The moon is going away and I spent three nights on one dark nebula. I also decided to get out the C8 and try for some planets. It takes awhile to switch systems, so I will probably be using the C8 for a while longer. I’ve always wanted to try imaging a small nebula at prime focus, which in this case is 2032mm, versus 500mm with the Canon lens. That will be a challenge. Planetary is a different story, imaging at over 5000mm but using video and stacking video frames. At those kinds of focal lengths everything is finicky!
This is the first time I have successfully imaged the planet Uranus. I’ve tried before but could never find it in the field of view. It really isn’t worth spending much time on, just a small blue disc in the darkness. However, despite how it looks, it is very challenging, equivalent to imaging an object with a diameter of two inches at 2.5 miles distance. The inset shows the size of Earth compared to Uranus. At an average distance of 1.7 billion miles from Earth, it seems like a long way out there. It took Voyager 2 ten years to get there. In the larger scheme of things in the universe, it isn’t much. This dark nebula contains Sh2-239, a region of star formation glowing in a cloud of cosmic dust, part of the Taurus Molecular Cloud. This region is 450 light years out there, the bright portion in the center spans about three light years. Seeing was very good on this night, and I got one of the most detailed images of Jupiter I’ve ever taken. This is the result of stacking about 8000 video frames. Some call this the boring side of Jupiter (without the Great Red Spot), but a recent event makes it more interesting. Spaceweather.com reported two gigantic (larger than Earth) thunderstorms on Jupiter, in the southern equitorial belt. The remains of the tracks of these storms can be seen in my image, in the upper left of the planet. Read about the storms HERE.
