Rick's Blog

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.