I’ve been trying to fix my mount issues with mixed success. The huge errors in the RA axis have disappeared but have now been replaced with some smaller issues on the DEC axis. This is entirely my fault for being a bit too curious about the inner workings of my equatorial mount and tinkering with all the gears and bolts.

It doesn’t really matter really at this moment because the only (more or less) clear night we had this month was last sunday under a full moon. We had other brief moments of clarity this month but I used those to start my journey in the rabbit hole of exoplanet transit capturing – something I want to devote more time to in the future.

The main galaxy in this image is peculiar galaxy ARP214, located about 52 million light years away. Its weird shape is caused by gravitational interaction with the smaller galaxy on the left (NGC3729).

Barely visible, under ARP214, sits the galaxy group ARP322. These weird shaped dots are interacting galaxies located 370 million light years away. This is 8 hours of total integration time but as said before, the moonlight really created a layer of noise that was hard to get rid off.

Last year we had a horrible fall season but wonderful clear skies in January. The same thing happened this year. We had 3 very cold nights (-15°C) with crisp clear skies this week. I could easily recognize Ursa Major, Auriga, Orion, Draco and many other constellations with the naked eye. But cold temperatures can be tricky to work with and the mount I use for astrophotography is known for having troubles in cold temperatures, the grease that is used to lube the gears can stiffen up and cause issues. It only started to occur on the second night but at least I was able to image a full night without too much issues.

I’ve been waiting for this period of the year for a while now and have a nice list of targets ready that I want to shoot. The plan is simple: less is more. Less targets but more integration time.

First on the list is the Twin Quasar in Ursa Major. This unique object was discovered in 1979 and is the first discovered proof of gravitational lensing. What we see are basically two images of the same object, distorted by the gravity of a nearby object, in this case a galaxy (not visible in the image). Einstein predicted this space-time warping in the 30s but also claimed in his paper: “Of course, there is no hope of observing this phenomenon directly.”

But here we are.

Around 8 hours of integration time gives this image of galaxy NGC3079 and the Twin Quasar.

I made a bit of a mess during the last session. On sunday afternoon it looked like we would have clear skies around 10 PM, but the forecast kept pushing forward so I had to set up the scope and just hope for the best.

My plan was to image the Jellyfish nebula, a huge supernova remnant, but right when conditions really started to improve the target moved behind my house and I had to figure something else to image for the remainder of the night.

I had two options: switch to a broadband target in Ursa Major and image till morning or try to image something low on the southern horizon and hope for the best. The smart thing would have been to go to broadband, but that meant changing the filter and re-focus and it was already getting really late. So I opted for the last option. Something went wrong though and in the morning I noticed I only had 4 good 180 second subs on NGC2359 or Thor’s Helmet and about 60 failed ones. Here’s the result.

Anyway, lessons learned and we move on to new adventures. Unless some surprise clear night pops up before new year I don’t expect to image anymore in 2023. My new UV/IR cut filter arrived today and I hope to be shooting galaxies soon.

The first thing I do in the morning is check my phone to get the latest weather updates. December is usually a horrible month to image and this year we’ve had a lot of snow on top of everything. Occasionaly some of the weather apps seem to indicate a few hours of clear skies but usually this turns around quickly and we end up with clouds.

Today I noticed some discrepancies between various websites. Ventusky seemed to indicate I was one of the lucky few in Europe with clear skies for a few hours but clearoutside showed a more pessimistic forecast.

In the end I had about 2 hours of okayish conditions to work with. Setting up was difficult though. The melting snow has turned my garden into a muddy place which increases the risk of losing balance during imaging. There were also some cold wind gusts messing with my guiding.

Normally I would go for a galaxy during this moon cycle but the lack of time and suitable targets was a real issue. In the end I decided to image the Fish Head. This is a pretty star forming region and is actually the tip of a larger object, the Heart Nebula, over 6000 light years away.

I did a quick process in HOO palette and I’m happy with the result.

Imaging has been difficult lately. There are however brief spells where clouds seem to disappear and the cold, dry air results in amazing moments of clarity. So I end up just shooting through the clouds, dropping a lot of data in processing and try to work with the few gold nuggets that remain.

I don’t really mind, my hope is that conditions will improve in winter & spring for galaxy season, those are the targets I enjoy most.

I managed to shoot two more objects. The first is The Crab Nebula (also Taurus A or Messier 1). It’s one of the best known supernova remnants, the first object on the Messier list and easy to find and shoot. The story of this object is interesting because we know now that Chinese astronomers observed the supernova happening in the year 1054.

The second object is the brightest and closest nebula in the night sky, the Orion Nebula. While I’m very happy with the colors and the detail in this image, I still think this object is way more rewarding with visual astronomy. Through a telescope the Orion Nebula is one of the few objects where we can actually see color and it’s one of the most spectacular visual objects in the sky.

Lots of cloudy nights so lots of things to think about. I’ve added a few accessorries to the imaging arsenal, mainly an autofocuser and a new narrowband filter, the Antlia ALP-T. I finally also decided to sell my Dob and EQ platform and made a good deal including a Telrad and 5 eyepieces. The reason of selling the dob was mainly to focus on my astrophotography rig which I still can use for visual, as my 130 PDS is a very capable scope anyway. For planetary stuff I still have my planetary camera and barlow. This keeps my setup compact and leaves me only with gear I’m actively using. The 200p dob was sitting mostly in the garage gathering dust and the platform was at risk of becoming the new home of a mice family that keeps invading our home.

I was still a bit sad to see the dob go, mainly because of all the great memories of discovering the night sky with my dog on one side and a copy of Turn left at Orion on my lap. Good times.

I had 4 hours of clear skies this week and thanks to daylight savings I could image between 6 PM and 10 PM without too much issues. I really wanted to test the new filter. IC63 or The Ghost of Cassiopeia is not the best target for this narrowband emission filter, because it’s both a reflection and emission nebula, but I like how much detail I could get out of the Ghost.

This is a beautiful but tricky object. The main star, “Navi” or Gamma Cassiopeia is 65.000 times brighter than our sun. It”s the top central star of the famous “W” formation that we can see with the naked eye in the night sky.

The nearby ghostly looking dust and gas is irradiated by the star and turning red because of it, which is the emission part of the nebula. But some of the dust is reflecting the blue light of the star, making it also a reflection nebula.

I had only 1 hour of clear sky last night that quickly turned into fog. I still decided to test out some things and point the scope at the Pleiades, the most iconic star cluster in the fall sky. In the end I had to throw away most of the subs and try to work with 1 hour of questionable data.

There’s a lot of noise and some weird artifacts but it’s still cool to see the bright blue nebulosity appear around the main stars.

With Taurus up I’m hoping to image both the Crab Nebula and Jellyfish Nebula. While I wait for clear nights I’ll probably spend some time cleaning my mirror, figuring out cable management and continue to design the observatory plans.

Flashback to last year where I didn’t have a single clear night between the end of November and mid January. October has been like that, continuously cloudy and I’m worried about the rest of the fall season, considering this is one of the best periods for amateur astronomy.

Last night though we got some good conditions coming out of nowhere with clear skies from 11 PM till 4 AM.

I was not really sure what to do, I had just finished working on my mount trying to reduce backlash and I kind of hoped to test it during a night with full moon, not during perfect conditions. Additionally I had to work the next day so I couldn’t babysit the scope all night.

My first two subs were not good but luckily I discovered my balancing was off. After rebalancing I had around 20 excellent subs so I decided to go to sleep. This morning I found my scope covered in dew and frost but my asiair showed me around 115 subs so the plan worked. Unfortunately when checking the last 40 or so subs I found elongated stars. I’m not exactly sure what the root cause is, could be guiding but also balance or loss of polar alignment.

All things considered I’m very happy that I got some imaging time.

The object is NGC2403, a spiral galaxy in Camelopardalis, 8 million light-years away from us. Its structure and amount of star formation make it look at lot like M33 and if you would compare Hubble images it would be difficult to see the difference.

Not many clear nights lately. I’ve been mostly working on figuring out a future garden observatory project and listing some stuff I would like to add to my setup (better narrowband filter, autofocuser, mirror baffle, dew heater).

I’ve also started working on improving the backlash on my HEQ5 mount. Last night was a full moon so not worth really to try and image but I still wanted to see if my efforts had lead to better guiding. So here’s the core of the Heart Nebula under a full moon.

It’s still very hot and humid for the time of the year in what looks to be yet another Indian summer. The constellations at night tell a different story though. With Taurus and Auriga showing late at night and Orion peeping early in the morning we know that summer is coming to an end.

Fall is a wonderful time to image. In my opinion this is the time with the most diverse and dramatic objects in the night sky. I look forward to image some of them. I’ll keep looking out for ARP galaxies too.

My latest image falls in the category of faint galaxies.

This is the Perseus galaxy cluster. It’s one of the largest known structures in our universe, housing thousands of galaxies. I went a bit hardcore on the editing to show just that, minimizing the stars to show the galaxies faint light. The longer you look, the more galaxies appear.