Dodging Clouds

Dodging Lights

Contradicting a cloudy forecast, large sky areas were clear on the evening of March 7th. I quickly set up my Seestar to take advantage of moonless conditions. One clear area included the constellation Cancer where two bright open star clusters reside. The Seestar seems to capture these star cluster types better than other celestial targets, so I pointed the small telescope there to begin.

Open star cluster M44, the "Beehive Cluster", is often recommended for observers with binoculars. The Seestar image of M44 shown next captures the pretty collection of stars with only a 3-minute exposure.

M67, the second prominent open cluster in Cancer, is familiar to me from my variable star monitoring days at Randolph College's Winfree Observatory. M67 contains a sequence of standard stars used to calibrate photometric measurements. Within M67 is a closely spaced group of stars resembling a tiny dipper with handle. Can you see the small 9-star dipper-like feature just right of center in the next image, a 6-minute exposure? (Click on the image to enlarge.)

Moving away from Cancer, I continued to search for targets in cloud-free regions. Next was a pair of dim galaxies in neighboring constellation Leo. In the next image Galaxy NGC 3507 is the 11th magnitude spiral galaxy on the left, and NGC 3501 is a dimmer 13.6 magnitude edge-on spiral galaxy about 12.6 arc minutes to the right of NGC 3507. A 62-minute exposure was needed to show this dim pair.

It's hard to predict how troublesome neighbors' outdoor spotlights will be for astrophotography on any given night. March 7th was not a good night because four out of five possible offending spotlights were randomly turning on and off during my observing session. These lights shine directly on my telescopes. The Seestar is so close to the ground that I can block some glaring light by erecting barriers around the telescope, but it's a constant battle.

Next, I moved north where clouds approaching from the west had not yet covered Ursa Major. My exposure of the famous "Whirlpool Galaxy", M51, was cut short because clouds did eventually move closer. The next image shows the resulting 25-minute exposure. I hope to try a longer exposure in the future.

Hazy clouds began appearing across most of the sky as I moved to one remaining clear area in Coma Berenices where globular cluster M53 looked like a promising target. Clouds began to interfere even here in this last clear area, so I was forced to settle for the 15-minute exposure shown in the next image.

Because the Seestar is so easy to use and set up I managed to get five decent images this night in spite of dodging clouds and lights.