Witt’s End

Last night was (relatively) quiet here at the Witt observatory (aka our driveway). A few coyotes up the road singing Meat Me In Saint Louis, a cameo appearance by Fred who seemed to be on task to get to the back deck, and a surprising number of meteorites still around from last week’s big shower. I opted to look into the Sagittarius region of the galaxy even though it’s low in the sky, it’s loaded with great targets that I can barely see above the trees.

First of two I’ve never looked at was the Small Sagittarius Cloud, M24. Small is a relative term in astronomy. This baby is 600 lightyears wide and proved to be beyond the width range of my scope. It consists of millions of stars ranging from 10,000 to 16,000 lightyears away. I got about half of it and will try for the full image when conditions are better. Easy to understand why it’s called a star cloud.

The other gem in the Sagittarius region is the Sagittarius Cluster, M22. Small by comparison with only 500,000 stars, however, they’re clustered into a nice tight package. This elliptical cluster, one of about 150 in the Milky Way, is considered to be one of the brighter of the bunch. This is a stack of 159 images. Can’t wait to get more than 27 minutes on this target. Dew was an issue last night. You’d think I’d remember to turn on the dew heater …

Well, last night’s session from Clyde’s Observatory was a toss up. The trees put up a good fight, however, I persevered and salvaged one image, M8, aka, the Lagoon Nebula. Stunning, however, almost always too low in the sky for me to see. Last night, I made a guess, if I aimed between a couple trees, I might just get an image. For the most part I was right. Had to toss out about half of the 150 shots to great this stack. (Image made with SeeStar S30 scope, post processing in LightRoom Classic.)

M8 is a giant emission nebula, which means it is a star-forming cloud of interstellar gas. It’s 5200 light years from my driveway, but still visible, naked eye, on a really clear night. What’s really cool about this nebula is that it has its own star cluster (just left of center so it must be a Democrat) that gives off enormous amounts of ultraviolet radiation which ionizes the gas, causing it to shine. (This will no doubt be on the final, so pay attention.)

The target I was really after was the comet 10P/Tempel 2 which was close to Earth last night. The trees won that battle. It was really low in the sky, however, I thought, just maybe … The thing that really killed the shot was the damned street light at the end of my street. Had to shoot right into it. Even I know ya can’t do that. If the comet is still around tonight, weather permitting, I’ll give it another shot from a different location.

Stay tuned,

Those of us, of a certain age, can tell you exactly where we were on this day 57 years ago. Some were having babies, others worried about whether they were going to find a meaningful career. I asked my grandfather if, when he was growing up, did he think he’d ever see men walk on the moon. He turned and gave me that grandfatherly look and said, “I didn’t think I’d ever see men fly.” Oh, right.

So here’s that same moon from 57 years ago—well, not the photo. That’s from our hazy sky.

And if you need something to think about, I read this morning about a huge ring-shaped sunspot that popped up over night. It’s 100,000 kilometers across—big enough to swallow 7 planet Earths. Scientists think (science is not a liberal conspiracy, by the way) that this emerging active region has an unusually twisted magnetic field that could produce Earth-directed solar flares this week. Had to get out and take a picture this afternoon, just in case …