visible in the left-middle of the dust tail

Elephant Trunk Nebula IC 1396

Having been inspired by the Bubble Nebula, I thought I would try for the Elephant Trunk Nebula and again I was very surprised with the results. The Bubble is still my favorite, but this one comes in a nice second. It is about 1,565 light years away from Earth. The entire IC 1396 region is ionized (energized to visible light) by a massive star. I really enjoy the black patches of interstellar dust that is blocking out all background starlight (upper to mid right side of photo). This was a stack of 157 subs frames culled out of 217 frames, each frame lasting 30 seconds (108.5 minutes of integration time).

 

The Bubble Nebula Plus the Salt & Pepper Star Cluster

 The Bubble Nebula is a new one for me and at only 11,091 light years away it is still dim at only 10th magnitude. Down in the left corner is the Salt and Pepper open star cluster. It is only 500 light years away from us and is brighter at 6.9 magnitude. So the two are in light of sight for us but are not especially close to each other.

Saguaro, Great Horned Owl and Comet A3

Check out the great horned owl on the saguaro looking at me, looking at the Comet A3

Venus, Saguaro, and Comet A3

 

September 11th Memorial

 On our most recent visit with our daughter in New York, New York - the September 11th Memorial.