Last night's target now processed... stage 1.... the initial offering. Sometimes I remain happy with the first edit, sometimes not. This is NGC6888, the Crescent Nebula in Cygnus. The central star is known as a Wolf-Rayet star, WF 136, which is massive and rapidly shedding its outer laters into the surrounding interstellar medium. This whole... Continue Reading →
Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE was definitely the comet of the year, one of the best in a couple of decades. Hovering low in the morning sky before dawn, then, later in July making its evening appearance low in the northwest sky after sunset, it provided hauntingly beautiful views of the night sky. Not much impresses... Continue Reading →
This has been quite a year. Now, add to this a bright new comet, and it gets a little better, yes? Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE: Named after the Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer’s asteroid hunting mission [https://neowise.ipac.caltech.edu/], this comet has become visible to the unaided eye, and, for now, is a morning object rising just... Continue Reading →
The new 0.7m telescope dome is up and running at Phillips Exeter Academy. There is still some serious testing to do in order to prove out the various bits and pieces that all have to integrate together: mount control, focus control, heaters, fans, pointing models, dome control, linking dome to the telescope, imager and filter... Continue Reading →
Winter is the Orion time…. time to get a wide field camera taking snaps of the winter sky. Here is a wide field frame of Orion with his nemesis, Taurus the Bull. This was a process-image of seven 15-second exposures at f/3.5 28mm, ISO10000, with automatic dark frame subtraction using a Nikon D810a on a... Continue Reading →
