Last month I bought a ZWO Seestar S50. Astrophotography was getting to time consuming and complicated. And, living amongst the trees didn’t make it any easier 😉. So I needed a quick fix to get me going again. This smal smart telescope does the trick for me. Easy setup, point and shoot.

First goal? Taking a photo of all 110 messier objects.

I am amazed by this image. It only took me 25 minuten of exposure time to get this result. 

Although the Seestar app also does some editing, I took ik on me to learn a free app; Siri’s. Together with GIMP, installed on my IMac,I found the perfect combination of imaging and processing.

The Wizzard Nebula in LLRGB.

This year I was happy to master a new processing technique: DSLR-LLRGB. This changed my view on processing astronomical images completely. Next year I'll make a start on reprocessing some more "old" data, to if this technique wil enhance it some more. I guess the image of the wizzard Nebula (NGC7380) on this page is the best shot of the year. What remains is wishing for clear skies for all of you (and a little for me as well). Happy New Year and "live long and prosperous" 😄.

Reprocessing the M33 files.

This is a reprocessing job on The Triangulum Galaxy. This is a spiral Galaxy approximately 3 million light years from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. It is catalogued as Messier 33. The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local group of galaxies, which includes our own Milkyway Galaxy, the Andromeda Galaxy and about 30 other smaller galaxies. This Galaxy may hold 40 million stars, thats about 10% of the stars in the Milkyway. The small pink area's in this picture are star nurceries where newborn stars cause the surrounding gas to glos.

The exposure time on this object is 1h41m @ISO 1600. camera: Canon 400D (Baader mod.). Telescope: 8" Newton telescope on a Syntrek EQ6 mount. 

Testing a new blog app

A new Blogger app and a new start? Just testing the possebilities of this app in words and images. 

Jupiter animation

The first Jupiter animation. Took me a good part of the evening. This animation shows the rotation of Jupiter and its four Galiean moons. I used 13 frames (5 minutes interval). Click on the picture at the left to see the animation)

NGC 2237; Rozette nebula - reprocessed

Today I'm trying to make some good use of my spare time. Found a copy of the program Nebulosity laying around. Thought it might come in handy so I tried to reproces NGC 2237. This nebula is a stellar nurcery at 5000 lightyears distance and measures about 130 lightyears across. The hot gas within the bright nebula is interlaced with wisps of dark interstellar clouds, making it one of the most beautifull objects in the sky.

Messier 13; Diamants in the sky

Last night I couldn't get any sleep - lucky for me the sky was so clear - made it also very cold! I was able to add 20 more frames to the image of 2010. This stack is a total of 40 frames. The total exposure time is allmost 4 hours. NGC 6207 is visible at the top right part of the frame. Even a tiny galaxy called IC4617 is visible (lies between both objects).