Hercules Star Cluster

Hercules Star Cluster is massive! There are over 100,000 stars in it (try counting them :)

This city of stars is about 22,000 light years or 208136070396760960 km away from us. Try going there on your car.. how many lifetimes would that take? I asked AI and it says 2.83 billion lifetimes.. thats living for 70 years, dying and coming back to life and then living for 70 years again and doing that for 2.83 billion times, all while travelling in a space ship. Ok.. thats a very bad example.. the main reason probably is, there are no roads in space. We need ion thrusters.

The big galaxy at the top right is 30 million light years away from us.. and there is a tiny galaxy in between; thats 550 million light years away.. lets stick to our coffee shop at the corner, man.

PS: I see at least three more galaxies.. do you?

Near Earth Asteroid - 2025 DM3- Magnitude 20

Discovered last month, this Apollo type Near Earth Asteroid, comes inside the orbit of our planet. I imaged it from my Abu Dhabi remote observatory. The total exposure time is about an hour and the magnitude of this asteroid is about 20.

Pleione 'Be' Star in M45 Star Cluster

Another visit to Pleione star yesterday night. With the bright emission at halpha line, it shows various absorption lines with an interesting H beta

Zeta Tau Star Spectrum

So many absorption lines and look at that bright emission line at halpha wavelength.

A5 and Be Star Spectrum Comparison

Alpy 600 is a really nice slit spectrograph. Joined with 533 mono chip it shows nice spectrums.

Still learning how to use this optimally.. slit spectroscopy is not easy! Having the mount to keep the star (well most of it) in the slit is a task. Focusing with Edge HD scope is also not perfect since it has a lens in between which does its, well, lensy thing at different wavelengths.

But progress is being made.. hopefully will be able to go much fainter than these initial bright stars experiments.

Jupiter and Saturn Spectrum Comparison

It is interesting to note the spectrum of these two giant planets.. so many similarites there.. I used Alpy 600 Slit Spectrograph with Celestron Edge HD 8 and a Player one mono camera.

Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS

Stacked image of the recent famous comet.

Craters on the Moon

Some prominent craters are Theophilus (98.6 km), Cyrillus (98.1 km) and Catharina (98.8 km) in the center. Western side of Mare Nectaris (333 km) is visible. On top of this Mare, Vallis Capella (49 km) is seen in the top right corner of the image with the Capella crater (48.1 km) and Isidorus Crater (41.4 km). To the lower right, this half filled crater Fracastorius (124 km) was invaded by the lava from Mare Nectaris, hence the North Wall is missing.

On the bottom left, Sacrobosco Crater (97.7 km) is half lit. The big Rupes Altai (427 km) is near. To the middle left, some part of Catena Abulfeda (438 km) is also visible.

Many more craters are here.. Ibn Rushd (31.1 km), Kant (30.9 km), Zollner (47 km), Taylor (41 km), Alfraganus (20 km) and many more.

PS: On April 16, 1972, We landed the crewed three days mission Apollo 16 on the moon. The image above has the location where it landed. Can you find the location?

Comet on 18 October 2024

Comet, Satellite, Clouds and Camera noise :)

Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS

Yesterday tried to image the comet, again. Clouds thought otherwise!

Sky Brightness Continuous Measurement

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Sky brightness, or darkness as we here prefer, is probably one of the most important factor in visual or instrumental observation of celestial objects. The lower the sky brightness number, the better the contrast we can have for the target object.

Here is a simple chart that shows two weeks of continuous monitoring of the sky. The top numbers are when it was night time. These numbers are in calibrated magnitude scale.

The dips there are the presence of clouds which made the number go a bit higher momentarily during the nightime. Remember, magnistude scale is reversed.

Asteroid 2023 FR3

50 minutes of imaging and i got to around 19 magnitude for this faint asteroid; this is in Ic band though. SNR is low but detectable. This asteroid was discovered some two weeks ago.

A distant galaxy in M 67 Star Cluster

Catalogue of Principal Galaxies, which has thousands of galaxies in it is a famous catalogue to find distant galaxies in your astro images. While imaging recently the famous M 67 cluster, i could easily see hundreds of far away galaxies in the images coming in the storage disk.

One of the galaxies i saw is PGC 4565962 which has a ‘look back time’ of some 3.2 billion light years!

Center of our Milkyway Galaxy

This is a combined 2 hours of infrared acquisition of the area where our Milkyway Galaxy’s center is located (marked with the arrow). Colors are artificial.

Dusty Crab Nebula

Infrared view of M 1 nebula.

C14+Hyperstar+Infrared Filter

International Space Station fly by

Starlight Xpress Oculus All Sky Camera thought this streak is a meteor and flagged it by saving it in Meteor Detection folder. This single image was exposed for about 25 seconds long.

Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko

Meet Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko!

The bright line you see is the path of the comet in 30 minutes.. Surrounding the bright core is the ejected material which is going towards the left of it.

This comet is 66 million kilometers away from us and has an orbital period of 6.43 years. In 1959, Planet Jupiter moved this comet's perihelion inwards form 2.7 to about 1.3 where it remains today. In 2014 Rosetta mission visited this comet.

Imaging details:

Telescope: Celestron C14

Mount: Losmandy Titan

Camera: Zwo 183 mono

Filter: Infrared

Total exposure: 30 minutes (Guided)