Clear Skies Continue

More Seestar Pics

The unusual run of clear skies in early February gave more opportunities to use my new Seestar 50. Added to good fortune was a lucky absence of neighboring spotlights shining into my back yard.

On February 4th my first target was open cluster NGC 457 in Cassiopeia. This cluster, also know as the "Owl Cluster" or, "ET Cluster", has two bright stars that look like eyes. Other cluster stars can be interpreted as a body with extended arms. This image was made from stacking 10 minutes of 10-second exposures.

While searching for targets in Ursa Major I noticed a few close galaxy pairs. The galaxies I chose to image turned out to be small and dim. Tenth magnitude galaxies NGC 3729 and NGC 3718 are about 12 arc minutes apart. Although the next picture was made from a 60-minute stack of 10-second exposures, it doesn't reveal many fine details. (NGC 3718 is the galaxy on top.) If you look closely, you can see another tiny galaxy smudge to the lower right of NGC 3718. This is 15th magnitude galaxy PGC 35620, an unexpected addition to the scene.

I tried one other Ursa Major galaxy pair, NGC 3756 and NGC 3738. These 11th magnitude galaxies are separated by about 16 arc minutes. NGC 3756 is the lower member of the pair shown in the following 50-minute stack of 10-second exposures. Once again, a small bonus 15th magnitude galaxy, PGC 35799, can be seen in the upper left corner.

February 5th was another clear day and night. During the day large sunspot 3576 had rotated into visibility on the left side of the Sun as you can see in the next picture made by stacking 100 frames from a thousand-frame video.

After looking at small dim galaxies on the previous night, I decided to capture a bigger, brighter galaxy on February 5th. I stacked 80 minutes of 10-second exposures to produce the next image of galaxy M33, the Pinwheel Galaxy in Triangulum.

The Flame Nebula is near belt star Alnitak in Orion. I engaged the light pollution filter to record the following 30-minute stack of 10-second exposures.

The final target on February 5th was the Cone Nebula in Monoceros. I removed the light pollution filter and obtained 30 minutes worth of 10-second exposures. Some thin clouds moved in towards the end of the 30-minute capture, so I cut the exposure short. The dark Cone Nebula is beginning to become visible on the left of the next image. A white reflection nebula below the brightest star also shows up well.

At this point I had been blessed with three consecutive clear nights and three consecutive bedtimes after midnight. I'm not used to this level of good conditions. Could it last for another day?