M13


Eclipse Report, Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a0nZAFfcEI&feature=youtu.be The above video is one of three that I captured during the eclipse.  This one uses a “white light” solar filter and is fairly wide angle, as it was intended to show the extended corona (and some nearby stars) during totality (more on that later).  The second was shot with my H-alpha solar telescope and is much more “close up”.  That one needs a lot of processing, since each frame of the movie requires processing hundreds of frames to produce a good image.  The third one is essentially useless.  In the not to distant future I hope to add […]


To Capture a Globular Cluster

I’ve tried many times to get a good photo of M13, the Hercules Cluster, and this is the best one yet, although it’s done with a telescope that is a bit low in magnification for this object.  M13 is a “globular cluster”, a group of stars that are gravitationally bound to each other.  In this case, there are about 300,000 stars in the cluster, so the goal in photographing it is to be able to distinguish one star from another as much as possible (obviously, we can’t come close to seeing all 300,000), which means getting excellent sharpness. Theoretically, a […]


Images from the Oregon Star Party

Since returning from OSP I’ve been busy catching up on a backlog of orders, on top of the usual chaos here at Wa-chur-ed Observatory.  But I took a break from that to do a quick processing of a couple of images I captured at OSP.  These were both done with my “work horse” system; the AT111EDT refractor and QSI683wsg.  First is the Iris Nebula: I’ve captured the Iris several times before, as it is one of my favorite targets, but have never been really happy with the images.  This is definitely the best one so far, showing a lot more […]