Here are some of the October photos taken with my 8” Celestron Evolution telescope in Custer, South Dakota.
Here is the October line-up:
Last month I featured the large Andromeda Galaxy, and noted that there were two smaller galaxies in the photo: M 32 and M 110. I used a different lens to get closer to those two. You’ll note that they are about as far away as Andromeda, and they are also both in our local group of galaxies. As I noted, Andromeda is rumored to be the largest galaxy in our group, but I’ve been reading that our Milky Way may be closer in size to Andromeda than what had previously thought.
Also in our local group is M 33, the Triangulum Galaxy. Andromeda, Triangulum and the Milky Way are all thought to be bound together gravitationally, and in a few billion years we may become one giant galaxy. Below are two photos taken of M 33, taken with different lenses with different seeing conditions in the sky.
M 45 is also known as the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters. What’s cool about this cluster of stars is the blue nebulosity that surrounds them. You can see this “fuzzy smudge” in the east early in the evening now when the sky is clear.
NGC 7009 or the Saturn Nebula is a small object for my telescope, but it does look a bit like our planet Saturn.
The Helix Nebula, NGC 7293, is colorful large ring. I can see this nebula, because I took 38 “frames” or photos, each with an exposure of 16 seconds, so my imaging software could “stack” them one on top of the other, giving me about six minutes and eight seconds of light. The software is called SharpCap and it has amazing tools to help me tweak out these images.
The last few months I have posted photos of Jupiter and Saturn. They are really the rock stars of our planets, as they show so many cool features in a telescope. Here is our 7th planet from the sun Uranus. I was amazed I could find and capture it. Uranus is unique among planets in that it is tipped over on its side with its axis tilted at 98 degrees to the Sun, making it appear like it is rolling around the Sun. All 27 of its Moons are named after characters created by William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. As you English Majors will remember, for example, Oberion was the Fairy King and Titania was the Fairy Queen in A Midsummers Night’s Dream.
Until next month….
Hank
