Rick's Blog

M51- The Whirlpool galaxy I had a picture of this that I posted three years ago. But I think this one is better in that it has a little more detail than the other one had. Plus this time of the year there just is not much up yet to photograph. But this is one of my favorite targets and I was not able to start filming until 10:30 when it got high enough in the sky.  

Horsehead and Flame nebulas This is the picture I have always wanted to get. But until now I just was not able to get it right. This picture has 6 hours of regular exposure time and 3 hours of Ha exposure time. Total 9 hours of exposure. Ha is the hydrogen wavelength of light. And to capture it you need to use a special filter on the camera called a Ha filter. Then the two sets of photos which was a total of 154 pictures were combined to get this finished picture.  

The International Space Station This picture was taken this morning at 5:42 a.m. If you compare this picture with the next one taken on Nov. 1, you can see the difference of how the angle of the sun makes it look. This picture was taken with the iss coming from the west to the southeast. The picture from Nov. 1 was coming from the northwest to the northeast.  

The International Space Station    I have been working on getting a good picture of this for two months. And this is the best I've got so far. This picture was taken this morning at 7:25 just before the sun was above the horizon but the sky was getting pretty bright. That is why some of it is in the shadows. Maybe next time it will be a better pass over. It is very hard to get a good picture of it because it is moving at 17,500 miles an hour and the telescope must be guided by hand. At the time of this picture the (iss) was 250 miles high and 16 miles north of me.  

The Eagle Nebula The nights around here have been terrible for months. But the nights have finally cleared and I was able to get back at it. This picture is the result of 60 four minute pictures for a total of 4 hours of exposure time. The reason there is so many stars is because M16 is right in the Milky Way.  

The Orion Nebula I took a picture of this about 2 years ago with a film camera and it is still on the blog. But this is a new picture I took with my astrophotography camera on 3-10-25.  

Horsehead nebula.    I took a set of photos of just the horsehead as seen here. The next photo is of the horsehead and flame nebula complex.  

The Flame and Horsehead nebulas  It only took me two years before I got good enough to get a good picture of this. The problem is the horsehead nebula is very dim and the bright star above the flame nebula looks like a head light. So it took me a while to figure out the right camera settings so that I could do the processing needed to bring out the horsehead nebula without blowing out the left side of the picture because of that d... star.

The Rosette nebula For the past 2 months the weather has been terrible. It has finally cleared up and for the last 2 nights I took 62 four minute pictures of the Rosette nebula. This picture here is what I saw on the computer screen. The next two pictures came from this one.  

The Rosette nebula #1  

The Rosette nebula #2  

Jupiter Jupiter with it's giant red spot and the shadow of it's moon Io being cast on Jupiter's cloud tops. A few nights ago the sky was crystal clear and no jet stream with very low humidity. It does not get any better than this in this part of the country.  

Jupiter and it's giant red spot  This is my most bestes (yes bestes) picture of jupiter yet. It will be nice and high in the sky through December so I will keep trying.

M31 the Andromeda galaxy M31 is our neighbor galaxy. It is only 2.5 million light years away. This picture is the result of  112 three minute pictures for a total exposure time of 5.6 hours. The pictures were aligned and stacked and then processed to create this final image. In the lower left of the picture is another galaxy that is much farther away.

comet Tsuchinsfan This picture was taken with a cell phone on Oct. 14, 2024 from my backyard. Some of the foreground is really bright because of a almost full moon. A little touch up was done with photo app Pixinsight.  

 Since my last post the weather has been terrible and I have not been able to get on my blog site to post. At first I thought it was something I was doing wrong. But we all know that could not be. So then I thought maybe it is my tech support. Maybe I am not paying them enough. Come to think of it, I am not paying them anything. HAY, maybe that is the problem! Well since I am here now, obviously I have solved the problem. It might have been me. So here are 3 new pictures.

I have been experimenting with a new camera control app which has a "seeing monitor" that lets me set a level at which I want all of my video frames to be or better. The ones that do not meet that level are automatically dropped. This picture is the result of the best 500 frames of  2,000 frames that were aligned and stacked. When compared to the other pictures of the moon I have taken this picture clearly has better contrast and definition.

This star cluster is 25,000 light years away and consists of hundreds of thousands of stars.  

M27 The Dumbbell nebula It is 1,360 light years away. This nebula is also one that formed when it's star exploded. At the center you can see the star's core, which is all that remains of the star. It is the light and radiation from the core that makes the nebula glow.

The night sky has been terrible for some time here and I finally finished my latest project. This picture is the result of 130 pictures and 6 hours of total exposure time. It is the remains of a star that exploded a long time ago. The ring is all that is left of the star except the tiny dot in the center of the ring. It is what is left of the stars' core. To give you an idea of how big this is and just how far away it is - a light year is 6 trillion miles. M57 is 2,000 light years away and 1 light year wide. It takes a mid size telescope [ which mine is} just to be able to see it and get a decent picture.