Astronomy pictures thread

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M101 - Spiral galaxy in Ursa Major

To put things in to perspective, that weird blob near the bottom left of center is the same galaxy that Foolsgold recently imaged.

M101-2023-04-25S.jpg
Date: 4/25/2023
Camera: Canon Rebel T8i (modified)
Telescope: 92mm f/5.5 triplet (Astrotech AT92) with focal reducer
Exposure: 48x360sec (4hr 48minpic202 total) at ISO 400
 
Just toying with an old planetary camera that came with a
fisheye lens. This is a single 25 second image straight from the camera. The Milkyway can be seen and the bright light in the upper
right are clouds illuminated by city lights. The Mono camera with lens only cost $299 and today's new improved version still costs $299. There's a color version too.
The windows based software that captured the image is called Sharpcap, it is free.

frame_00001.jpg
 
Playing with Rokinon 14mm F2.8 lens and color camera. 30 - 9 second images calibrated and stacked. My Southern Milkyway bulge is ruined by NYC light. This is the northern end of the Milkyway and Adromeda is off on the right. If I can learn how to take good flats the image can be improved. Oh and lots of Coma at the edges.
I like the second one better, but nothing can replace good flats.
 

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I tried finding a gallery of pics from this year's Leonid meteor shower and I'm not finding much. Was the shower a dud this year?
 
fwiw:

www.ksnt.com

Best meteor shower of year coming up

TOPEKA (KSNT) – If you’re lucky you might see meteors shooting across the sky in late November, but the best meteor shower of the year is just around the corner. We are currently in the…
www.ksnt.com www.ksnt.com

I'm hoping our resident astronomers will post some observations.
 
Most everything professional astronomers have discovered about the universe is attributable to spectroscopy. I will take the occasion pretty picture of a comet, other than that I am done with "pretty pictures".

Got the hardware (Slit and Grating spectrographs) and software now I need the knowledge and experience.

Screenshot 2023-11-28 130159.pngScreenshot 2023-11-15 224050.png
 
Last edited:
foolsgold said:
Most everything professional astronomers have discovered about the universe is attributable to spectroscopy. I will take the occasion pretty picture of a comet, other than that I am done with "pretty pictures".

Got the hardware (Slit and Grating spectrographs) and software now I need the knowledge and experience.

View attachment 11172View attachment 11174
Click to expand...
Awesome! I hope to dabble in spectroscopy some day. Probably long in the future with a bigger scope and dedicated astro cam.
 
pmbug said:
I tried finding a gallery of pics from this year's Leonid meteor shower and I'm not finding much. Was the shower a dud this year?
Click to expand...
I watched for about a half hour and counted 10 meteors (8 likely Leonids). Not a great year for Leonids but not too bad.

Here are a few I captured on peak night.

Meteor-2023-11-17-IMG_3887S.jpg

Cropped:
Meteor-2023-11-17-IMG_3887C1.jpg
Meteor-2023-11-17-IMG_3145S.jpg

This next one produced what is called a persistent train. A remnant charge left from the meteor.
Meteor-2023-11-17-IMG_1783C1.jpg

Meteor-2023-11-17.GIF
 
Wow that's really cool Eric. I especially like the bottom one that left an exhaust trail. Great work!! How's the new homestead?

Steve
 
That is so awesome. I had hoped to try watching the Leonids, but life got in my way. I understand that there is another meteor shower coming Dec 13 that might be a better show than the Leonids were this year. Hopefully I get to see some of it.
 
foolsgold said:
Wow that's really cool Eric. I especially like the bottom one that left an exhaust trail. Great work!! How's the new homestead?

Steve
Click to expand...

Thanks Steve! I really like the new homestead. Nice and quiet out here. Very nice skies when it is clear and dark.

Okay one more pic, my first night here I noticed I could still see a nice section of the milky way in the SW so I grabbed this quick pic above my trees. The better part of the sky here is to the SW.

FirstNight-IMG_0205S.jpg
 
pmbug said:
That is so awesome. I had hoped to try watching the Leonids, but life got in my way. I understand that there is another meteor shower coming Dec 13 that might be a better show than the Leonids were this year. Hopefully I get to see some of it.
Click to expand...
Yeah the Geminid meteor shower should peak the night of December 13 / morning of December 14. It tends to be a very good shower with a fairly sharp peak. Unlike the Perseids, you aren't likely to see a lot of Geminids accept during the peak night but peak night tends to be very good.

It is almost always cloudy here for the Geminids but I'm hopeful and have December 14th off of work just in case.
 
On a similar note, I encountered an owl this evening while I was setting up cameras for the meteor shower. It was hard to tell but I think it too was a great horned owl. Surprises me since I used to hear owls at my old place almost every time I was outside at night for a length of time and I haven't heard one here at my new place. I didn't even hear the one I saw tonight. It flew away silently when I startled it.

Anyway I hope some of you are enjoying the meteor shower. I have seen 50 meteors so far in about 40 minutes.

Here is a nice meteor I captured a couple nights ago. Not a geminid. Possibly a Monocerotid.
Meteor-2023-12-11-IMG_5013-P1S.jpg

Meteor-2023-12-11-IMG_5013-P1C1S.jpg

Meteor-2023-12-12.GIF
 
Unfortunately there is a cold front blowing in and its super cloudy where I am. No meteor viewing for me this time.
 
Bump

Total solar eclipse April 8, 2024: The longest and most visible for the US in 100 years​

If we were to compare the "Great North American Solar Eclipse" of April 8 against other eclipses over the past century, where would it rank?

Actually, it would end up quite high on the list.

During the last 100 years, from 1925 (inclusive) to 2024, the maximum duration of totality of 75 solar eclipses that we sampled (including annular-total/hybrid and non-central total eclipses) averaged 3 minutes 13 seconds. Incidentally, the absolute maximum possible duration of a total solar eclipse is 7 minutes 32.1 seconds, according to Jean Meeus, a Belgian Earth and planetary scientist specializing in celestial mechanics.

More:

www.space.com

Total solar eclipse April 8, 2024: The longest and most visible for the US in 100 years

When a total solar eclipse attains a duration of over 4 minutes it certainly should be considered as an exceptional eclipse.
www.space.com www.space.com
 
searcher said:
Bump

Total solar eclipse April 8, 2024: The longest and most visible for the US in 100 years​

If we were to compare the "Great North American Solar Eclipse" of April 8 against other eclipses over the past century, where would it rank?

Actually, it would end up quite high on the list.

During the last 100 years, from 1925 (inclusive) to 2024, the maximum duration of totality of 75 solar eclipses that we sampled (including annular-total/hybrid and non-central total eclipses) averaged 3 minutes 13 seconds. Incidentally, the absolute maximum possible duration of a total solar eclipse is 7 minutes 32.1 seconds, according to Jean Meeus, a Belgian Earth and planetary scientist specializing in celestial mechanics.

More:

www.space.com

Total solar eclipse April 8, 2024: The longest and most visible for the US in 100 years

When a total solar eclipse attains a duration of over 4 minutes it certainly should be considered as an exceptional eclipse.
www.space.com www.space.com
Click to expand...
I am very much looking forward to it. At the rate time flies it's coming right up!
 
I recently got a proper planetary camera (ZWO ASI678 MC).

Here is a shot of Jupiter with Ganymede, Europa and Io from 1/21/24 using my 254mm f/4.7 reflector and a 2X Barlow lens.
2024-01-21-0047_4-U-RGB-Jup_lapl5_ap766b.jpg

Close up of Plato crater on the moon with the same setup.
2024-01-20-2336_2-U-L-Moon_lapl5_ap1225SSSS.jpg
 
Here is a more recent image, captured over 2 nights (1/31/24 - 2/1/24).

NGC2174 (The Monkey Head nebula), emission nebula in Orion

NGC2174-2024-02-01-P1S.jpg

Date: 1/31/2024-2/2/2024
Camera: Canon Rebel T8i
Telescope: 92mm f/5.5 triplet (Astrotech AT92) with focal reducer
Exposure: 110x300sec (9hr 10min total) at ISO 400
Acquired using BackyardEOS, stacked using DeepSkyStacker, processed usingPixInsight
 
EricTheCat said:
Close up of Plato crater on the moon with the same setup.
2024-01-20-2336_2-U-L-Moon_lapl5_ap1225SSSS.jpg
Click to expand...
How big is that crater?
 
I am busy capturing (boring) Exoplanet transits. At it again tonight, first clear night in weeks. Here's my previous work of Qatar-9 b.
The "blue" graph shows the light (apparent magnitude) from star Qatar-9 dipping as a planet transits in front of the star. The "brown", "red" and "green" graphs are nearby stars, whose light (apparent magnitude) is unaffected during the same interval. Clouds are rolling in now, so looks like another night shot to hell.
anonymous_Screenshot 2024-01-20 164900.jpg
 
foolsgold said:
Wow you must have nice steady skies!!
Click to expand...
A nice thing about the high frame rates of planetary cameras is if you capture enough frames some are likely to be sharp. I think I stacked the sharpest 10%. Had mediocre seeing that night. Jupiter was around 57 degrees above the horizon which helps a lot. Focusing though is very difficult especially when it is 0F degrees out like it was that night!

Joe King said:
How big is that crater?
Click to expand...
101 km according to wiki.
foolsgold said:
I am busy capturing (boring) Exoplanet transits. At it again tonight, first clear night in weeks. Here's my previous work of Qatar-9 b.
The "blue" graph shows the light (apparent magnitude) from star Qatar-9 dipping as a planet transits in front of the star. The "brown", "red" and "green" graphs are nearby stars, whose light (apparent magnitude) is unaffected during the same interval. Clouds are rolling in now, so looks like another night shot to hell.
View attachment 11879
Click to expand...

I don't find that boring at all. That's awesome. I like charts.

Looking like clouds here too tonight. I am eyeing tomorrow night but the forecast is right on the edge.
 
Had a productive night/morning despite technical issues while I slept which caused me to only get 2hr 20min of data on the Christmas Tree Cluster/Cone Nebula last night.
NGC2264-2024-02-05-P1S.jpg
Date: 2/5/2024
Camera: Canon Rebel T8i (modified)
Telescope: 92mm f/5.5 triplet (Astrotech AT92) with focal reducer
Exposure: 28x300sec (2hr 20min total) at ISO 400
 
By the time I woke up realizing I wasn't getting any data it was time to pic a new target as the previous one was going to set into the trees soon enough. So I went for some distant galaxies in Virgo.

NGC4535, NGC4526, NGC4472/M49 and others
NGC4518-2024-02-06-P2S.jpg
Date: 2/6/2024
Camera: Canon Rebel T8i (modified)
Telescope: 92mm f/5.5 triplet (Astrotech AT92) with focal reducer
Exposure: 56x300sec (4hr 40min total) at ISO 400
 
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