April 2023 DSO Images

This post is backdated to April 10, 2023 the day on which all my April imaging occurred. Setup: Celestron 8 SCT, Starizona Night Owl f/4.0 focal reducer, ZWO ASI294MC Pro cooled camera, Orion Magnificent Mini Auto-guider. Processing: Autostakkert!3, Paintshop Pro 2021. 

IC447 

NGC2175

Sharpless 274

Open Clusters 10/27/2022

Open clusters are deep sky low hanging fruit objects that let you image quite a few in a single night. If you're new to astro-imaging open clusters are great for familiarization with focusing and autoguiding. The eleven open clusters were all acquired during one night out each using 30 x 30 second exposures; plenty of time for familiarization and practice. 

Messier 34

Messier 39 

NGC 129

NGC 225

NGC 457 (Owl Cluster)

NGC 663

NGC 774

NGC 7039

NGC 7082

NGC 7243

NGC 7789 Caroline's Rose

Recent and Not So Recent Images

Comet C/2022E3 ZTF is racing towards the outer solar system as evident from its small size in the image below compared with just a couple months ago. The comet, M36, M93 and NGC2360 were imaged from my third floor the terrace thanks to the recent removal of the sky blocking tree. The remaining five images were imaged from the Harvard, MA darkish site. As usual these will likely be revisited especially the nebulae. 

Comet C/2022E3ZTF (3/20/2023) 

Messier 36 (Open Cluster)

Messier 93 (Open Cluster)

NGC2360 (Caroline's Cluster)

NGC7538

Sharpless 140

 

Sharpless 252 (Monkey Head Nebula)

Sharpless 297

Sharpless 206 (NGC 1491)