Ad Astra Observatory

Hi,

I think that we can all agree that the “Deep Sky Astrophotography” page on
the website was getting pretty ponderous — even with a fast ‘net

connection, it was taking me almost a minute to load it up. So, while
waiting for the telescope to finish its photo run on Saturday night, I
decided to rewrite the webpage. I split out each object onto its own
webpage, so that the “historical” versions of each image are still up
there, but don’t have to be loaded from the main page unless you want them.
In theory, this could open up the possibility of capturing more information
about each object in the future, too — celestial coordinates, size, object

type, etc. That’s for another day.

Anyway, I then changed the “main” page to have thumbnails of each object,
each thumbnail is a link to that object’s page. This gives a more “at a
glance” function to the page. Enough talk. A picture is worth 1000 words,

so here’s the link: http://www.jimbo.net/astro/category/long-exposure-photography/deep-sky/

I also went through my backlog of unprocessed photos and got most of them
up, so there’s a bunch of “new” images that were shot months ago. In
addition, I finally made it out to the observatory to take advantage of the
last few days of “the astrophotography portion of the month”, the 2 weeks

from 3 days after full to 3 days after new. More on that in a second. I
stayed up *way* too late on both Friday and Saturday nights (which were the
night of the new moon and the night of the 1-day moon, repsectively), and
was able to really get some good time in on the telescope. I chased some of
the spring galaxies as they tried to set in the west, and by the time I’d
finished, the summer constellations were nice and high in the sky, so I
spent some time digging around in there, too. Between backlog and new
stuff, there’s a lot to show off:

New galaxy photos, including 3 brand-new, never-before-seen on jimbo.net!
http://www.jimbo.net/astro/m101 this galaxy is just
really really dim (shot in may)
http://www.jimbo.net/astro/m64 1st image (shot in May)
http://www.jimbo.net/astro/m106 note all the “little
friends” in the latest image (from this weekend)
http://www.jimbo.net/astro/ngc4725 1st image (note all

the “little friends”) (from this weekend)
http://www.jimbo.net/astro/m94 1st image (from this
weekend)

I kept running into “volunteer” galaxies that would show up in the same
image as my main target. “Galaxy cluster” indeed.

New nebula photos, including 1 brand-new, etc. etc.
http://www.jimbo.net/astro/m27 M27 is just about a
perfect target for my current setup. (from this weekend)
http://www.jimbo.net/astro/m16 two shots of The Eagle
Nebula / Pillars of Creation from this weekend. yummy.
http://www.jimbo.net/astro/ngc2237 1st image (and not a
particularly good one) The Rosette would be as famous as the Orion nebula,
if it had *any* bright stars near it to make it easier to find… (this was

shot in January)

New cluster photo: http://www.jimbo.net/astro/m3 (shot
in May)

Some final words about the moon.
The reason that full+3 to new+3 is a good time to shoot photos is because
the moon comes up an hour later each day during its cycle, and those 2
weeks are the two weeks where the moon doesn’t rise until several hours

past sunset (full+3, moon comes up 3 hours after sunset, next night it’s 4
hours after sunset, etc.), or where the moon sets soon enough after sunset
that there’s still time to shoot while the moon is down (day after new,
moon sets 1 hour after sunset, etc). In short, “the moon isn’t up at night”
during that time of the month.

The “other half” of the lunar cycle is the part that most people think of

when they think of “moonlit nights” — the moon is up for most of the
evening, and gets progressively brighter until during a full moon, you can
just about read a newspaper in the moonlight. By the way, the moon cycles
through one zodiac constellation per month (that’s why there are 12 of
them), so by the time the next “astrophoto moon” happens, one whole set of

constellations is now gone for several months, and another set has just
risen for the first time in awhile.

Last thing. If it’s clear tonight (Monday June 18, 2007) at sunset, please
go check out the pretty conjunction of the moon, Venus, and Saturn. The
moon should be riding between the two planets tonight. Saturn won’t be
visible until it’s getting pretty dark; it’s the yellow “star” to the east

of the moon. Also note that all 3 solar system objects appear to form a
nearly straight line with the star Regulus in Leo.

The moon will have moved past the conjunction by Tuesday, so check it out
tonight if you can!

Clear skies to you.

Jimbo