Bits and Pieces
I gathered some astronomical bits and pieces in early December before waxing moonlight became too bright. On December 5th Seestar was initially balky, refusing to target and track targets. Eventually, it settled down, and I captured the following 50-minute exposure of open cluster NGC1893 with its accompanying nebula, IC410, in Auriga.
As usual, Seestar delivers disappointing dull red nebula color. NGC1893 and IC410 are about 12,000 light years away, the most distant object observed tonight.
The worst of troublesome neighboring lights glared into my backyard this night. In spite of this annoying light pollution I was able, with some image processing, to get a decent 10-minute exposure of open cluster M50 in Monoceros. This unremarkable cluster is shown next.
Three days later, on December 8th, it was hard to pass up clear sky. Moonlight was becoming an issue, but, just for fun, I pointed Seestar at Jupiter to see what kind of picture Seestar would produce. (Seestar is really not designed to get good images of planets.) I had to adjust gain and exposure time because Jupiter was so bright. Even with zero gain and short exposure the planet's disc was overexposed showing no detail. Three Galilean moons are visible in the next image, however.
The three visible moons are, diagonally upward from left to right, Europa, Io, and Callisto. The fourth Galilean moon, Ganymede, happened to be transiting in front of Jupiter's disc when this image was taken, so Ganymede and its shadow were lost in the planet's glare. Jupiter was about 34 light minutes away this night, so much closer than the previous two targets.
Even closer still was the nearly first quarter Moon, only 1.22 light seconds away. Seestar produces nice lunar images. The next picture is a single snapshot with no image processing. It can be enlarged to full size without losing detail.
This ends my far and near early December trip from 12,000 light years away to 1.22 light seconds away.
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