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.

I’m on PTO so I have all the time in the world. I had 3 clear nights in a row and decided to image the Elephant Trunk Nebula and the Bubble Nebula. I’ve imaged both before and I really like to go back to those old images and compare.

Here is my first EAA image of IC1396 versus my most recent capture with a total integration time of 7.8 hours. On the EAA image the trunk is only visible as a dark feature.

Same with NGC 7635. Seeing that Bubble ‘pop’ on the screen for the first time was something special.

The EAA images were made with a planetary camera, focal reducer and a cheap UV/IR cut filter. The long exposure images were made with the same scope but with a cooled astro camera, a rather expensive duoband filter, an autofocuser, coma corrector etc. And while the EAA images were made sitting outside (sometimes in the cold), the long exposure images were made sitting inside while the scope and mount were doing everything on autorun mode.

Some people will say that makes astrophotography boring. But I still enjoy researching targets, reading about them and processing the final result. But they have a point. The excitement of EAA, live astronomy, starhopping and going really deep on objects (even if that results in blurry images) is a wonderful feeling. I didn’t ask anyone, but I’m sure lots of astrophotographers miss that sensation of sitting outside and discovering the universe with their own eyes, getting lost in dense milky way starfields. But as our busy lives take over, astrophotography is a very convenient way to stay ‘connected’.

I could go deeper from here on and invest in a better scope, more filters and maybe a monochrome camera but I don’t feel that urge. Instead I like to devote more time on spectroscopy, exoplanet transits and dimmer objects (which might require a larger scope unfortunately).

My plan for the rest of the summer is to focus on astrophotography during the clear nights and shoot some spectroscopy data anytime I can in between the clouds.

The nights are getting longer again. We now have nautical dark around 10 PM till 3.40 AM which means I can capture a lot of data in a clear night. I shot 3 objects recently. The Swan Nebula, NGC7822 and The Crescent Nebula. 

The Swan Nebula is a star forming region low in the southern sky and I was only able to get 1 hour of integration time on it, but it’s enough to make it pop. NGC7822 is a huge object and I tried to focus on the core of the region but had to deal with a lot of noise due to some high clouds. The Crescent is a familiar object, it’s easy to shoot and very bright but I decided to go at it again because I never shot it with my Antlia filter. 

I will probably go for a few more familiar objects in the next sessions before I go back to more challenging targets. 

In the meantime I’m also figuring out my observatory project and the possibility of adding a 200mm lens to my equipment to shoot those bigger fall nebula targets. We’ll see.

To make my journal a bit more accessible I’ve linked my image gallery directly with my instagram account. You don’t need an account to browse it, you can click on every image and it will load the description.

Looking for inspiration for my next target I was reading Alastair Reynolds collection of short stories Beyond the Aquila Rift. One of his greatest skills in writing in my opinion is his competence in describing the vastness of space and the recurring theme of being lost or making unexpected discoveries. 

It also made me realize I’ve never looked at the Aquila constellation before and the wonderful dark absorption nebulas that are hiding between the dense starfields. 

It took a while to figure out how to best process this image. It was clear the data was there but I had to play around a bit with the background to really bring out the sense of color and scale. 

The weather has turned to downright tropical now so I need to be very careful about unexpected rainfall when I leave my scope outside. Hoping that summer stabilizes and we get more clear nights.

Big news last week as mainstream media was reporting on an asteroid having a very close encounter with earth at a distance of 290k kilometers. To put this into perspective, the moon is about 385k kilometers away. 

The news that this asteroid was only discovered on the 16th of June makes it even more interesting as it shows how unprepared we would be for an extinction level event asteroid. 

Anyway, this close distance meant that it’s possible for us, amateurs, to track and image this object. This is usually very easy, we have a bunch of software at our disposal to steer our telescopes to the desired object and start imaging. Astronomy is basically point and click today. But not for recently discovered objects. This meant looking up the NASA coordinates and manually directing our GOTO systems to the asteroid. 

On Saturday evening I joined the amazing Dobsonian Power Youtube livestream to join the channel’s Explorer Quest, where amateur astronomers who are members of the community can join the stream and cast their telescope views. Our mission was to capture this asteroid and we can proudly say this mission was accomplished. Cheers to Tiago Ferreira and his amazing Youtube channel!

Here is asteroid 2024MK flying past us at a close distance with the Pegasus constellation in the background.

I had an unexpected streak of clear nights and took full advantage to image both the Wizard and Trifid Nebula. I looked at the Wizard last year too but I was in a hurry and didn’t give it the appropriate time. This year, with 4 hours of total integration time and a better filter and proper guiding I managed to get a very decent result. It’s also enough data to experiment with the colors without making it too ridiculous. 

The Trifid is a different story. This object is barely rising over 15 degrees altitude from my location which means I only have a short time window to shoot it, through a lot of light pollution. I tried it last year and was not happy with the result. I’m very satisfied with this year’s result and look forward to trying the Helix Nebula in late August.

The days are hot, the nights are short and rainy, in other words: summer is here.

I don’t have particular plans at the moment. I’m still doing spectroscopy on the semi-cloudy nights with mixed results and I hope to maybe image the Trifid Nebula if the opportunity is there. No target list, no time pressure, just enjoying the nice weather.

I do hope the Helix Nebula will work this year as last two years the weather didn’t allow any imaging during the short time it’s visible. Fingers crossed.

Here is my first summer object, the Cygnus Wall, about 3 hours with the Antlia ALP-T processed in HOO.