Howard Bird is getting great results after recently starting his astroimaging adventure....

 Howard sent me this image of the Cygnus Wall after getting 25 hours of photon collection! 

He took 420 subs of 3 minutes each using an Antlia Dual Band filter on his 8-inch Celestron Edge with a Celestron OAG 0.7 Focal Reducer in place as a ZWO ASI290 Mini guided while a ZWO ASI2600MC did the heavy lifting!  An ASIAir was used to image and guide the setup, then he processed everything in Pixinsight.

Very impressive work especially considering his recent jump-start into astrophotography!

Thanks for sharing, Howard.

Keith

Jupiter Is Back! (so are the other planets, but that's another story)

 I recently received another email from member Al Ernst, saying;  Jupiter is again rising above the trees and becoming a visual and photographic target for those who stay up late (or get up early -Keith).  With a little help from me, the St. Joseph HS, Metuchen(New Jersey), Astronomy Club took this series of images of one of the double transits over several hours in late October 2021.  The students used the School's C14 telescope and ZWO ASI-120MC camera.  Five minutes of subs were accumulated for each image was processed in Fire Capture and then in Photoshop.

   With Jupiter, a bit higher above the horizon during this opposition, the steadier atmosphere should provide much incentive for planetary imagers.  

Al Ernst

Thanks again Al, they did a great job capturing these shadows as they zoomed across the planet's surface. You can easily determine which is the closer moon Io's shadow. It's great seeing this quality of work coming from high school students. I wish more US schools had this level of interest in astronomy, along with volunteers like you to guide their work.

We'll keep spreading the word...

Thank you!

Keith