Smoke Rings in Space
Fought with the drive, fought against the weather... and mostly lost. My target was M101 (which I have imaged before) with the hope of determining what the Supernova now looks like. But M101 is low in the North West sky at sunset and that is the worst light pollution direction from my backyard.
Since I've been teaching Astrophotography 101 I feel it is important to represent what is achievable using very modest equipment - including the failures.
Clouds came and I quickly repointed nearly straight up into Lyra where I knew I'd find the tiny object known as the Ring Nebula (aka M57, NGC 6720). After spending about 10 minutes getting it framed near the center of my field of view I was only able to get 3 45-second exposures before dew and clouds ended the evening.
If you've ever watched the TV show "Big Bang Theory" featuring a bevy of nerds you've probably seen this planetary nebula on the wall of the apartment. However that image is big and colorful - it was captured with a large scope at high magnification.
I'll be adding this feature to my "how big is it" series comparing the sizes of various objects in the sky to the moon. The Ring Nebula is about 1.4 arc minutes or 84 arc seconds. How does that compare with Jupiter? Jupiter is about half the size at 49 arc seconds.
I may be deceiving myself, but it appears that despite the horrible light pollution, and imprecise drive alignment I appear to have caught the central star that formed this "planetary" nebula. It's notoriously difficult to see except in large aperture scopes. Of course, it could just be noise since with so few exposures, the noise from 1000 ISO 45 second exposures is not small.
This object is actually very easy to find. It's lined up right between two of the brightest stars in Lyra.
© Copyright 2011, Steven Christenson blog Events
All rights reserved. Curious what "all rights reserved means?" it means that without written permission you may not: copy, transmit, modify, use, print or display this image in any context other than as it appears in Flickr.
Smoke Rings in Space
Fought with the drive, fought against the weather... and mostly lost. My target was M101 (which I have imaged before) with the hope of determining what the Supernova now looks like. But M101 is low in the North West sky at sunset and that is the worst light pollution direction from my backyard.
Since I've been teaching Astrophotography 101 I feel it is important to represent what is achievable using very modest equipment - including the failures.
Clouds came and I quickly repointed nearly straight up into Lyra where I knew I'd find the tiny object known as the Ring Nebula (aka M57, NGC 6720). After spending about 10 minutes getting it framed near the center of my field of view I was only able to get 3 45-second exposures before dew and clouds ended the evening.
If you've ever watched the TV show "Big Bang Theory" featuring a bevy of nerds you've probably seen this planetary nebula on the wall of the apartment. However that image is big and colorful - it was captured with a large scope at high magnification.
I'll be adding this feature to my "how big is it" series comparing the sizes of various objects in the sky to the moon. The Ring Nebula is about 1.4 arc minutes or 84 arc seconds. How does that compare with Jupiter? Jupiter is about half the size at 49 arc seconds.
I may be deceiving myself, but it appears that despite the horrible light pollution, and imprecise drive alignment I appear to have caught the central star that formed this "planetary" nebula. It's notoriously difficult to see except in large aperture scopes. Of course, it could just be noise since with so few exposures, the noise from 1000 ISO 45 second exposures is not small.
This object is actually very easy to find. It's lined up right between two of the brightest stars in Lyra.
© Copyright 2011, Steven Christenson blog Events
All rights reserved. Curious what "all rights reserved means?" it means that without written permission you may not: copy, transmit, modify, use, print or display this image in any context other than as it appears in Flickr.