Thursday, October 30, 2025

Moon, comet, star clusters

 The moon is 8.7 days past new, waxing gibbous, and lighting up the sky.  The faux-daylight blue is very strong in photographs.  I used three lenses tonight: Olympus 75mm f/1.8, Canon FD 300mm f/4 L, and an Astro-Tech AT80EDT f/6 refractor (480 mm focal length).

GIbbous moon through the double-pane bedroom window.  AT80EDT.

 
C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) over Bristol Head.  Olympus 75mm.

Canon FD 300mm.

AT80EDT

Just for fun, while I had the telescope mounted (on a ZWO AM3), I snapped some pictures of a couple star clusters.  The bright moonlight is not ideal. However, the measured sky brightness was sqml=20.28, which is darker than a moonless night in Santa Fe. Both exposures: 30 sec, unguided.

M13, a famous globular cluster in the constellation Hercules.

 
M11, the "Wild Duck Cluster", an open cluster in Scutum (part of the Milky Way).

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