Orion Ranch Observatory Blog

A bit late with this post, but I had a pretty good weekend a week ago and managed to get four new objects (Pleiades, Sculptor Galaxy, Butterfly Nebula, and Heart Nebula), two on Friday and two on Saturday, switching objects rather than going to a meridian flip. This was second light on our AstroTech AT80LE 80 mm ED refractor. First light was the weekend before with the Andromeda Galaxy, but I haven’t had a chance to re-process that to be as good as I think it can be. Half the subs there are in moonlight too, so not ideal. At any rate, the field of view on this fast f/6 scope is just awesome! I hope you enjoy the images.

After literally MONTHS of clouds, rain, and infavorable moon phases, we finally had some beautiful clear skies in Central Texas. I took that opportunity to test out my new and improved camera cooler by taking some shots of the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) last weekend. Things are still noisier than I want and I still have work to do both on the cooler and my autoguiding, but for a quick effort, it turned out ok.

I’m happy to announce that we’ve just added the neighboring 10 acres to Orion Ranch, nearly doubling the size. Now I have to decide if the current location for the observatory is really where I want to keep it!

Michael

Well, it’s the weekend with a favorable moon phase and of course the clouds have rolled in! Not totally socked in, but not clear enough for good AP.

Well, I’ve added a new browser bar to the gallery (thanks to Uli (hukoeth)) for fixing some of the last issues with the module(s). I’ve enhanced the link module quite a bit too.

Michael

Last night I managed to get some decent shots of the M16, the Eagle nebula. I hadn’t posted last year’s effort yet because it really wasn’t up to snuff, but this one turned out pretty good despite numerous problems imaging. Enjoy!

Well, the skies actually cleared (more or less) last night and I managed to get some halfways decent images. Guiding wasn’t perfect and I didn’t get very many good exposures, but I managed to make something of it. The Pelican Nebula is located right next to the North American Nebula (see the picture taken last year — you can actually see part of the Pelican in that shot) in the northern spiral arm of the Milky Way. The posted picture was taken with my F/9 ED100. I also piggybacked my Nikon and took a stack of the Milky Way, centered on the Pelican.  You can actually see the red North American Nebula near the center.

Here’s hoping everyone had a Happy 4th of July Holiday (for those of us in the States). I had some family visiting and after shooting off a bunch of fireworks, the skies cleared just enough after all the storms that spun off of Hurricane Alex last week to allow us to do a bit of viewing Sunday night. We managed to take in Saturn, M13 (Hercules Cluster), the Swan Nebula, the Lagoon Nebula, M81 and M82 (Bodes and Cigar galaxies), the Butterfly Cluster, and the Wild Duck Cluster through all the haze before calling it a night. I spent most of the weekend working on another site, but I did add a couple of modules to the photo gallery. They’re experimental, but there are some neat features. After a bit of tweaking I’ll probably replace the random image in the sidebar with the scrollers that are there now.

Michael

I’ve completed uploading the observatory construction progress to date, as well as adding some pictures of my redesigned camera cooler box that will allow me to take decent astrophotos during the summer months.  Here’s hoping the weather will be suitable to do so in the coming weeks.   I’ll add descriptions to the pics as I have time, but it may be a while before that’s done. 

There’s a neat pic towards the end of the observatory construction that shows the constellation of Orion rising over Orion Ranch.  That was taken the night we had first light with our first pier.  I may post that pic, or a video of that to the astrophoto page.

Hope you enjoy the pics!

Michael

The first two months of work on the observatory have been posted, showing the progress through the first of November last year. I’ll add more descriptions, etc. some other time.  You can see them here.

Michael