Venus, at magnitude -3.9, is currently brighter than Jupiter (-2.2) and Sirius (-1.4). From my location, Venus sets behind the Bristol Head ridgeline around 8:10 pm MDT.
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| Venus setting |
A clear moonless night was a welcome sight during a brief return to Creede. The sky seemed exceptionally dark, but I did not have a sky-brightness meter to measure it. My guess is 21+ mpsas.
The Zodiacal Light is a diffuse glow caused by sunlight reflecting off cosmic dust in Earth's orbital plane. Most of this dust is thought to originate from the planet Mars.
These images were obtained with an Olympus E-P5 camera with an Olympus 12mm f/2 lens and a Hoya Sparkle-6 filter.
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| The Pleiades touched by Zodiacal Light over Bristol Head. |
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| Orion and Sirius setting over Bristol Head |
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| Orion, Sirius, and Jupiter (top) |
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| Easter-morning moon |
The Easter-morning photo was taken with a Lumix 12-60mm lens.
I wanted to try some solar photography with a Lunt Solar Wedge on the infini D50 refractor, but there is a problem. The Solar Wedge works well visually, but there is not quite enough in-travel to achieve focus with micro-four-thirds cameras. The fix for this problem is to add a Barlow element to push the focal plane farther out. This also increases magnification.
I tried two configurations: a Celestron Omni 2x Barlow element screwed onto a 1" nosepiece, and a 1.5x Magic Dakin Barlow (MDB) screwed directly to the T-adapter. The resultant magnifications were 2.0x for the Celestron, and 1.67x for the MDB.
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| 27 March. Celestron Omni Barlow. |
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| 28 March. Magic Dakin Barlow. Through thin clouds. |
The MDB was also tested on the moon with a normal mirror diagonal.
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| 27 March |
The results with this 50-mm f/10.8 refractor are surprisingly good. There is a small amount of green fringing visible on the moon's limb.
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| Olympus E-M5iii with the 1.5x Magic Dakin Barlow |
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| Olympus e-M5iii with the Celestron Omni Barlow |
There is now about 15 mm of focuser travel still available on the infini D50 when using the MDB (and Celestron Barlow).
Lalande 21185 is a magnitude-7.5 red-dwarf star in the constellation Ursa Major. It lies about midway between the constellation Leo and the Big Dipper asterism. At a distance of 8.3 ly, it is the fourth nearest star system, but the sixth-nearest star, because the Alpha Centauri system consists of three stars. The closest member of the Alpha Centauri trio is Proxima Centauri, a magnitude-11 red dwarf. Next comes Barnard's Star, a magnitude-9.5 red dwarf, then Wolf 359, a magnitude-13.5 red dwarf, and then Lalande 21185. From this list of the six nearest stars, four of them are too faint to be seen with the unaided eye.
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| Location of Lalande 21185. credit: SkySafariAstronomy.com |
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| Lalande 21185 is circled. Olympus E-M1iii + Lumix 20mm f/1.7 lens. |
In the image above, the constellation Leo is in the bottom half and the location of Lalande 21185 is marked with a circle near the top. Lalande 21185 is the brightest red dwarf star in the northern celestial hemisphere. It can be seen with binoculars.
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| Lalande 21185 is at the center. Sightron infini D50 telescope (540mm focal length) |
Comet C/2014 Q2 (Lovejoy) was discovered in August 2014 by Australian amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy. By January 2015 it had reached magnitude 4 and was a naked-eye comet. These images were obtained in January 2015 from Santa Fe. Three lenses were used: a Nikon 50mm f/1.2 Ai-s, Rokinon 85mm f/1.4, and a Vivitar 135mm f/2.3 Series 1.
The images were obtained with a Sony A7 camera and are newly processed (after more than 11 years) from the raw files using Affinity Photo image-editing software. Strong white-balance corrections were required to compensate for the red skyglow present in urban Santa Fe. Exposure times varied between 15 to 30 sec.
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| Comet Lovejoy near the Hyades (left) and Pleiades (top), 15 Jan. Nikon 50mm f/1.2. |
The comet exhibited the typical green glow of diatomic carbon. A hint of the tail is visible in this 30-s exposure at ISO 800.
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| 10 January. Rokinon 85mm f/1.4. |
The motion of the comet was easily observable over short time intervals. The composite image below spans 4.6 h, during which the comet moved about 0.6°.
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| 10 January, Rokinon 85mm. Three-image composite. |
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| 16 January, Vivitar 135mm. |
I found this image while looking through old pictures during a long (3690 mi) just-concluded road trip to Michigan from Santa Fe. It is a view of the August Milky Way (18 Aug 2019) from Bristol Head Acres. It has the appearance of being shot through a diffusion filter, but it was not. There must have been a thin cloud layer or wildfire-smoke haze acting as a natural diffusion filter.
Three planetary bodies are visible in this image: Saturn (upper left), Jupiter (brightest object right of center), and the dwarf-planet Ceres (requires zooming in, see second image).
The lens used was a Bower (Samyang) 35mm f/1.4 manual-focus lens on a Sony A7 camera.
The inifini D50 refractor is a 50-mm aperture, 540-mm focal length (f/10.8) achromatic refractor manufactured by Sightron Japan. It was designed primarily as a visual instrument, but it is of course fun to see how it performs photographically as well.
Polaris (Alpha Ursae Minoris) is well known as the "North Star", but it has other qualities which are of interest to astronomy enthusiasts. It is the closest Cepheid Variable, which makes it an important part of the cosmic distance ladder. It is also a triple-star system. Two of the components are visible with modest amateur telescopes. The third component is a close companion of the massive primary star and has only been resolved with the Hubble Space Telescope.
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| Polaris. Sony A7iii + Rokinon 75mm f/1.8 + Hoya Softon filter. |
Polaris B is a magnitude-8.7 companion separated from Polaris A (mag 2) by 18 arcsec. To photograph this star with the D50, an Astro-Tech 2x telecentric focal extender was used with an Olympus E-M5iii camera. The camera and extender was inserted directly into a Baader 90-deg Amici prism diagonal. The telescope was mounted on a manual alt-az mount. Polaris is close enough (0.62°) to the north celestial pole that a tracking mount is not required for short exposures.
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| Sightron infini D50 + Baader prism and camera. |
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| Polaris A and B with the infini D50 refractor. 2-sec exposure. |
Mizar and Alcor is a well known naked-eye double star in the handle of the Big Dipper. What is less well known is that this is actually a six-star system. Mizar, the brightest component of the pair, is easily resolvable in small telescopes into two components, each of which is also a spectroscopic double star. Alcor, the fainter companion to Mizar, is a spectroscopic double as well.
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| Mizar and Alcor (center). Rokinon 75mm f/1.8 + softon filter. |
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| Mizar (top) and Alcor (bottom). 2-sec exposure. |
The full moon of March is traditionally known as the "Worm Moon". This year it was also eclipsed.
The sequence below spanned the time from 2:52 am to 4:46 am MST in the wee hours of 03 March. There was a cloud band to the north at the start and some clouds did eventually come sliding past, but the eclipse was mostly unobstructed. I gave up just before the official end of totality because a stubborn cloud was partially obscuring the moon.
The copper hue captured so well by the camera was not very apparent visually. Even when viewed through the Sightron D50 refractor at 22x, the color was very washed out. There may have been a high thin cloud layer attenuating the color. A hint of this haze layer is evident in the middle picture of the montage below.
Equipment used: Astro-Tech AT72EDII refractor + Olympus E-M5iii camera on a ZWO AM3 mount.
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| Maximum eclipse: 04:34 am |
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| Just past peak, with background stars visible (north to the right) |
I was recently looking for some general-interest photos from last year and came up with this short list. There is only one Milky Way photo in the set, and its the winter Milky Way, not the more impressive summer version.
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| Northern Lights over Creede, 11 Nov. Laowa 15mm f/2. |
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| Venus, Jupiter, and Orion rising over Snowshoe Mountain, 02 Sep. Leica 9mm f/1.7. |
Venus is immersed in the soft glow of Zodiacal Light just above the mountain ridgeline.
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| Jupiter, Orion, and Sirius over Snowshoe Mt, 02 Sep. Olympus 17mm f/1.8. |
Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, but in the two photos above it is outshone by the planets Jupiter and Venus. The reddish hue of the supergiant star Betelgeuse also stands out nicely in the second photo.
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| Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon) setting behind Bristol Head, 29 Oct. Canon FD 300mm f/4L. |
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| The Winter Milky Way, 02 Nov. Leica 9mm f/1.7 |
In this photo the winter Milky Way arcs above the green airglow along the southern horizon. There is a beam of blue light projecting upward from the bottom right. This comes from an inconsiderate landowner two miles away on Highway 149. I was initially annoyed by this light trespass (and still am), but it does add an unusual element to the picture.
Last night (28 Feb) the Sightron infini D50 f/10.8 refractor was used to photograph the 12.4-day moon. There were some thin cloud bands passing, but there was enough time to catch a clear shot. The camera used on the moon was the Olympus E-M5iii.
This morning (01 Mar), the D50 was used with a ZWO ASI294MC-Pro camera to photograph the sun. In addition to a front-mounted Baader solar filter, ND-0.9 and UV-IR-cut filters were also used.
Both of these shots were meant to test a new mounting arrangement for the D50 refractor. This scope ships with a 4-inch flush-mounted Vixen dovetail that works fine with the light-weight stock diagonal and eyepieces. However, when heavier accessories are attached, such as a camera or large eyepiece, balance becomes tricky because there is not enough forward movement available. The new arrangement consists of two More Blue 60-mm tube rings (from Astro Hutech) and PrimaLuceLab dual-sided Vixen-Arca-Swiss dovetails.
Sunspots are visible again after a stretch of several spotless days.
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| Moon photography setup. |
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| Solar photography setup. |
There were some thin clouds in the early-evening western sky, but they didn't prevent getting a shot of the 5.7-d moon. The telescope used was the Sightron Japan infini D50, a 50-mm aperture, 540-mm focal length achromat. This scope seems to perform quite well. There is only a hint of chromatic aberration along the limb of the moon in the digital image. Visually, a Nagler T6 5-mm eyepiece was used to provide a 108x view of Jupiter. The cloud bands were very well defined.
There are currently no sunspots visible on the face of the sun. It is blank.
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| infini D50 |
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| 7 February, AT72EDII refractor. |
Sunspots may be absent, but the sun is far from quiet. Many large prominences are visible around the rim in hydrogen-alpha light.
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| Today, 22 Feb. Hydrogen-alpha sun. Lunt LS50THa double-stacked. |
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| false-color image. |
Tonight (Saturday) the Moon is 4.7 days past new. This image was taken with an Orion 80mm ED f/7.5 refractor and Olympus E-M5iii camera. The large circular feature near the middle on the terminator is Mare Nectaris.
The telescope used last night was an Astro-Tech AT72EDII refractor with an Astro-Tech 0.8x focal reducer. This combination gives a focal length of 346 mm at f/4.8. This reducer shows very little corner vignetting on the micro-four-thirds sensor of the E-M5iii camera, unlike the Metabones 0.71x Speedbooster. Sky brightness was 19.72 mpsas, which is on the better side of average for this location. Exposures were either 30 sec or 40 sec at ISO 1600.
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| NGC 2281, an open cluster in Auriga. 2-deg FOV. |
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| M44, the "Beehive Cluster", in Cancer. 2-deg FOV. |
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| M67, the "Golden Eye Cluster", in Cancer. 2-deg FOV. |
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| NGC 2232 in Monoceros. 2-deg FOV. |
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| NGC 2244 in Monoceros. 2-deg FOV. |
The open cluster NGC 2244 lies at the heart of the Rosette Nebula in the constellation Monoceros. The nebula is too faint to show up easily in a 40-sec exposure with this optical configuration, but some extreme contrast enhancement reveals its presence:
Images were obtained for three of these nearby red-dwarf stars: Ross 614 in Monoceros, Luyten's Star in Canis Minor, and DX Cancri in the constellation Cancer.
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| Finder chart for three nearby red dwarf stars. credit: SkySafariAstronomy.com |
Ross 614 is a red-dwarf double star that lies just north of the open cluster NGC 2232 in the constellation Monoceros. Ross 614 is 13.36 ly distant and is the 29th closest star system. Its two components have magnitudes of 11.2 and 14.2.
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| Ross 614, top circle. NGC 2232, bottom circle. |
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| Ross 614. 1-deg FOV. |
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| Procyon (left) and Luyten's Star (circled, right). Rokinon 135mm lens. |
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| Luyten's Star. 1-deg FOV. |
DX Cancri is the 17th closest star system and shines at magnitude 14.8 (faint!) in the constellation Cancer.
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| DX Cancri. 1-deg FOV. |
