Partial Lunar Eclipse 26 June 2010

I was waiting for this night since March but I cannot hide my skepticism if the weather would cooperate by mid-June. Sure enough, the whole day of June 26, 2010 was cloudy, overcast even. Rain started falling at around 6:00 pm so I had to abandon all my plans for imaging the eclipse. While I was sitting by my computer feeling sorry about the weather, my wife shouted that the eclipsed Moon was penetrating the clouds. I hurriedly took my camera and began shooting the Moon. I chose one shot taken at 8:42 pm when the clouds uncovered the beautiful eclipsed Moon.

Crescent Nebula (NGC6888)

This 3-day weekend off gave me enough time to re-process a few of my images captured previously. The H-alpha subs were taken at home while the color subs at Buso-buso. It also gave me opportunity to practice and experiment combining H-alpha with color images. But I have to learn more. This image did not turn out what I had expected but a good exercise nonetheless. I didn't crop the image to capture more of the red nebulosity of the background albeit the elongated stars at the corners.

Helix Nebula

Tonight is New Moon. I'm supposed to be under the beautiful night sky. Why is that rainy season starts early in June? Somehow, I felt that this astro season ended so soon. I could have imaged more wondrous objects in Scorpius, Cygnus and Sagittarius. But here I am tonight, listening to the rain as it makes its unwelcome noise on our tin roof. So instead of feeling sorry, I started to look at my old images and tried to re-process them. This time, I was able to try a few tricks in processing astro images. First on the list was the Helix Nebula I took in November 2009 in Buso-buso, Antipolo. I started to re-stack the images and adjust it in Photoshop CS. I made some color balancing and gradient control. These brought out more pleasant colors of the nebula. Comparing the new image with the old really made my night. (day?)