I’ve been considering a widefield scope for a long while and looked at countless reviews from different manufacturers. In the end I decided to just get the new Askar SQA55 without even reading a single review based on its technical parameters.

It arrived yesterday and somewhat surprisingly came with clear skies. Here’s my first light with it, about 6.5 hours on the Andromeda Galaxy.

The difference with setting up a newtonian is unsettling at first. There’s no backspace to consider, no collimation and balancing is not really a thing with a small scope like this. And while the result is a nice crisp image, I do think it can’t replace the deep field of a newt.

But I did manage to find a special star in my image. Here is M31-V0619, the original Cepheid Variable that Hubble discovered and measured so he could conclude M31 being a galaxy on its own and not some nebula in our own Milky Way.

I’ve been trying to image the Helix Nebula for 2 years. This is probably the most challenging object for me. It’s extremely low and the window of opportunity is very short. The last two years I usually had bad skies or other obligations so I was really hoping to get a shot this year and last night I got lucky.

Here’s about 2 hours of noisy data, shot at 17 degrees altitude right above some houses, processed as best as I could on this wonderful planetary nebula. We’re lucky this thing is very bright which means little integration time is needed.

While I was waiting for the Helix to be high enough to start imaging I captured two hours on the Eagle Nebula which was suprisingly good data as well.

This has been an amazing summer and I’m already looking forward to autumn.

M27 or the dumbbell nebula takes many of us back to our first time using a telescope. This dying star shedding off its layers is one of the brightest deep space objects one can observe and one of the easier targets to spot during the summer months. 

I have fond memories of the hot summer nights spent with my 8 inch telescope searching for this object and getting lost in the nearby constellations Sagitta and Vulpecula. This is such a rich part of the sky where it’s easy to get lost and stumble on other objects like open clusters or colorful stars. 

This summer I used M27 to check my guiding, focus and test some quick things before I move on to the main target. This image is the result of all these brief test sessions put together. 

I also added another hour of data shot with my IR 850 filter. This filter blocks ultraviolet and visible light but lets through the infrared. It’s mostly suited for planetary work but also works on stars. 

The bright star in the second image with the red arrow is the so called “Goldilocks Variable”. This is a Mira type variable that outshines the nearby stars at its peak but is not visible in duoband or even with a normal broadband filter in its normal state. Next (observable) peak is expected in July 2026. Last observable peak was in July 2019 – if you’ve shot the dumbbell in that time it will be visible, otherwise not. With the IR filter these stars pop instantly. 

Mira stars are pulsating variables in the red giant phase, like our sun in the future. What is cool is that theoretically we could have a new planetary nebula at some point inside M27, that is if it’s still around then.

After my little journey around brown dwarfs I was able to capture a T-Tauri star last week. These stars are in the pre-main-sequence, as opposed to brown dwarfs who will never reach this phase.

This is V1331 Cygni, a “T Tauri” star in Cygnus, in the middle of dark nebula LDN981.

What makes this star special is the little nebulous ring surrounding it. This is believed to be a circumstellar accretion disk. Usually these young stars are hidden in a nebula but in this case we can clearly see the star thanks to a jet blowing away the dust that would otherwise block our view.

Circumstellar accretion disks are where planets and asteroids are born so we’re potentially witnessing the early days of a solar system.