Bill S

Not very original... Last night was quite a good one so one of the objects I looked at was Hickson 68 - like Mike JW inspired by PatG's post. Definitely worth a look.

Martin - I'll watch your experience with the ASI 290 with interest! Meanwhile I thought I would try something different with lenses. I normally use a 0.5x reducer to make my scope faster than its normal f/5. I thought I would try going the other way. I replaced the reducer with something called a Magnimate Magni-Max. It is something I bought years ago to go with a binoviewer so that I could reach focus. It's more or less a Barlow but it has a 1.25 inch thread and so I screwed it into a short C/CS adaptor on my Lodestar. It's marked 1.6x but due to the short adaptor I found it was more like 1.45x and made my scope set up about f/7. This gave a bit more detail in NGC 2022. Of course I then wanted to look at some other planetary nebulae. I think these have been shown earlier in this thread by Martin and others. I liked NGC 1514 a good outer ring and really quite large. This Eskimo Nebula (NGC 2392) is an old favourite but I managed to see a bit more with the increased magnification so was worth a look. NGC 2346 was a break from the blue. A return to blue came with NGC 2371. The outer lobes show up faintly. It does look a bit like a sweet in its wrapper. Hence its nickname The Candy Nebula. (Also The Bow-tie Nebula.) Wikipedia tells us that NGC 2242 was thought to be galaxy until 1987 when it was shown to be a planetary nebula. I find that difficult to believe. But here's the paper (or at least the first page): https://www.jstor.org/stable/40678863 I'm sufficiently old that 1987 does not seem very long ago. And finally here's one that is not blue and would perhaps have been better with less magnification. This is also called the Medusa Nebula. It's an old planetary which is why it is so large - the shell has expanded so much. It was regarded as a supernova remnant at one time but shown to be PN in 1971. An interesting night's viewing. Bill

I had another look at NGC 2022 in Orion about a week ago. It's OK but nowhere near the detail Martin got in his shot on 14 January. (Martin, do you think this is this largely because you are using the ASI 290MM whereas I am using a Lodestar?) I did find that I could not a get a stacked colour image at all to start with but the guidance to shuffle the subs solved that problem. Anyway it is a pretty colour. Bill

Yes, Martin. I can see a bit of pink. I have not made much use of the gamma stretch. I will try it more in future. Thank you for the suggestion. When I tried it at first there was nothing to see but altering the white point makes all the difference. I think I could do with a laptop with a bit better screen. This one does not seem very responsive. Anyway here is one with a gamma stretch. There is a bit more pink. I think you are right about the blue in the flame nebula. It must be coming from Alnitak. It might be worth having a look another time. Bill

It occurred to me that I had not had a look at the Horsehead or Flame Nebulae with Jocular in LRGB so I had a go last night. Colour did not add a lot for the HH (still nice to see it) but the Flame was worth a look. January has certainly been a better month than December.

The other night was a rather bright Moon so not the best for looking at faint galaxies. I was having a bit of a go with LRGB in Jocular and left my focal reducer off to make inward travel of the focuser easier with the filter wheel. I had a bit of look at some old favourites. As I say the telescope had the focal reducer removed so it was actually f/5 and not what it says in the snapshots. Of course looking well away from the Moon helped with the sky-glow but there was a bit moisture in the air making things a bit worse. The sky was about 17 sqm thanks to the Moon and moisture.

I also had a look at a few comets recently but missed out on 4P. I did have a look at 19P Borrelly as well but I was lucky to get anything becasue it was scraping the rooftops from my location. Like you, Mike, I looked at 29P and noted that it was quite tricky to see. This contrasts with observations we made in early October when it was in outburst. I also looked at 104P Kowal. I had a look at 2019 L3 with LRGB but it did not really add anything. No obvious nice colour from the C2 Swan band. I need to repeat this on a comet that it nearer the sun some time. Good to have a chance to look at anything in the sky other than clouds! Bill S

Inspired by Mike JW's shots of the JWST I had a go myself on the evening of 5 Jan. The gif feature in Jocular was a good way to pick out the moving telescope. 50 x 15 second subs. Seemed to work pretty well. Bill S

Well done Mike! Thanks for posting this.

Same story as Cosmic Geoff for me. I did go out and have a look for Comet Leonard with binoculars without success but there were some stars around so I set up the scope etc. by which time it had clouded over completely. Very pleased you got the shots of all three Mike. Well done. Bill

Yes, with a Lodestar X2 Starlight Live is the way to go. When you have got somewhere with that (or in your case reminded yourself what's what as you have used it in the past) then add Jocular and keep Starlight Live as the way to collect subs and feed them into Jocular (instead of live stacking and adjusting in Starlight Live). You do not mention what scope and mount you are using. With a Meade SCT you probably want to put a focal reducer in front of the Lodestar to make the system faster. Bill

I had another look at 29P last night before the clouds came over and the coma seems to have expanded somewhat compared with how it looked on 4 October - posted earlier. Could be worth keeping an eye on. Bill

Three comets snapshotted the other night. I was looking for (1)Ceres, which will have a close encounter with Aldebaran in early November and then spotted the comets on the Cartes du Ciel chart. Comet 67P Churyumov–Gerasimenko is familiar enough as the comet that was visited by the Rosetta mission and landed on by Philae and later the Rosetta spacecraft itself. It’s nice to have a look and say hello. At a magnitude of ~10.5 it was about 0.49 au from Earth and 1.26 au from the Sun. It’s in an elliptical orbit that goes out to roughly the distance of Jupiter and comes round every 6.4 years. Also in the Taurus / Auriga area, 29P Schwassmann-Wachmann is of particular interest at the moment because it has been undergoing a series of outbursts. Normally it’s around magnitude 16 but the series of four outbursts have caused it to brighten to around 11. It is about 5.4 au from the Earth and 5.9 au from the Sun. Its coma makes it look rather like a planetary nebula. Perhaps someone should produce an anti-Messier catalogue of comets that can be mistaken for DSOs. The outbursts could be due to unstable material undergoing phase changes causing material to expand outwards. It is at its brightest for 40 years. The comet has a fairly circular orbit beyond Jupiter and goes around the Sun in 14.6 years. See for example https://britastro.org/node/26242 C/2019 L3 (ATLAS) was the BAA’s comet of the month for September. (ATLAS = Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System) I viewed the comet in Lynx. It had a magnitude of about 10.5 and about 3.6 au from both Earth and the Sun. More information about this brightening comet is on the BAA website https://britastro.org/node/26218 Looking forward to another clear night before long - I hope. Bill S

Plenty to see in that shot, Martin. Yet another area to have a look for. Bill

K 1-20 is a pretty faint ghostly object to manage to catch. I looked it up in Kent Wallace's Visual Observations of Planetary Nebulae. The entry says that it was discovered by Lubos Kohoutek and reported by him in 1963. It was found on the Palomar sky survey prints. Wallace reports seeing it with a 20 inch reflector requiring an OIII filter and averted vision and says it was first seen visually by Jack Marlin using a 17.5 inch in 1985. It is also known as ARO 384. Bill

This one is mesmerising! Great shot, Mike.

I decided to see if I could find a way of viewing the orbit of the comet. I had not used it before but the theskylive.com has a good way of doing this. It's very good for asteroids as well so I got a bit distracted looking at the orbits of asteroids such as Hebe. You can set an animation going too, which is nice. Anyway, here's a snapshot of solar system with the orbit of C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS shown. It supports the point that it could be from the Oort cloud or even interstellar.

A look at the Rochester supernova website showed that there is an interesting supernova in NGC 7814 in the bottom left-hand corner of the square of Pegasus. It is very easy to pick out from its host galaxy. This is SN2021rhu, discovered on 1st July by the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). It’s a type 1A so the type resulting from material going from one star to its white dwarf companion resulting in a runaway fusion leading to destruction of the white dwarf in a supernova. It’s about magnitude 12.8. It's worth a look. Bill

Nick James, Section Director of the BAA, has picked comet C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS as comet of the month. Although it was discovered in May 2017 previous images have shown it back to May 2013. It will reach perihelion in December next year. It’s in Hercules between the top of Keystone asterism and the globular cluster M92. It seems to have a large nucleus and be quite active. This snapshot is a stack of 15 second subs. More information is on the BAA website https://britastro.org/node/26070 and in Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C/2017_K2 Good to have some clear skies. Bill

Impressive capture especially during a period of no true astronomical darkness. Bill

NGC 3758 This is an object I was encouraged to look at by a fellow Lincoln Astronomy Society member. For many years it has been classified as a Seyfert galaxy having an active galactic nucleus (AGN). In fact what makes it really interesting is that it has two cores. The galaxy must be the result of two galaxies merging and at this stage the two nuclei are separate. The galaxy itself is 425 million light years away and the cores are separated by 11,000 light years. The object is also classified as Makarian 739. I was pleased that my equipment plus software allowed me to observe the two separate nuclei. The nature of this binary AGN has been clarified by several studies including the Swift satellite. Swift's Burst Alert Telescope looking in X-rays showed that there is a second AGN, which was not apparent in visible, ultraviolet or radio wavelengths. It has been speculated that eventually the AGNs will merge generating a gravitational wave outburst. (Not in our lifetimes.) I observed in LRGB although I am not sure this adds a lot to monochrome in this case. The subs were actually 15 seconds each and so you can see I observed with 10 minutes of L with RGB added too. Five 15 second subs were enough to make out the two cores but more subs made things clearer. It's quite a small object so a fair bit of digital zoom has been applied to this snapshot.

Fascinating. Thank you for taking the trouble to find a way to at least give a feel for the night vision experience. I look forward to seeing other examples, please.

These are a couple of old favourites that I thought were worth a quick look in LRGB following Martin Meredith's post earlier in this thread about fairly bright Messier galaxies, M82 the Cigar Galaxy. I think it always looks a bit angry in colour. A starburst galaxy about 12 million light years away. Clearly many new stars being formed. It's suggested that gravitational interaction with M81 may be an important factor. 15 second subs whatever the snapshot says. I had a look at its neighbour, M81, while I was in the area. Bode's Galaxy also about 12 million light years away. 15 second subs again. It's also quite an active galaxy but more obviously a grand design spiral. Bill

I decided to have a look at this object using LRGB. It adds a bit to it perhaps but not a lot. Note that the subs were actually 15 seconds each. Always worth a look.

I've been having a look at comet C/2020 R4 (ATLAS) on a few occasions recently. The shot below shows it in Bootes shining at magnitude 10. The snapshot is based on 9 subs of 5 seconds each using Starlight Live + Jocular. My usual 200 mm F/5 Newtonian + Lodestar X2 with a 0.5x focal reducer although with the way it's set the focal length is about 670 mm so about F/3.5. The comet was about 0.51 AU from Earth and 1.40 AU from the Sun. It was in Bootes. It's moving pretty quickly across the sky and so I made a little movie using the gif feature in Jocular. The shots are about five minutes apart (not very accurately). Made from single subs of 5 seconds each. Happy observing! Bill