Roaming the Sky

Target Variety

 The sky was cloudless on September 10th and all five neighbors' spotlights were turned off. Although a nearly first quarter Moon hung in the south, clear conditions were too good to pass up. Forecasts predicted two upcoming cloudy weeks along with a brightening Moon, so I was motivated to take my Seestar outside for some imaging. There was no wind, and temperature ranged from the mid to low 60's.

I've decided to try capturing Seestar images of all 110 objects in the Messier catalog, so I began this night with some globular clusters and open clusters in Sagittarius, Scorpius, and Aquarius while the first quarter Moon continued getting lower in the sky. I've found 10-minute exposures work well for all globular images below. Globular cluster M28 had a relatively small apparent size and appeared among a crowded Sagittarius Milky Way star field in the first image below.

Also located in Sagittarius, dramatic globular cluster M55 is almost twice the apparent size of M28 and is nicely portrayed in the next image. 

The central portion of globular M2 in Aquarius seems burned out in the next image. (Click on images to get an enlarged view.)

The last member of this night's globular collection is M15 in Pegasus shown next. 

Open cluster M23 in Sagittarius features several interesting star chains and patterns in the next 5-minute exposure.

Pretty open cluster M6 in Scorpius, also known as the Butterfly Cluster, contains a couple colorful stars and an arrow-like grouping in the next image. M6 was very close to the horizon. I had to end the exposure after only one minute and 40 seconds because rooftops were beginning to show in the bottom of the image. I cropped rooftops out of this image.

While collecting the previous cluster images I came across dim galaxy NGC6822 with planetary nebula NGC6818 located nearby in the same field of view. This pair in the constellation Sagittarius are shown in the next 20-minute exposure. The galaxy, left of center, is barely visible above background noise. NGC6822, known as Barnard's Galaxy, was discovered in 1884 by Edward Emerson Barnard. It looks very similar to our own Milky Way galaxy's satellite, the Small Magellanic Cloud. Planetary nebula NGC6818, also known as the Little Gem Nebula, is the small blue-green object in the upper right hand corner. This nebula is too small to show any internal structure at Seestar's image scale.

Planetary nebula NGC 6818 in the previous image has an apparent angular diameter of only 22 X 15 arc seconds. Many planetary nebulae are similarly small and show up only as small blue-green circles in Seestar images. For example, NGC7662, the Blue Snowball Nebula in the constellation Andromeda, is about 30 arc seconds in diameter. It's the small blue-green circle near center of the next image, a 5-minute exposure.

Another example is planetary nebula NGC 7009 in Aquarius whose apparent size is about 30 X 25 arc seconds. This planetary is called the Saturn Nebula because its elongated shape in small telescopes slightly resembles Saturn's rings. Only a hint of this structure is visible in the next 5-minute exposure.

On the other hand, some planetary nebulae, like NGC1501 in Camelopardalis shown in the next 8-minute exposure, are large enough for Seestar to reveal internal structure. NGC1501 has a diameter of about 54 arc seconds. You can see the 14.5 magnitude central star when the image is viewed at full size.

My final planetary nebula for the night was the famous Ring Nebula, M57, in Lyra. Its apparent angular size is about 84 X 66 arc seconds, significantly larger than the previous examples above, so a 5-minute exposure reveals the ring shape and hints of red color.

Camelopardalis is an often overlooked northerly constellation recently featured in the October issue of  Sky and Telescope magazine. A suggested target there was open cluster NGC1502 which Seestar captured nicely in the following 5-minute exposure. Enlarge the image to see several close star pairs and a semicircular arc containing nine stars.

NGC281, the Pacman Nebula in Cassiopeia, was also well placed in the northern sky. The following 30-minute exposure taken with light pollution filter in place exhibits the Pacman mouth oriented upward. As usual with all my Seestar emission nebula images I find the red color dull compared to colors exhibited in more expert images.

I ran out of energy at 1:30 am and brought the dew dampened Seestar inside. At this point I've collected 45 out of the 110 Messier objects and look forward to capturing more in future months.

Smoke Clears

Nearly Perfect Conditions

September 2nd was the first night in several weeks without clouds, wildfire smoke, or a bright Moon. It was nice to see dark sky between stars instead of milky whiteness illuminated by moonlight. In addition, the 63 degree temperature was pleasant and wind was calm. Total perfection was too much to hope for, however. Four of my five light polluting neighbors had miraculously turned off all their troublesome spotlights. Only one remaining neighbor, the one next door, left one backyard spotlight on. Even though this annoying spotlight pointed away from my Seestar telescope, it lit almost the entire back of the neighbor's house. The glow of this reflected light ruined sky darkness toward the southern horizon where I had hoped to get images in the constellation Sagittarius.

My first target was a closely spaced galaxy group called Stephan's Quintet located near spiral galaxy NGC7331 in Pegasus. Stephan's Quintet turned out to be too small to show up well in Seestar's image scale, so I tried to center on larger NGC7331 instead and produced the first image below with a 20-minute exposure.

I should have taken more time to move NGC7331to the left because I might have captured tiny Stephan's Quintet in the same field of view. Nevertheless, there are at least six tiny dim fuzzy galaxies in the same image with NGC7331 which you can see labeled in the next image. (Click on the image to enlarge details.)

Next, I moved to the Helix Nebula, NGC7293, in Aquarius. This colorful planetary nebula showed up nicely in a 20-minute exposure with Seestar's nebular filter engaged. The colors seem kind of dull, however.

At this point Sagittarius was beginning to dip closer to the horizon, so I quickly tried to image some targets there. First, I took a 5-minute exposure of open star cluster M18 whose unimpressive portrait fills the next image's center. 

I also found open cluster M25 to be unspectacular as you can see in the next 5-minute exposure.

The previous two images required special processing to remove a glow in one corner coming from the spotlight reflection on my neighbor's house. With Sagittarius sinking I tried one more target, globular cluster M22. M22 looked nice in the following 10-minute exposure.

It was time to swing north from Sagittarius to Andromeda which had now risen high enough to put giant galaxy M31 in a good position for imaging. Since M31 is too large to fit entirely within Seestar's limited field of view, I hoped to create a mosaic by assembling three neighboring galaxy sections together into one complete image. Next are three separate 20-minute exposures moving across the galaxy in steps.

Unfortunately, Photoshop could not successfully merge all three previous images. Apparently, there was too much image rotation during the hour long period while exposures were taken. Also, inexplicably, the color of the first image in the series above did not match colors of the next two. I had partial success, however. Photoshop did manage to patch together the second pair of sections to produce the following nice two-panel mosaic.

M31's dark dust lanes show nicely in the previous mosaic. The two companion galaxies M110 (top) and bright compact M32 near the right edge also fit within the field of view.

At this point, more than four hours beyond my normal bedtime, fatigue was increasing. My final target was the Western Veil Nebula, NGC6960, in Cygnus. This segment of the larger Veil Nebula supernova remnant showed up well in the following 20-minute exposure made with the nebular filter engaged.

Now I ran out of gas! I quit imaging at 2:30 am and staggered off to bed. In the future I'd like to capture more separate pieces of the Veil Nebula. I'm also thinking of taking Seestar images of all objects in the Messier Catalog.