Since about 30 years ago, when an astronomy club colleague showed me M104 the sombrero galaxy in a 20×60 binocular it was one of my favourite deep sky objects.
A night after the great Aurora Display of 2024 I joined a friend who was imaging the Leo triplet, and had a go at M104 using the Starfire 127mm on the G-11 mount. We had a fun evening, saw some faint meteors, watched the milky way slowly rising.
The giant sunspot had been producing strong x-ray flares and produced a number of coronal mass ejections, so I had decided to bring the refractor out and take a whole disc picture of the sun using the Nikon D750 and a 2x times converter.
Sunspot AR3664 Astrophysics 127mm f/8, 2x converter, Nikon D750a
After experiencing the 2001 and 2003 (more) aurora displays, I was always on alert when larger CMEs (Coronal masse ejections) were heading towards earth, but in the last 21 years I was not able to see another Aurora display at home. So I got pretty excited when huge sunspot AR 3664 sent some CMEs toward earth. When checking the aurora forecast in the afternoon, mid-latitude Auroras were deemed extremely likely, so I packed up some cameras and headed to a place with a good view towards the north.
Read More
M101 is a slightly disturbed spiral galaxy we see face on, it is located in the constellation Ursa Major, the big bear. This is the first image I have taken since I updated the G-11 mount with the rectascension extension, which also allows separating the RA and DEC units for portability. I also switched out the original tripod for a Meade Field tripod, which is lighter and packs smaller.
Read More
The partial solar eclipse on October 25th happened conveniently during lunch break, and the skies were perfectly clear. I opted for the big refractor (Astro-Physics 127mm f/8) combined with a 2x Nikon teleconverter in the hope to capture some detail in the form of sunspots on the solar disc.
I setup the camera to record a set of timelapse images, taking a picture every 20s. After I while I also setup the 60mm refractor to be able to observe the eclipse visually.
Shortly after maximum eclipse I noticed an airplane with contrail heading to the area of the sky where the sun was located. From past experience I thought that it will miss the sun (the apparent diameter of the sund and moon in the sky is only about half a thumb’s width at arm-length), but switched the camera to video and started recording.
Read MoreI chose the Rosette nebula again as my target of choice when I wanted to test if I can improve on the image quality when using the 0,7x reducer.
The Rosette nebula is a large and relatively bright emission nebula in the constellation Monoceros. Various parts of the nebula have separate NGC numbers and the embedded star cluster itself is NGC2244
This wider view was taken with the Takahashi FS-60CB and shows the surrounding area of the sky.
Later I discovered that the reducer only provides a 10% reduction in focal length, while introducing quite a bit of vignetting.
I had to wait quite a bit for the clouds to reveal this view of Vorarlberg’s highest peak, the Piz Buin (3312m). The image was taken at an elevation of 2650m in the Silvretta mountain range in Vorarlberg, Austria.
Orion is not only home to the famous Orion and Horsehead nebula but it is also filled with lots of dust and faintly glowing hydrogen. The bright newborn stars of the area illuminate the interstellar gas and dust, creating a smoky, glowing background.
