Cassiopeia



Jupiter without a tripod



Sections of Andromeda








There is a chance that the bright blob in the top right is M31. I truly do not know how wide a view this pic is.

More


Pleiades





A view of the star field around the Double Cluster NGC 884/869

Moon photos

Here is a series of moon pics my wife took. They have a complete Halloween feel to them.






This last one just has a special look to it based on the color.

Galaxy Zoo.

A long time ago a project called Galaxy Zoo started. This project allowed people with a little extra time to review pictures from space and then help catalog items that computers had trouble reviewing. This project has now expanded into 10 different items that people can review and discuss in order to support science. Seriously go to http://www.zooniverse.org/ and look around. You can review craters on the moon. You can catalog old greek notes, or track solar storms. Totally worth your time. Find something you like and give it a try. It has been a while since I started this but they are fun and trust me it is a better way to fill in your time than facebook.

First few days

I noticed that some of my political posts are shall we say, opinionated. So I decided to break off my astronomy stuff into its own blog.

I found out you can do the most amazing things with a camera and a dark sky. Since I do not have the equipment to take photos with my telescope I found out how to just use the camera and shutter setting. To start off I played with all the setting and took the following photos.

First off we have Canis Major.


In this second shot below we have a series of orange dots going across the top of the screen. That is an airplane.



This third image may have the best view of M41, it is the fuzzy spot towards the top.



Next we have Hyades star cluster


M45

M45 Right before sunrise.


Orion

You will notice that all the Orion pics focus from the belt down. The reason for this is I was try to get a good pic of Orions sword or M42. If you spend 5 min on Wiki you can find some mind altering pics of M42 and discussion of star formation. Based on that I will not discuss this here.










A random sky shot to zero my focus.