Das ist ein #Zeitraffer der heutigen partiellen #Sonnenfinsternis. Leider zogen immer wieder Wolken durch und haben den Blick getrübt.

So this morning we got up a while before dawn to see if C/2023 A3 Tsushinchan/ATLAS was going to play ball at last. Things were a bit dicey because of smoke from many, many prescribed burns going on, but we had a go anyway.

And we were rewarded! The comet is increasing in brightness (now at +5.1, a full magnitude brighter than at the start of last week), and moving away from the rising sun just enough to get in a set of 50 subframes before the sky gets too bright.

(This is all Southern Hemisphere-centric.) Because of the combined movements of the Earth and the comet, it will appear to move back towards the sun from our perspective after Wednesday, and then reappear in the evening towards the start of October. During this time it is expected to continue to brighten, possibly even becoming daylight visible, with peak visibility expected around October 14.

#Comet #TsushinchanAtlas #C2023a3 #Astrodon #Astronomy #Astrophotography #OrbitalMechanicsAreWeird

#DwarfII 50x8s@80 Postprocessed in #Snapseed and #GooglePhotos

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS early this morning. Unfortunately the Dwarf ii didn't want to do any stacking this close to the horizon so this is just one frame. Hopefully I can get Siril to help later.

But still, it's a photo of a #comet I would not otherwise have, and look at how pretty green it is!

Can anyone tell me anything about the object OCI999.0? I found it on the catalogue of my Dwarf II, and it seems to be an open cluster with a nebula.

I cannot find anything about it! Not even which catalogue it is from!

#dwarfii #stellarium #astronomy

@CosmicRami ? @futzle ? @ariaflame ?

This is the Eagle Nebula which I've just learned is sometimes called the Star Queen Nebula. For Messier enthusiasts it is M16. I took this at home, a few hundred frames.

Did you know that it's this nebula contains the famous Pillars of Creation which awes everyone who sees the Hubble Space Telescope images of them? They're basically under the eagle's right wingpit, but of course my telescope isn't the Hubble, I'm just grateful for what it can do for me.

Look at the Pillars of Creation folks, there's limited time - they were apparently destroyed 6000 years ago by a supernova, and in a thousand years we will no longer see them. But not so much with my telescope.

If you go clicky, you can see it biggerer.

So, on Tuesday night we had clear skies. Rob and I were still pretty knocked around by Covid at that stage, so it was the put on the roof and retreat to the warmth and watch Van der Valk technique.

So here we see beneath the burning glare of Antares, on the top right and half cut off - a swirling mix of dust, gas and nebulae. It's a pretty bit of sky and again I spent a good 7 or 8 hundred frames on it, a few hours at 15 second shutter speed and gain 80. There's a couple of Nebula in there, IC4605 - my actual target and bonus IC4606. Check out the dark I don't know, maybe dust clouds to the left. They look more Horsehead Nebula than the Horsehead Nebula does.

I'd tried to capture this region before but hadn't had much success, so I was really pleased with this. I spent some time thoughtfully in both Snapseed and Google Photos bringing up the colours and de-noising it.

I recommend viewing this to Kim Boekbinder's Stellar Alchemist
https://kimboekbinder.bandcamp.com/track/stellar-alchemist-2
Hmm actually I recommend viewing most celestial phenomena to Kim Boekbinder's Stellar Alchemist.

#DwarfII
#astronomy #Astrodon ##BackYardAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotography
#SouthernHemisphereAstronomy

Last night wasn't the best night for people recovering from Covid 19 to do astrophotography.

Usually we park the scopes in the driveway and hover nearby in case they attract the wrong kind of attention, huddling on the patio. This wouldn't be good for our recovering lungs.
But a clear night, and the stars beckoning!

But I had previously asked @rdm if he could design a platform for them to sit on, on the patio roof, which is angled. We can sit very close by in the gaming room, and it's literally just outside the door, and out of the sight of the road. And of course, 'they never look up' Anyone wanting to interfere with them would be noticed right away.

The view from the roof has a good look at the Eastern horizon.

So I fired off this little Lagoon Nebula beauty last night while we stayed in the warm and watched videos. It's the longest exposure I've ever taken to date, over 800 frames (15 second exposure). And it was basically, step out the door, put the telescope on the wedge Rob designed and tell the telescope what I wanted to photograph. New Star Atlas is really swish in the Dwarfii.

A little tinkered with in Snapseed and Google Photos.

Clicky to see it bigger.

Here's one I took a few days ago, in pursuit of my promise to have a look at open clusters for you good folks.

Welcome to the beautiful sight of Messier Object 6, which is also known as The Butterfly Cluster. It's a pretty little open cluster and even in this photo which didn't get as much time as I would have liked you can still see that some of the stars in it (it's the patch of stars in the middle) are not like the others. Got some orange supergiants in there amongst the hot blue ones.

Ok that's enough from me, Covid finally caught up with me and I'm out of witty repartee.

Pretty all of last week was cloudy, but there were a couple of gaps - admittedly the Moon was pretty full, so there's some moon beamedness, but hey, at least the skies were clear for a little while.

Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was clear despite the moonbeams. Took this with the #Dwarfii and edited it a bit in Google photos. I think the tail's a bit longer.

#Comet
#astronomy #astrophotography #BackYardAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotography #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy

C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS)

By all accounts this is going to be a super bright #comet when it arrives in September.

I am happy to report that even now the #DwarfII can pick it up with a visible tail - but only if you are in the #SouthernHemisphere.

While we were all oohing and aahing over the Southern Lights on Saturday night I had my trusty Dwarfii with me. We'd been joined by a middle aged lady with a cellphone and enthusiasm but no knowledge, so between Aurora visits I cast about for an interesting galaxy to show her.

Rob suggested Centaurus A. This amazing celestial spectacle might be a spiral galaxy colliding with a larger elliptical galaxy, and there's a relativistic jet emitting from the supermassive black hole in the middle of it - heady stuff.

What is known for certain, from the party observing on Saturday night was that it looks a lot more like a hamburger than the galaxy nicknamed the Hamburger Galaxy ( NGC 3628 looks more like a hotdog to me) - specifically something from the Hungry Jack's / Burger King stable.

So I'm going to call it the Aussieburger Galaxy. It's possible that the supermassive black hole is the beetroot. We could definitely see the sesame seeds and the pickles.

This image is less than 200 frames, but with a bit of tweaking in Google photos it's acceptable viewing, and a bit of fun. I think the cloud coming in might have halted my stacking. I'd like to revisit this one again soon.

And the nice lady who'd wandered down to get a shot of the aurora with her old iphone? With the help of some advice and my monopod she caught it, and apparently is all fired up to get a Dwarfii of her own, and we have already set a stardate with her this week. Lovely!

I've been watching #Eurovision2024 , which, being in Western Australia, means getting up at 2am for a 3am start. This does mean I get to do some cool #Astrophotography in the early early morning. (Not a combination of #hashtags commonly appearing together, I am sure!)

Three nights ago, I got a nice, but short shot of #NGC7293 - the Helix Nebula - only 100x15s at the end of my shooting time.

Last night, as clouds rolled in, I started on that target earlier, but had to compete with light pollution close to the horizon. Still, I was able to get some decent images, even with the clouds, scoring another 178x15s.

So today, after a bit of post-processing of both images, I decided to manually stack them in #Snapseed. If you are working with cleaned up images, this is surprisingly simple - provided you are working on a tablet, not a phone! The end result was still not fantastic, but a definite improvement.

#DwarfII Postprocessing in #Snapseed and #GooglePhotos

I'm highly amused! This morning we were going to watch Eurovision live, which is way early our time in Australia. So we sat down and worked out what would be good to photograph in the sky beforehand, as we're not usually up at 3am or so.

The Lagoon Nebula is tempting at that time this time of year so I made a note that would be my target because I'd be too bleary to think of such things at the time. So on May 8, entirely coincidentally, I photographed M8. - Messier 8. Maaaaaaaate!

Turned out very pretty, to my eye, with just a little tweaking in Google Photos. There was quite a bit of colour in it before tweaking. It's about 400 frames, the gain was 80 and the exposure was 15 seconds. It took a few hours, stacked in the #DwarfII.

The air seemed pretty clear, and despite our neighbour having rigged their security light to go off for most passing cars now, was sheltered enough to not be much affected, as far as I can tell.

Much earlier, and before our pre show nap, Comet Pons-Brooks also had a cloud free photo shoot. I'll post some of them later.

If you have ever used a star map or application, you would have seen many many objects listed as "NGC(some number)" . But what does that mean?

NGC is short for New General Catalogue - or, more properly, "The New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars". It is a catalogue compiled by John Dreyer in 1888 (yes, "new" is relative), and contains about 7800 objects.

You may have also encountered objects listed with an "IC" prefix. These are *also* part of the New General Catalogue - or more precisely the follow-up supplements called "Index Catalogues" - adding another 5400 objects.

The NGC (and ICs) are sufficienty important that they have been updated, most recently in 2019, and it now contains nearly 14000 objects.

Last night, I imaged one of the IC objects - the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, centering on IC4604.

This is an amazing and beautiful nebula complex, but it took some post processing to really bring it to life.

154x15s@gain 80 #DwarfII . Post processed in #Snapseed and #GooglePhotos .

After a week of clouds, we finally had a day of clear skies, letting me get my #sun shot today!

A lot of small sunspots, and a moderate solar wind means that the high latitudes should get #aurora tonight.

Got a bit of clearing Monday night and was able to capture Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks on its way out of the inner solar system, not to return for 71 years. SO happy give this was from atop a deck amidst piles of #Seattle light pollution.

2024-04-01
Dwarf II
~ 50 exposures
15 sec each
60 gain
Stacked in Siril

As I've mentioned before I'm not really attracted to clusters, being a nebula and galaxy sort of girl, but this one was unusual, and caught my attention last night. It was also in the right place for me to catch it in my driveway, devoid of the surrounding trees and buildings.

This is IC 2391 or Caldwell 85.

But it also rejoices in the rather cool sounding name of the Omicron Velorum Cluster! I'm sure that would have people ducking if they heard a magic user shouting the first two words during a ttrpg! This can be observed with the naked eye and was first described by Abd al-Rahman al-Sūfī as a nebulous star.

This was taken with my #DwarfII smart telescope and very, very slightly postprodded in Snapseed.

It's a very bright open cluster and the blue of the stars in it was distinct even before I enhanced it.

This open cluster laughed at the light pollution and said I only needed to take 214 frames for it to shine this well. It says if I spend more frames on it I might get some slight nebulosity too. There's a hint of something there if I do ridiculous things in Snapseed, but perhaps I'll spend more frames on it some time.

One of the limitations of the DwarfII is that you need to be aware of an object's apparent size, due to the display. You can't zoom. Omicron Velorum Cluster's spread of 50 arc minutes is framed perfectly.

Things like the Rosette Nebula are an ideal size, but anything under 10 arcminutes not really worth it.

#photography #astrophotography #stars

#photo of the #comet my son shot last #night.

200ish frames into a planned 600 frame shoot of the Northern section of the Antlia Cluster of #galaxies .
Most notable are NGC3268, 3267, and 3271, but there are over a hundred in this frame.

Only a dozen or so will be discernable as galaxies.

How many can you pick out?

200ishx15s@gain 100, UHC filter. #DwarfII and minimal postprocessing in #snapseed

#Astrophotography #Nebula #DwarfII #Australia #WesternAustralia #Astronomy

This is VDB107 - a section containing a reflection nebula, part of the very interesting area near Antares. It's sometimes called the Antares Nebula.

Taken near Bindoon on Nyoongar Ballardong boodjar with my DwarfII smart telescope. Pretty good dark skies there. I took 254 frames, which I think the telescope stacked most of, and the gain was 80.

I want to revisit this one, there's something about it that really appeals to me.

Lightly post processed in Google photos and Snapseed.

More Bindoon photos later.