M52

Busy Days and Dreary Nights

 in Blog  tagged astro-flash / backlit print / Bubble Nebula / M52 / Oregon Star Party / OSP / Sh2-170

The night sky has actually been completely free of clouds for several days.  Unfortunately, it has not been free of smoke.  Only a few of the brightest stars can be seen and the Moon looks decidedly yellow.  And the same weather pattern that is allowing this smoke to stick around is also keeping us very warm here.  Daytime temperatures have been well over 100 degrees F, and at night it doesn’t get cold enough for my camera to operate properly, so it’s a double whammy. I’m getting ready for the Oregon Star Party – and the eclipse!  My inventory has […]

A Sharp Picture of a Sharpless Object

 in Blog  tagged Bubble Nebula / M52 / Sh2-157 / Sharpless 157 / Stewart Sharpless

A while ago, I posted a monochrome image (H-alpha channel) of M16 and another bright, but unknown (to me) hydrogen region.  The second object did not appear in my planetarium software and very few images I could find on the internet included it, so I asked people for help in identifying it.  I eventually came up with an answer myself:  It was Sh2-54, AKA Sharpless 54.  More importantly, this led me to the online catalog of Sharpless objects, http://www.sharplesscatalog.com/. Stewart Sharpless was an American astronomer who worked on a number of important projects and with some well known astronomers, including Edwin […]