double cluster in Perseus

here's another image from this past weekend, this is the famous double cluster in Perseus, a pair of open star clusters.

new setup!

I finally have my telescope setup where I can take photographs directly through it. With my Canon Rebel set at prime focus, I can gather more light and reduce the time needed for my exposures. Here are a couple of examples using the new setup. The second image is the galaxy M33, also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy. It is a composite of 25 exposures of 30 seconds each.




The first image is the comet Holmes, currently about a second magnitude object in Perseus, easily visible with the naked eye. This comet is notable because it brightened unexpectedly over a millionfold in the past couple of weeks.

The North America Nebula

The last night provided another chance to image the North American nebula in Cygnus. This photo is my result, the first image I posted covered the same general area, although at a much smaller scale. (For all of you non geographers, smaller scale meaning a wider area) while this one is an improvement, I am still not terribly pleased with the result. Processing images stinks!

Color!

Here is another pic from this weekend. I have finally managed to find my color data. This image shows the Andromeda Galaxy also known as M31. To the upper left, the faint fuzzy is a companion Galaxy, and there is a second one directly to the right of the galactic core that looks more starlike. This object is visible to the naked eye, and appears as a faint smudge on the sky looking to the east around 9:30 p.m. between Cassiopeia and the great square of Pegasus.

First photo taken with the Atlas Mount

I finally had a chance to try some long exposure photography with the new mount. This is the only photo I could get before dew became a problem.

Photo taken with a canon rebel dslr with a 70-300 mm zoom lense set to 70 mm at f/5.6 at 800 ISO. Four exposures of approximately 90 seconds with three dark frames.

The area pictured is the Milky Way around the North America nebula. The brightest star is Deneb, in the constellation Cygnus, one of the three stars of the summer triangle.