Mike's Astro Photos

Here’s a quick snap of Arcturus. This is a single 30 second exposure using the new William Optics telescope. I’m still waiting on some mounting brackets before I will be 100% with the new scope, so the content production is a little slow right now.

arcturus

Here’s a photo of the Waxing Crescent Moon on March 20th, 2010.

Waxing Crescent Moon - March 20th, 2010

Here’s just the moon at full size cropped from the big image.

Waxing Crescent Moon - Full size

I took this picture while testing out the focus and trying to align the scope. When I reviewed it the next day I spotted what looks like a satellite streak in the upper left corner.

Star & Satellite

Here’s a picture of NGC 2244 I took using the new telescope. I’m really still figuring things out with this new scope, trying to get it setup, get polar alignment right, get focusing right — basically re-learn everything I’ve learned in the last year with the other scope. I was able to capture this photo on the third night of using the new scope.

Rosette Nebula - March 7th, 2010

Photo Details
Optics: Willamoptics FLT 98
Camera: Canon 20da
Exposure: Multiple 18×3 minute exposures, flats, darks
Software Processing: Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop Elements

Here is a picture of Messier Object 63 a spectacular spiral galaxy nicknamed the Sun Flower Galaxy.

M63 - February 20th, 2010

I recently bought a new telescope and I used it for the first time Saturday March 6th. I was really having a tough time with it the whole night. Between setup, polar alignment, balancing, tracking and then doing it all over again a few times, I didn’t get much time to do photography. I was really only taking test shots most of the evening and after several hours of frustration and not expecting to have taken any good photos, I chalked the perfectly dark no moon clear night up to a leaning experience. I was eager to review the test shots just to see how the new scope performed. During the session, I took 3 shots of the Flame Nebula to test focusing. While reviewing the photos at the end of the evening, I found this meteor looking streak right through it.

Flame Nebula & Telescopic Meteor

Here’s a zoom-crop of just the meteor part:

Meteor

Here’s an inverted image of the meteor. The variation in light intensity and pixel width (a sign of a meteor) is clear in the inverted picture:

Inverted Image of Meteor

I haven’t gotten confirmation on what this is yet, but I’ve posted the picture to the meteor observing community to get some opinions. If it was in fact a meteor, it would have been a very teeny tiny one, probably the size of a grain of sand. This meteor would not have been visible to the human eye or normal camera lens.

Here’s a picture of M3 a magnificent globular star cluster.