The Bubble Nebula and Friends
Category Archives: Star Clusters
M22 Globular Cluster with AT60ED
12 x 180 sec, QHY183c at -15C, Gain 11, Offset 50, Optolong L-eNhance filter, Astro-Tech AT60ED at F/4.8, SharpCap 3.2 Live Stacking for acquisition, metro-area light pollution
The Moon and M13
A quick outing before the weather got bad as a tropical storm hits from the Gulf. I wanted to test the new T-adapter fittings I got for the AT60ED to attach the camera instead of using the 1.25″ eyepiece adapter, like I had to do for the first light images.
M35 Open Cluster on Jan 14, 2021
I was having a good night of steady seeing and really good guiding (<1.13 arc sec error) for this object and the Pleiades on this night. I went until it was time to flip and the guiding was starting to degrade. 78 minutes worth of subs was good enough to show this object well.
2020 Image Sampler & Review
The 12 best images of 2020 roughly in a monthly order, Jan to Dec.
Christmas Tree Cluster and The Cone Nebula
The Bubble Nebula and M52 Open Cluster During a Full Moon
Imaging Session June 20th, 2020
Friday night, Jun 19th, 2020 was warm and muggy and clouds persisted till after 9:00 PM. It was predicted to clear, so I went to bed early and woke up just before 2:00 AM and setup my scope then. It was clear, but the transparency was poor and the humidity was still high.
I managed to get a decent amount of data on two objects, and I also peeked at 2 or 3 other things in between. M22, the globular cluster in the first image, was a secondary target and I really wanted to get the Omega Nebula and the Trifid Nebula nearby. My narrow window to image them was so small, however. Trees and streetlights were in the way. By the time I was ready to shoot, that area had moved out of position.
I had imaged M22 a few times, but with other scopes. I took all the data I had on it and recombined it to produce the 2nd image above. It is data from an 8″ Schmidt-Newt and a 6″ Schmidt-Newt, along with the data from the first image above.
The Ring Nebula was a quick peek that turned into a usable image. The full size image is a crop at 100% resolution of the central area. I was hoping to pick up that galaxy that is nearby to the Ring, but 48×15 sec sub-images wasn’t enough to bring it out.
However, I did have a stack of 34×30 sec sub-images taken in March that I blended this night’s data with and now you can see it, just barely, above and slightly left of the ring. Check it out:
It looks like I need to get out of the big city to get the summertime nebulae targets like Omega and the Trifid. Late June and early July sometimes has clear skies and hopefully I’ll be lucky and get to a dark sky site before too long.
Supernova in M61! Another M13 Globular Shot, Too.
I imaged the galaxy above and the globular below on Sunday, May 10, 2020. Very nice weather that day and a pretty good evening, too. Being I had to work the next day, I cut the session short and only got data on two objects.
Imaging Session April 30, 2020
The Sunflower Galaxy was the second time this year for imaging it, so I combined the two data sets and got this detail view below. It is 3.77 hrs total time:
