Telescope: GSO 8” f/12 Classical Cassegrain @ f/12, Orion Atlas EQ-G

Camera: Canon EOS Ra, Baader Mk III MPCC

Filter: 2” GSO IR Blocking Filter

Guide scope: Astro-Tech 60mm, Starlight Xpress Super Star, PHD2

Exposure: 17x180sec, ISO 800, saved as RAW

Darks: Internal (Long Exposure Noise Reduction On)

Flats: 32×1/20sec, Tee shirt flats taken at dusk

Average Light Pollution: Red zone, Bortle 8, fair transparency

Lensed Sky Quality Meter: 18.4 mag/arc-sec^2

Stacking: Mean with a 1-sigma clip (sky); maximum (JWST).

White Balance: Nebulosity Automatic

Software: Backyard EOS, Deep Sky Stacker, Nebulosity, Photoshop

The dashed line crossing to the left of center in this field is the James Webb Space Telescope as it was approximately 538,000 miles out crossing Monoceros on its way to a halo orbit around the Earth’s L2 Lagrange point. I located the field using an ephemeris generated by the JPL Horizons Web App. Shining at about 15^th magnitude I initially thought that I had missed the telescope as I was getting different positions from different sources. Just like my annual pilgrimage to Pluto, the telescope wasn’t the star that I thought it was in the source images. When I was about to give up, thinking that it wasn’t in the field, I blinked the first and last pictures in the sequence. After several minutes of searching I finally spotted the telescope moving on the left side of the source field. I then re-processed the source images using a normal mean with a sigma clip to stack the background sky, and a maximum combine to stack the images of the telescope. There were combined into a single image in Photoshop and cropped to center the telescope as best I could. The track shows as a series of short dashes, each dash showing the apparent motion of the telescope during the 3-minute exposure. The gaps in the track are from the 3-minute darks taken between each frame and the time needed to transfer the image to my computer. The motion itself is mostly parallax from the rotation of the Earth and not the telescope itself.

When the telescope arrives on-station it is expected to fade to about magnitude 17 where it should be within easy reach of cameras and small telescopes. The telescope will also be located near the Earth’s shadow, so it should remain well placed in the evening sky throughout most of the night. Neat stuff!

Telescope: LXD75 SC8 @ f/10, Twilight I mount

Camera: Stock Canon 600D, remote switch

Filter: GSO IR Blocking Filter

Exposure: 40×1/3000sec, ISO 400, saved as RAW

White Balance: Nebulosity Automatic

Software: Autostakkert, Nebulosity, Photoshop

I wanted to try and catch Venus before we lost it to the sun’s glare and with the weather forecast looking bleak for the next week I decided to take a peek with my SC8 while I had it out from earlier today observing the moon in daylight. Venus was easy to locate by setting my telescope’s altitude using an inclinometer and sweeping east of the sun. In my finder Venus quickly appeared as a tiny crescent, and through the scope it looked beautiful, being less than 6% illuminated and only about 27 million miles away and about to pass between the Earth and the sun. I replaced my star diagonal with my stock 600D, centered and focused Venus using live view, and took a several series of images, pausing to reset the field between sets. The source images were centered and cropped in Photoshop, stacked in Autostakkert, binned 2×2 in Nebulosity, and finished back in Photoshop.

Venus in currently very low in the southwest at dusk.

Telescope: Astro-Tech RC8 @ f/8, Orion Atlas EQ-G

Camera: Canon EOS Ra, Baader Mk III MPCC

Filter: Orion Imaging Skyglow Filter

Exposure: 64×1/800 sec, ISO 3200, saved as RAW

Seeing: Fair, 3/5

White Balance: Nebulosity Automatic

Software: Backyard EOS, Registax, Nebulosity, Photoshop

This was a quick peek at the moon taken right before covering my gear after a long night of imaging. The setting sun is setting over Sinus Iridum near the moon’s northern limb and you can glimpse Mare Orientale just peeking over the southwestern limb. Mare Orientale is one of my favorite lunar features even though it is often hidden just out of view on the moon’s backside, though you can often see the impact basin’s ring mountains in profile against the black sky. This is also the location of the famous “bull’s eye” picture taken by Lunar Orbiter 4 in 1967.

Telescope: Astro-Tech 8” f/8 Ritchey-Chretien, Orion Atlas EQ-G

Camera: Canon EOS Ra, Baader Mk III MPCC

Filter: Orion Imaging Skyglow Filter

Guide scope: Astro-Tech 60mm, Starlight Xpress Super Star, PHD2

Exposure: 36x120sec, ISO 800, saved as RAW

Darks: Internal (Long Exposure Noise Reduction On)

Flats: Synthetic

Average Light Pollution: Red zone, Bortle 8, poor transparency, moonlight, haze

Lensed Sky Quality Meter: 18.4

Stacking: Average

White Balance: Nebulosity Automatic

Software: Backyard EOS, Nebulosity, Photoshop

Comet C/2021 A Leonard is a faint comet currently crossing Coma Berenices in the morning sky. When this image was taken the comet was glowing with a total integrated magnitude of 7.1 and was 53.8 million miles away above the Earth’s northern hemisphere. The trailing stars show the apparent motion of the comet over the period of 140 minutes.

Comet Leonard is currently well placed high in the northeast at dawn.

Telescope: Astro-Tech 8” f/8 Ritchey-Chretien, Orion Atlas EQ-G

Camera: Canon EOS Ra, Baader Mk III MPCC

Filter: Orion Imaging Skyglow Filter

Guide scope: Astro-Tech 60mm, Starlight Xpress Super Star, PHD2

Exposure: 10x120sec, ISO 800, saved as RAW

Darks: Internal (Long Exposure Noise Reduction On)

Flats: 32×1/20ec, Tee shirt flats taken at dusk

Average Light Pollution: Red zone, Bortle 8, fair transparency, moonlight

Lensed Sky Quality Meter: 18.2

Stacking: Mean with a 1-sigma clip.

White Balance: Nebulosity Automatic

Software: Backyard EOS, Deep Sky Stacker, Nebulosity, Photoshop

Comet C/2021 A Leonard is a faint comet currently crossing Canes Venatici in the morning sky. When this image was taken the comet was glowing with a total integrated magnitude of 8.2 and was 73.8 million miles away above the Earth’s northern hemisphere. The trailing stars show the apparent motion of the comet over the period of 40 minutes.

Comet Leonard is currently well placed high in the northeast at dawn.

Telescope: ES Comet Hunter MN6 at f/4.8, Orion Atlas EQ-G

Camera: Baader modified Nikon 610

Filter: 2” Orion Imaging Skyglow Filter

Guide scope: Williams Optics 50mm, ASI290MM mini, PHD

Exposure: 34x60sec, ISO 400, saved as RAW

Darks: Internal (Long Exposure Noise Reduction On)

Flats: 32×1/250sec, tee shirt flats taken at dusk

Average Light Pollution: Red zone, Bortle 8, good transparency

Lensed Sky Quality Meter: 18.7

Stacking: Mean with a 1-sigma clip.

White Balance: Nebulosity Automatic

Software: Backyard Nikon, Nebulosity, Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop

This image shows the motion of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko between 4:15am and 5:15am EST on the morning of 11/6/2021 as is swept past upsilon Gemini to the upper right in this field. The comet was glowing at about magnitude 9.9 at a distance of 39 million miles. Comet 67p is the resting site of the ESA Rosetta probe and Philae lander.

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is currently crossing Gemini in the morning sky.

Telescope: LXD75 SC8 @ f/6.3, LX65 mount

Camera: Canon 600Da

Filter: GSO IR Blocking Filter

Exposure: 16×1/500 sec, ISO 1600, saved as RAW

Seeing: Fair, 3/5

Software: Backyard EOS, Autostakkert, Registax, Nebulosity, Photoshop

This was a quick peek at the moon taken as part of an imaging test using my LX65. This particular test was to determine whether I could frame the entire moon in a single field using a 0.63x focal reducer/field flattener. The source images were taken manually using a simple remote switch and the mirror lock-up function to work around vibrations from the DSLR’s mirror retracting. The sky was thick with haze which gave the moon a bit of an odd color, so I separated the image into its red, green, and blue panes and selected the blue data set for the final monochrome image.

Telescope: Astro-Tech 8” f/8 Ritchey-Chretien, Orion Atlas EQ-G

Camera: Canon EOS Ra, Baader Mk III MPCC

Filter: Orion Imaging Skyglow Filter

Guide scope: Astro-Tech 60mm, Starlight Xpress Super Star, PHD2

Exposure: 8x120sec & 9x120sec, ISO 800, saved as RAW

Darks: Internal (Long Exposure Noise Reduction On)

Flats: 32×1/10sec, sky flat taken at dusk

Average Light Pollution: Red zone, Bortle 8, fair transparency, low altitude

Lensed Sky Quality Meter: 18.3 mag/arc-sec^2

Stacking: Mean with a 1-sigma clip.

White Balance: Nebulosity Automatic

Software: Backyard EOS, Deep Sky Stacker, Nebulosity, Photoshop

This is my annual pilgrimage to the frozen outlands beyond the orbit of Neptune and my homage to Clyde Tombaugh who discovered Pluto on photographic plates taken at the Lowell Observatory in 1930. These two images were taken almost exactly 24 hours apart showing Pluto’s apparent motion against the background stars (marked by red ^ symbols). I say ‘apparent’ as this motion has more to do with the Earth than Pluto. The true motion of the outer planets is from west to east, but in these images Pluto appears to move from east to west (retrograde). This results from our changing perspective as the Earth sweeps past Pluto in its orbit around the sun. Pluto will remain in retrograde motion until October 6th.

When these images were taken (September ^1st and 2nd at between 9:30 and 10:00pm EDT) Pluto was 3.13 billion miles away shining at Mv 14.4. The sun’s illumination took a little over 4-1/2 hours to reach Pluto and the feeble reflected sunlight took another 4-1/2 hours to make the journey back to the Earth.

Telescope: Celestron C11 @ f/25, Orion Atlas EQ-G

Camera: ZWO ASI462MC, 2.5x Powermate

Filter: Meade IR cut filter

Seeing: fair, 3/5 with brief periods of 4/5

Exposure 4x(3min x 15ms), gain 275, saved as SER

White Balance: Nebulosity Automatic

Software: SharpCap Pro, AutoStakkert, Registax, WinJUPOS, Nebulosity, Photoshop

We finally had a brief spell of reasonably good seeing, probably the best that we’re going to get this year, so I think that this is getting close to as good as I’m going to get with the C11 and I’m pretty happy with it. I have one more thing that I want to try to see if I can pull out a little more detail, but I’m also anxious to try my 12” f/8 Meade ACF and at least a brief test with my trusty C9.25. With the moon waning towards last quarter I’ll be switching back over to deepsky imaging for a couple of weeks, so I’ll have a little time to think about it.

So much to try, so few clear nights!

Telescope: Celestron C11 @ f/25, Orion Atlas EQ-G

Camera: ZWO ASI462MC, 2.5x Powermate

Filter: Meade IR cut filter

Seeing: poor, 2/5

Exposure 5x(3min x 15ms), gain 275, saved as SER

White Balance: Nebulosity Automatic

Software: SharpCap Pro, AutoStakkert, Registax, WinJUPOS, Nebulosity, Photoshop

On this sequence I snuck the gain up a tad and the exposure down a tad and my system ran fairly smoothly with only few dropped frames. The sky conditions were very poor with the seeing a solid 2/5 with bright moonlit haze, but there was a fairly even stretch of thin haze between clouds large enough to squeeze in this sequence. Overall not a bad result.