Astro Blog

Jose Bellas's Astronomy Blog.

IC 1318 - Sadr Region or The Gamma Cygni Nebula

This is a pretty part of the sky Jim suggested we image.

This data was collected over the course of three nights and consists of three hours per color channel (Red, Green, Blue, and Luminance) for a total of 12 hours of data. Needless to say it was pretty easy to process with all that signal. :-)

IC 1318 - Sadr Region/The Gamma Cygni Nebula

Despite the heat in Texas making the camera's cooler work overtime the observatory continues to purr along gathering good data so as long as there are clear nights we'll keep sending it plans.

Thanks for looking, clear skies everyone.

M 57 - The Ring Nebula

A quick processing of some data the observatory gathered the other night. The Ring Nebula is a planetary nebula in the constellation Lyra. It is absolutely tiny in the wide field of view of our scope but the data was nice enough to process.

This is an object we will definitely revisit once the second observatory with the the long focal length scope is up and running.

Here it is:

M 57 - The Ring Nebula

More images to come, thanks for looking.

IC 5070 - The Pelican Nebula +

I've been putting the observatory back through the paces and have been zooming around collecting a little data on objects that are in good positions of the sky. This is an object I have imaged before so I felt it was a good object to practice on.

I had a lot of problems with timing to work out which resulted in us having only two hours or luminance and red data, one hour of green, and forty minutes of blue. Even with that little data Jim felt it was still enough to produce a decent image and move on. I have to agree.

Here it is:

IC 5070 - The Pelican Nebula

While looking around the field of view of the image Jim saw what he believed to be a Wolf Rayet star but he was unable to confirm that. From the research he did in our astronomy programs it looks like it is a planetary nebula designated PLN 84+ 1.1 but we can't find any pictures of that to confirm.

I cropped out the part of the image above so you can get a better look at what we are talking about.

 

Possible PLN 84+ 1.1?

That's about it for now, thanks for stopping by and having a look.

Clear skies :-)

M 51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy

It's been a long time since I've posted an update but here we are with something new.

The observatory is alive and well and eager to work after a long hibernation.

I recently began collecting data on a few targets just to get everything going, work out any kinks, you know... remember the things you forgot, stuff like that.

On two consecutive nights in late June I captured data on M 51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. Obviously this is a galaxy that deserves a long focal length but it was data, good data none the less so why not process it, right?

Here is what my effort looked like:

M 51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy

The image above consists of an hour of sub exposures for each color channel (red, green, and blue) as well as Luminance.

Usually when you take these images you find other objects in the frame that you didn't explain. Most times it's an airplane or helicopter that has flown through the frame. Other times it could be a satellite or even an asteroid or comet.

In one of the blue frames for this object I caught what I believe was a shooting star, It streaks into the image brightens intensely (like shooting stars do) and then disappears. Have a look:

Screen shot of possible shooting star :-)

That's about it for this entry. Thanks for looking and have a Happy 4th of July.

M 33 - The Triangulum Galaxy

I can't believe it has been over a year since I processed an image. I actually forgot how to do a lot of things. :-/ Life has been pretty crazy lately but I managed to find the time to fire the observatory up and start capturing data again, mind you I still have an incredible backlog of data from 2013 and 2014 to process.

This data was meant as just a shake down to see if everything worked but the data looked so good we decided to go ahead and process it. As usual I owe Jim a huge thank you for sending me the calibrated masters. I know it only takes a few minutes but saving that time really makes the difference, thank you Jim.

I know I could have done a lot more with this if I dedicated more time but given that it's been a year and I'm exhausted I think this is pretty good. :-)

Here it is:

M 33 - TheTriangulum Galaxy

Thanks for looking and feel free to share your suggestions or criticisms.

Clear skies.