Astro log – Through the smog and light pollution

A month back I finally got a new stepper motor and got the tracking for my telescope working. One dark night I took it to a pretty dark spot close to Bergen and did some observations.

M42 – Orion Nebula

I have observed the Orion nebula under bad light pollution before, but this time I got to observe it with under better conditions. It was stunning. Very sharp.

The next day I took my first deep space photography ever from our apartment. The light pollution was really bad, and there was some smog as well. I also forgot that I could use a timed shot. So i think some blurring is due to the camera moving slightly after I started the exposure.

I think it turned out fine for a first:

M42 taken with a 5 – 10 seconds exposure. Very heavy light pollution. The left image is the raw image, the right ones are versions where i increased contrast and tried to remove the pollution. The latter is an attempt to make it look somewhat like what a visual observation of M42 looks like in my telescope (it is sharper when visually observed)

M1 – Crab Nebula

My original plan for the trip, was to observe M42 and the Andromeda Galaxy. I was also hoping to get to see the Flame Nebula since it was really dark. I sadly did not see any trace of the Flame Nebula so I started looking for some open clusters to look at in Taurus. While scanning for them I suddenly saw that the Crab Nebula was close, and I found it immediately. It is the first supernova remnant I have observed, and I think I saw some small amount of detail. Hoping to get a picture of it one of these days.

M31 and M110 – Andromeda Galaxy and a friend

Andromeda is a not that interesting to visually observe since it is so hard to see anything beyond the core. I think I saw some more since it was really dark, but it was very faint. These two are prime targets for a photo some day, since that should bring out some more detail.

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Jonas

Hacker and developer that loves to explore topics related to informatics, software engineering, mathematics, graphics, games, science.

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