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,
Witt’s End 