2019 Summer Milky Way

Posted on 16/06/2019 by philipp

I used the new moon weekend before the nights become too short later in June to shoot some images of the summer Milky Way.

M8 the Lagoon nebula and M20, the Trifid nebula, 218x30s, Takahashi FS-60CB, Nikon Z6, ISO 1600

Galaxies with 60mm

Posted on 25/05/2019 by philipp

The constellation Virgo is home to the Virgo galaxy cluster, the largest in our vicinity (if you count millions of lightyears as vicinity). The image above are individual crops from an image taken with a 60mm refractor telescope.

M81 & M82 with 60mm aperture

Posted on 16/05/2019 by philipp

Galaxies M81 & M82 in Ursa Major, also in the Picture are NGC 3088, 2976, 3027 and various PGC galaxies. Takahashi FS-60CB, Nikon D750, Vixen Polarie, 105x30s (52m 30s), ISO 1600.

The Moon 2019-05-10

Posted on 13/05/2019 by philipp

I used the 127mm f/8 refractor together with a Nikon TC20EIII teleconverter on the Nikon D750, resulting in a focal length of about 2m. The picture is a combination of 24 exposures of 1/20s. First I aligned the pictures using PIPP to be able to stack them in AutoStakkert 3. Sharpening was done in Registax 6. In Photoshop I followed Dylan O’Donnell’s process for HDR moon images by combining the stack with a single 20s exposure using a layer mask in Photoshop, some final touches were added in Lightroom.

Sunspot Active Region AR2736

Posted on 24/03/2019 by philipp

Sunspot AR2736 – Astro-Physics 127mm f/8, Televue 3x Barlow, QHY5L-IIc

After a few very quiet months the sunspot AR2736 grew to a considerable size and shows quite a bit of detail in this close-up image. The image was taken on 22.03.2019.

Comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto

Posted on 15/02/2019 by philipp

Lunar Portrait and closeups

Posted on 14/02/2019 by philipp

The alpine valley with the rille along it’s length.

Yesterday I took out the 200mm reflector in a very cold wind to take some close-up images of the moon. I am quite happy to have captured the rille in the alpine valley quite distinctly.

Comet C/2018 Y1 Iwamoto

Posted on 14/02/2019 by philipp

The Horsehead nebula (again)

Posted on 16/01/2019 by philipp

B33, The Horsehead Nebula, 50x120s – 1h40m, ISO1600, Nikon D7000a, 80mm f/7 ED-Refractor, 0,78x Reducer, Baader 2″ H-alpha Filter 35nm

After a long spell of clouds, snow and rain, clear skies have returned. Apart from the streak artefacts in the background I like this image a lot, this is my first properly focused image with the Baader h-alpha filter.

Moon – Jupiter conjunction 03.01.2019

Posted on 04/01/2019 by philipp

When my wife noticed the beautiful thin crescent moon in a gap in the clouds I rushed to the deck on our roof, to take a picture of the conjunction of the Moon and Jupiter. At first I went bare-footed, but after a few seconds I couldn’t stand the snow under my bare soles, and put on some slippers. But I was still only wearing my sleeping attire, boxer shorts and a worn-out T-shirt. Temperature was -5°C.