ASI1600

M78 and a piece of Barnard

 in Blog  tagged ASI1600 / Barnard's Loop / M78 / Messier 78

Messier 78 is another target that I’ve wanted to shoot for years, but is only visible in the Winter.  I’m currently collecting data on this target (very slowly) from the remote observatory in Australia, and I hadn’t planned to shoot it during this trip to California because it’s a rather small object for the wide-field telescope I brought here.  But I decided to try it anyway, hoping there would be some interesting stuff in the background.  Well, there sure is!  The red band on the left and upper left corner is a small portion of Barnard’s Loop, a huge semi-circle […]

A Glowing Heart

 in Blog  tagged amp glow / ASI1600 / Heart Nebula / lunar eclipse

The sky has been mostly clear the last couple of nights, but with the Moon nearly full it’s not possible to shoot anything in “normal” RGB, and no reason to go out to a darker location, since the Moon is producing far more light pollution than anything around here.  So I set up to do narrowband imaging from the patio behind our apartment.  The Heart Nebula is a great target, and fits beautifully in the field of view of the WO Star71 telescope and ASI1600 camera.  The above image is just the Hydrogen-alpha (H-a) band, as I haven’t yet captured […]

First Light in the Desert

 in Blog  tagged ASI1600 / Celestron AVX / desert / first light / Rosette Nebula

We had a beautiful day yesterday, with no clouds, and temperatures approaching 80 degrees.  The night before was also very good, and was my first real opportunity here to do some serious imaging.  So it was “first light” for desert imaging, but also for the new ASI1600 camera. Although I had some issues with both the camera and the mount (a Celestron AVX, which I rarely use, but was small enough to bring on this trip), the results were quite satisfying.  This is the Rosette Nebula, captured with narrowband filters H-a, O-III, and S-II.  This is a large target, so […]

The Constancy of Change

 in Blog  tagged Apollo 8 / ASI1600 / CCD / change / CMOS / Earthrise / Paramount MyT

Life changed for many of us a little over 50 years ago, when the crew of the Apollo 8 mission captured images of Earth rising over the Moon’s horizon.  It was not the first time that Earth had been photographed from far away, but it was the first time it was photographed from a “place” far away – something that gave it context.  Perhaps it was the contrast of Earth’s color and dynamic weather against the Moon’s barren gray surface, but whatever it was, it changed us.  We could recognize Earth as our home, and see that it was beautiful […]