Orion Ranch Observatory Blog

I had the opportunity to tour the John F. Kennedy Space Center outside Orlando, Florida last Sunday.  I took the “Ultimate Experience” tour that included the “Lunch with an Astronaut” (John Blaha who flew five shuttle missions and spent four months on Mir) and an extended bus tour with multiple stops not included in the baseline visit.  This allowed for capture of some good pictures including the Space Shuttle Endeavour on Launch Pad 39A, poised for its last flight (STS-134) next month.  The only problem was that with these scheduled events, there wasn’t enough time to do all of the other stuff they had to offer (Hubble 3-D and Space Station 3-D IMAX movies, shuttle simulator, Star Trek Experience, etc.).  The ticket actually allows guests to come back a second day within the week, but I didn’t know that beforehand and didn’t schedule the time.   

I’ve put the better pictures on the website here.  Just click on the picture below.

I just posted some of my latest images of widefield galaxy shots.  There are also a few posted several weeks ago.  I’m kind of working backwards and have quite a few images where I’m still not satisfied with the processing.  Look for new posts before too much longer.  Enjoy!

Michael

M95, M96, M105, NGC 3384 & NGC 3389 – Galaxies in Leo

M84, M86, M87, & NGC 4438 – The Eyes & Vicinity

M65, M66, NGC3628 – The Leo Trio

M81 & M82 – Bode’s Nebula (Galaxy) and Cigar Galaxy

NGC 869 & NGC 884 – The Double Cluster

Wow, this blog post never got posted.  Bit late now, but you might want to check out the full lunar eclipse from last December!

Saturday night turned out pretty good, so I managed to get a few more pictures.  I captured the Christmas Tree Cluster and the surrounding Cone Nebula just in time for Christmas!  With the moon moving towards full, this was the last chance to do so before Christmas.  I also captured a wide field with my Nikon piggy-backed on the guide scope.  I still have a number of other images to process, and am learning some new techniques that are making this heavy star field images look much better.  Look for the rest of those images in the next couple of weeks.  I hope you enjoy and have a Blessed Christmas Holiday and a Happy New Year.

Michael

The last couple of weekends have been pretty productive and I’m making some progress on the list of images I have to stack and process.  I’ve finally posted the new Andromeda Galaxy from the end of October, as well as a new Horsehead Nebula from last Friday, which turned out really great despite waking up to a bunch of dew soaked equipment on Saturday!  There’s similar high humidity and cloudy skies predicted for tonight so I wimped out and didn’t go image despite the clear skies at the moment.  On last Saturday night I also managed to get some wide field shots of a couple areas of the Milky Way using the Nikon D90 piggybacked on the ST-80, although the flats didn’t turn out right for them.  Look for these and posts of The Cave Nebula, The Flaming Star Nebula, and possibly a new Orion Nebula over the next week.  The shots of Orion have a bit more background noise than I like for what I want to be able to show, so I may have to reshoot that one.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Michael

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