Started with Saturn with 25mm then switched to 18mm ortho with 2x barlow. Titan and two smaller moons Dione and Rhea clearly visible to the left side, no others. Thin sliver of ring shadow visible across the face of Saturn and planet’s shadow visible on left side of rings. Cassini division visible during moments of better seeing. Cloud band with slight contrast visible in lower half, as if completing the oval ring shape.

NGC3242 was next, several degrees east of Alphard. Color was very faint and the nebula boundary indistinct, although sometimes with seeing the brighter inner oval outline was visible.

Next came M44, the Beehive cluster, which is too large to view in its entirety in my 32mm. I was able to pick out a slight yellow or orange hue for one star, but the color contrast is slight. Eyepiece view is better than online photos, which tend to be over-exposed so that the cluster stars form large saturated circles.

Split Algieba (γ Leonis) with 12.5mm. Very close pair with little or no color distinction.

Last target was M3, a globular cluster in Canes Venatici toward Arcturus. Individual stars were very hard to resolve and seemed to appear and disappear rapidly and in mass, producing a subtle sparkling effect.

First light with guidescope. Very disappointed to discover PHD Guiding software did not recognize the NexImage and it claimed my scope did not support pulse mode. Fiddled with it longer than I should have. Bottom line: zero success.

Guidescope was very useful for making fine adjustments while D50 was attached to the main scope. Best practice using laptop to view real-time output from NexImage in the guidescope, but eyepiece use works ok, too.

Tried to image Jupiter, photos were awfully blurry. First image seemed to show moon touching jupiter’s limb, no other moons. Tried again with ep. No moons visible, black spot visible at edge. Re-installed D50, tried to re-focus, star image was an irregularly shaped streak even with relatively short exposure times less than 1/10 second. I suspect vibration from the shutter, but it was late and I was tired of trying to debug it.

Finally reverted to visual observation. By this time two distinct black spots were visible. I thought I was seeing a double eclipse, but later cross-ref with SNP and SkyViewCafe indicated one spot was the shadow of Europa and the other Ganymede itself. In the illustration below, the top spot is the shadow of Europa and the bottom spot is Ganymede.

Illustration of Eclipse on Jupiter's clouds

First light using Starry Night Pro to control the telescope via serial cable. I have an old version of SNP (4.5) and there are a few minor user interface quirks, but generally I was pleased with the operation. Also first light using DIYPhotoBits to control the Nikon D50 via USB. I was very pleased with the results. I’ve actually modded DIYPB to display images after download using IrfanView, making it much easier to center and check focus.

I started with M57, the Ring Nebula. Exposures above 10 seconds exhibited elongation. It didn’t occur to me until later to use DIYPB’s time lapse feature to collect a set of images for stacking, so I only captured two at that speed. M57 is hardly visible at only 10 seconds, even using ISO1600, so there’s not much to see there.

Next I captured photos of Jupiter and the Galilean moons. Due to the bad seeing and the humidity the image quality was quite poor. The two main bands were visible but murky and the entire image seemed slightly out of focus. I rechecked the focus with the Hartman mask and that was not the problem. The composite photo below shows the relative positions of the planet and its four moons. Io and Europa (on the left) passed in conjunction over the next couple of hours, but it was already late and I didn’t want to stay up for it.

Jupiter and its moons (composite image)

Last I photographed M52, an open star cluster in the constellation Cassiopeia. As earlier with M57, I was unable to get an exposure longer than 10 seconds without elongation. It occurred to me then to use DIYPB’s time lapse feature to take several photos (10, actually) in quick succession then try to stack and merge them later. I tried stacking with RegiStax5, but I was not pleased with the results: the stars looked dull and washed out. I stacked the frames by hand and the result was much better.

Composite image detail of M52(click image for 1000x800 resolution)

This image shows far fewer stars than you might see in a typical photo of M52. This view is representative of what you might see in an amateur telescope. You mileage will vary depending on your telescope and sky conditions.

Began with visual observation of Jupiter. Best view I have ever seen. Two main belts easily seen, two thin faint belts also visible in steadier seeing. All four Galilean moons visible: one left and three right.

Took photos of many targets using the D50. Most images had elongated stars varied in length and direction. In a couple of photos the stars are almost doughnut-shaped with dark centers. A few photos had no elongation, even at long exposures. Magnification shows elongated shapes are often irregularly shaped. My best explanation for the elongation is wind, although I felt no wind all night with only rare light gusts. Shutter is on 5 second timer. Perhaps I will try a longer timer next time.

Photos of M103 and M31 suffered from elongation. Photos of η Cas and Albireo (shown below) came out well. M76 was barely discernible even with a 30 second exposure at ISO 1600. Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC6543) small, vivid teal, somewhat hazy — maybe from initial dew buildup that I didn’t recognize until much later.

Also took several photos of Jupiter and its moons, none of which were very good because of (as yet undiscovered) dew on the corrector. Several photos of Neptune and Uranus showed good color but no detail.

Albireo (β Cyg - double star). Click image for large (1500x1000) size.

Saturn was actually the first target before the DSOs. I captured a couple of images at ISO 800 and 4 sec exposure that included the moons Titan, Tethys, Dione, and Iapetus (Rhea was transiting and lost in Saturn’s glare). I reduced the exposure time several steps, but it was hard to see much detail in the LCD (another argument for tethered control), so I moved on.

Next I tried M13, the globular cluster in Hercules. This actually turned out to be the best subject of the night. One of the photos had some jitter from the wind shaking the telescope (did I mention it was occasionally quite breezy?). Most were fairly good, however, with nearly round stars — limited by the sharpness of the focus, most likely. Click the image to see a very large full-sized photograph. If you look closely you can see stars of several different colors in the cluster. M13: FL 2032mm, ISO 800, 30sec exposure, f/10.

M13

Next came M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra. I captured several images, but they all showed noticeable wind jitter. I’m certain this is telescope vibration and not tracking error because the motion vector varies from one photograph to the next. I merged the four best frames in Registax, stretched to compensate for the motion vector, applied a gamma correction to increase the brightness, then reduced the image size to improve the apparent sharpness of the focus. M57: FL 2032mm, ISO 800, 30 sec exposure, f/10.

M57 - The Ring Nebula

The next target I tried was M27, the Dumbbell nebula. However, even with a 30 sec exposure at ISO 800 there was almost no trace of any nebulosity in the photo, so I moved on.

I decided to re-balance the telescope forward to compensate for the extra weight of the camera on the back. This, of course completed wrecked the scopes alignment so I had to restart. After alignment I focused the camera on Mizar (ζ UMa). It’s a nice blue double, but it’s included here for more than aesthetic reasons. According to SNP, the separation between Mizar A and B is 14 arc-seconds. In the unprocessed photo, the distance between the centers of the stars is approximately 19.3 pixels (along a diagonal). This puts the resolution for the camera at about 0.725 arc-seconds per pixel. By comparing similar measurements of other doubles I should be able to calculate the actual resolution more accurately. Mizar: FL 2032mm, ISO 800, 1/2 sec exposure, f/10.

Mizar A and B

After rebalancing I Attempted several images of the Whirlpool galaxy M51. The cores of M51 and its companion galaxy both appeared tiny and featureless over several photographic attempts.

The number of craters visible in the high-resolution image is really amazing. Central peak uplifts are visible in many of the larger craters. However, the focus was not tight enough in general to pick up the terrace edges (although you can make out traces here and there). You can click on the image below to see the full-sized photograph, but be prepared to wait! The big photo is 2.3MB at a whopping 2900×2900.

You can see some severe vignette in the corners from the 1.25″ universal T-adapter. The photo is actually a composite of two separate shots because the moon did not fit in the camera’s image sensor at this high magnification.

Telescope: Celestron C8, FL 2032mm, f/10
Camera: Nikon D50, ISO 800, 1/1000s

1st quarter moon in daylight

It was hot outside tonight, even for Houston in the summer. It was still 93ºF after sunset! I got this shot with the Meade refractor using ISO 200 at 1/100s. There’s just a touch of blur from me supporting one end by hand. I was tired and didn’t want to mess with pulling out the GEM tonight in the heat. Click the image to see full resolution photo.

waxing crescent moon