September 16, 2009

With the end of summer, the nights are becoming darker, longer and - thankfully - clearer. I still need to use the heating unit to prevent condensation on the Starshoot Pro, but with fall and winter's dark nights approaching, I eagerly anticipate many productive imaging sessions in the coming months. The winter sky is laden with astronomical gems I hope to capture.

Here are some images from the past two weeks.

M31

The Andromeda Galaxy, appearing in Andromeda, is easily visible to the naked eye on a clear, dark night as a faint smudge. The galaxy lies 2.3 million light years away. None of my previous cameras had large enough CCD chips to capture the entire galaxy in a single image.

Also visible in this image are M31's companion galaxies, M32 (the bright blob toward the upper edge of the image) and M110 (the disk in the middle of the lower edge of the image). This image comprises 20, 300-second sub-exposures, for a total exposure of 100 minutes, and was taken on September 14.

Moon

I don't usually image the moon, or planets, preferring more distant astronomical wonders, but every so often the moon is so unavoidable that even I take notice.

This image was taken with the LX200 at f/10. One 0.001 second image.

This image was taken with the LX200 at f/6.3. A single 0.001 second exposure.

This image was taken with the LX200 at f/6.3. A single 0.001 second exposure.