Any star gazers and amateur astronomers ?

Here is the Trifid Nebula; unprocessed and in mono.

 

Veil Nebula mosaic. 55 minutes total integration, stretched in Affinity Photo 2, processed in StarTools. Dual Band filter. Bortle 5 skies, had to stop imaging due to trees. Light pollution from moon, hazy sky due to high humidity.

 

Horsehead nebula, taken without light pollution control filter.

 

After seeing the mono image from Toyotamullet I tried one of the Cygnus Wall, I kind of like it...

 

The Cygnus Loop (East and West Veil Nebulae) mosaic. 6670 seconds total integration, stretched in Affinity Photo 2, processed in StarTools. Dual Band filter. Bortle 5 skies, had to stop imaging due to trees. Light pollution from moon made the imaging difficult. I was trying to resolve the entire loop and ran out of FOV, but was able to get a good amount.

 

https://twitter.com/skyandtelescope/status/1686717240886915072?s=46

 

Bubble Nebula Mosaic (7 light-years across – about one-and-a-half times the distance from our sun to its nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Centauri) – and resides 7,100 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia. The open cluster M52 and NGC 7538 are also framed in this image. 1:49:00 total Integration (10 second subs). Stretched in Affinity Photo 2 and denoised with Topaz. Dual band filter was used. Took a chance with the full moon!

 

Elephant Trunk Nebula Mosaic. 1421 10 second subs. Affinity Photo 2 and StarTools, Dual band filter.Very difficult object, especially with a full moon.

 

Cocoon Nebula Mosaic in Cygnus (IC 5146). 389 10 second subs. Stretched in Affinity Photo 2 and processed with StarTools. Full moon, Dual Band filter

 

I was only able to get ~30 minutes last night until clouds moved in... Was able to get this mosaic image of the Crescent Nebula and the IC 4996 Open Cluster. Affinity Photo 2 and StarTools were used. Bortle 5 skies, Dual Band filter. 190 10 second subs

 

More Perseid info here...

 

Basics on photography meteors:
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/510/how-to-photograph-a-meteor-shower/

 

https://youtu.be/Nt29_kHV1Fg

The ZWO S50 unboxing/first light video. This is a $500 astrophotography package.

 

There’s a noticeable brightening of my northern NH, rural location over the past 20 years:
https://x.com/johnbarentine/status/1696376707392184424?s=46

 

It's a very contentious issue. Lick Observatory has been working with the city of San Jose to manage but it makes you wonder. They have a number of points in the city's design guides that are seemingly ignored. Like dimming LED street lights or minimizing exterior lighting. Speaking of LED, these are really difficult to filter. The older sodium vapor lights are readily filtered. White is such a broad spectrum and far more difficult making observing, especially distant objects, more difficult.

 

Pacman Nebula (NGC 281. Emission nebula) in Cassiopeia. Stretched and processed in Siril using a Hubble Palette script! My 1st attempt at doing so. Took a few hours to set everything up. This represents 2045 10 second subs (3.5 hours). Clear night, but day after full moon. Used the Vaonis Vespera Dual Band filter.

 

iTelescope offers webinars on a regular basis. Usually on a Friday. People from around the world attend. They’re usually an hour or so and held via zoom.

Yesterday’s presentation was on X-rays and Seyfort 1 & 2 galaxies and given by a grad student working on her PhD in Physics.

I’m not even going to pretend I completely understand the topic but it was interesting and I learned something. There is a question and answer session after the presentation.

The common understanding is that black holes swallow things but after this, maybe the spit stuff out too.

subscribe to their YouTube channel to see the various presentations.

https://www.youtube.com/@itelescopewebinars

Watching the webinars has made observing more interesting and even when they’re over my head, I leave with something.

 

While imaging last night I saw this show up for a moment. Went back and got this image of a possible meteor or some space junk in the constellation Cepheus.

 

Could it be the recently launched chain of StarLink satellites? Stellarium might let you look and see what.

 

Remember the Sun is our closest star
https://x.com/mastronomers/status/1699787103071006861?s=46