The Sunflower Galaxy
Probably my favourite galaxy. Distance to earth is 27 million light years and shape and bright yellow core explain where it gets its name from.
Messier 81/82
We are very lucky to be able to witness what is happening here. Bode’s Galaxy on the left is gravitationally affecting the Cigar Galaxy on the right, causing starbust.
Distance to earth: 11.5 million light years.
Messier 106
This was a tricky capture. Over 4 hours of data but some issues in post processing that had to be fixed.
Messier 106 steals the show on this picture but it’s not the only visible galaxy. On the lower right you can see NGC 4217 and other smaller galaxies scattered around.
Interacting galaxies
There is no better way to show the colossal scale of the universe than imaging interacting galaxies. These enormous galaxies are light years separated but still gravitationally impact each other in different ways.
The most impressive one is the Whirlpool Galaxy where we can see in detail how M51 and NGC 5195 are in full collision.
The Whale galaxy & NGC 4656
The Leo Triplet
The Whirlpool Galaxy
Venus
Jupiter & Venus are in conjunction now, next time this happens will be in 2032. Imaging our sister planet is very hard but it’s a good excuse for me to take out the 8 inch dob and go old-school planetary mode.
Messier 3
This globular cluster is traveling above our galactic plane, some 33.000 light years away from earth.
It is estimated to have around half a million stars in it.
New camera
After months of research I decided to go for the ZWO 533 MCP as my final camera for EAA. It took me a while to get everything running and I struggled for two nights with:
- Figuring out the correct backspacing for focus
- Balancing the whole setup correctly
- Cable management
- Doing all that stuff in the cold instead of setting up things earlier like any normal astronomer would do.
I will not share a picture of the final setup because some of it is a bit embarrasing, such as the duct tape I used to stick the ASIAIR to the tripod;
The results for EAA area really good, considering my balancing, polar alignment, leveling and camera settings were all -to say the least- a bit experimental.
I don’t have a coma corrector but I still might try to take some longer exposures in the future.
2022 in review
A night to remember
The long wait was rewarded yesterday with a clear night, stable amtmosphere and not a drop of dew.
Comet C/2022 E3 ZTF is coming closer now and I hope to track it for a longer time on my next session.
A new year
We still didn’t get a clear night since that last great session at the end of November. It seems Europe is in a constant state of cloudiness. I still decided to set up the EAA rig yesterday, despite a full moon, medium to high clouds and horrible seeing.
Galaxy season is around the corner and I spent most of the night looking at the faint smudges around Ursa Major, Coma Berenices, Leo and deep in the night even Virgo. You could probably spend a few lifetimes only observing all the galaxies in just that part of the sky.
Livestacking in such conditions is not really worth it but I still had a go and included a first look at M51.
