08/31/2025: IC 4665, IC 5146, Messier 13, NGC 7635, Sharpless 140, Sharpless 142, Sharpless 155

Celestron 8/AVX, Starizona Night Owl 0.4X Focal Reducer, ASI294MC Pro Orion Mini Autoguider. Nebulae: 30x60s subs, IC4665: 30x15s subs, Messier 13: 30x30s subs. Stack averaging with Autostakkert! Stretching and gradient reduction with GraXpert. Post processing with Paintshop Pro 2021. 

IC 4665

IC 5146 (Cocoon Nebula)

Messier 13 (Hercules Globular Cluster)

NGC7635 (Bubble Nebula)

Sharpless 140

Sharpless 142

Sharpless 155

07/21/2025: Messier 8, Messier 13, NGC6857

Along with five of my favorite targets M8 and M13 this was my first attempt at imaging NGC6857. M16, M17 and M20 were imaged on 7/19/2025. I plan to revisit NGC6857 to see if I can pull out any more nebulosity. Usual Setup: Celestron 8/AVX, Starizona Night Owl 0.4X Focal Reducer, ASI294MC Pro

Messier 8 (Lagoon Nebula, 60x15s, -10C)

Messier 13 (Hercules Globular Cluster, 60x15s, -10C)

NGC6857(60x30s, -10)

 The following DSOs were imaged 07/19/2025

Messier 16 (Eagle Nebula, 30x15s -10C)

Messier 17 (Omega Nebula/Swan Nebula, 30x15s,-10C)

Messier 20 (Trifid Nebula, 30x15s, -10C)

New Laptop and Orion Magnificent Mini Autoguider. Phew!

It's been a while since I posted. Increased age related sensitivity to winter temps and a bit of laziness around imaging galaxies during galaxy season is partly to blame. I'll do better next fall and winter. Also my aging Acer laptop while usable needs a new keyboard which, according to a local tech guy cannot be replaced. As a stop gap I acquired a $10 Bluetooth keyboard while shopping for a new computer. Also, the Acer is incompatible with Windows 11. 

After some research I opted for a Dell Inspiron 2 in 1 driven by an AMD Ryzen 7 8840Hs at 3.30 Ghz. It shows when in the time it takes to stack lunar images which is an order magnitude faster than the Acer it replaces. For the most part I'm no fan of Windows 11's look and feel or Microsoft's pushing and nudging users towards the Edge browser or obnoxious OneDrive. OneDrive almost caused the loss of my years of SharpCap images. Fortunately there are numerous tipsters providing advice on how to make Win11 less annoying. 

So why the Phew!? When it came time to install the auto-guider software I realized I didn't have the drivers for the Orion Autoguider. As you're likely aware Orion went out of business and PhD2 does not include the drivers. Well, much thanks to someone going by italic posting on Cloudynights  the drivers and installation software can be downloaded from here on archive.org. 

Over the last couple of nights I revisited some of my favorite targets, globular clusters, to give the Orion Autoguider a workout. With the current settings performance has been excellent. 

Setup: Celestron 8/AVX, Starizona 0.4x NightOwl FR, ASI294MC Pro, Orion Mini Autoguider. Imaging: SharpCap pro,  30x30s, 0C, 120 gain. Processing: Autostakkert! (stack averaging), GraXpert (stretching/gradient reduction), Paintshop Pro(image touchup)

Messier 13 (Hercules Cluster)

Messier 3

Messier 5

Messier 10

Messier 12

Messier 53

So Begins Globular Cluster Season.

Globular clusters (GC) are some of my favorite targets for this time of the year with short spring and summer nights and the annoyance of daylight saving time. With sunsets around 2030 and astronomical twilight's around 2240 globulars can usually be acquired in less than 15 minutes making for productive nights of imaging. 

Why do I keep coming back to these low hanging fruits? I like to think I can improve on my past performance and take advantage very rare good seeing Northeast nights. Most of these targets are low in the southern sky making it challenging to image them with the denser more turbulent air and refraction.

A few recent examples appear below. All of these globulars were acquired from a favorite Harvard, MA darkish site with 15 x 30s subframes with a ASI294MC-Pro, Starizona Night Owl 0.4x focal reducer and Celestron 8 on an Advanced VX mount. 

While I call this Globular Cluster Season there are many more  open clusters favorably placed this time of the year. Look for images of those in up coming posts. 

Messier 3

Messier 5

Messier 53

Messier 13

Messier 92

NGC5897

Messier 4

Messier 10

Messier 12

Messier 14

Galaxy Season

The coronavirus pandemic put my astro-imaging on hold. Two favorite Harvard MA public area dark sites are temporarily closed due to the pandemic. Luckily I was recently able to image from the unlighted parking lot of a friendly fruit stand with a great view of the skies. Thanks to surrounding towns Harvard's skies are starting to rival the light polluted skies of Boston suburbs. That said they are still worth traveling to.

With two rare clear sky nights in a row I was able to do quite a bit of galaxy imaging using the Starizona Night Owl focal reducer alluded to in earlier posts. I decided to experiment with 15 x 1min sub-frames instead of the more typical 6 x 5min I've used in the past. The results are a pleasant surprise. UPDATE: Actually, according to Robin Glover's CMOS color camera astrophotography YouTube video it's not such a surprise after all. 

Interesting note: Images from the first and better night sky-wise were plagued with an unpleasant gradient brightening on the left side. I hypothesized was due to flat frames with histograms with too many points below 20%. Flat frame histograms should fall between 20% and 80%.  I adjusted this on the second night and in a Hail Mary play applied one of these flats to the previous night's images. Any serious imager knows this is a no-no because flats must be taken with the exact optical configuration used to acquire the images. Despite this, the result was a successful, albeit imperfect salvaging operation made possible because I typically insert the camera with the same orientation around to the telescope's optical axis. 

Note: Galaxy Season refers to the many Coma cluster galaxies in the  in the southern spring evening sky. Also, Galaxy season doesn't preclude imaging comets, globular clusters or gaseous nebulae as exemplified by the first four images.

 

Comet C/2017T2 PANSTARRS

.Messier 3 Globular Cluster 

Messier 13 

Messier 97 Owl Nebula

Messier 51 Whirlpool Galaxy

Messier 63 Sunflower Galaxy

Messier 85

Messier 94

Messier 101

Messier 106

Messier 109

NGC4613 Whale Galaxy