Total Lunar Eclipse 10 December 2011

No way we could see the eclipse with these clouds! Clouds, clouds and more clouds outside the airplane's window while we were descending towards Manila. We were even greeted with heavy rain upon touchdown. So, I could not blame myself when my bed was the primary object in my mind to go to instead of the Moon. I glanced at my wristwatch and said,"Its already eight and the eclipse had started". Looked outside and saw this blob of light stubbornly piercing through thick clouds. Well, It won't hurt lugging my camera and 70-300 lens outside just in case. Then, that bright blob of light took the form of an eclipsed moon. I aimed the camera and fired a few shots every time clouds thinned out. I had a stiff-neck afterwards but I felt a quiet satisfaction that all the pessimism before suddenly made an about turn. There was a moment when the sky became so clear that I was able to take a shot of the eclipsed moon with the gorgeous Orion. At around half past midnight, the moon exit totality and I entered the state of drowsiness. So, processing will have to wait the following day. I chose the better shots and combined it to form a collage of the last eclipse of 2011!

Triangulum Galaxy M33 and the Jellyfish Nebula

I have decided to push our intended astro session at Buso last Tuesday even though the weather was not promising. Disappointment was in the air after we were not able to camp at Caliraya last Saturday due to unforeseen events. So, nothing will be new if the same had gone that night. I lazily set-up my gears under the almost-quarter-moon glow, aligned the mount and waited for the moon to set. I slewed my scope to M33 and started shooting even as clouds threatened over the southwest horizon. And just what I had expected, clouds blanketed the sky as soon as the third sub was shot. I could almost sense the overpowering feeling of hopelessness that the sky would not clear the entire night. Even to the point of entertaining the option of packing up and heading home. But we stayed. And we were glad that we did. Clouds thinned out past 2 am and the Gemini-Orion region was clear. I hurriedly pointed the scope towards the feet of the Twins and shot the Jellyfish Nebula. I was able to shoot around an hour of total exposures and here are the images:

Amateur Astronomy Picture of the Day

I was pleasantly surprised a while ago when I opened my Inbox. There was a mail coming from the Admin of AAPOD which states:

Congratulations! tani
Cat's Paw and Lobster Nebulae
http://astronomy.fm/aapod/2011-11-02/Cat%27s+Paw+and+Lobster+Nebulae.html
Everyone at Astronomy.FM congratulates you for being today's Amateur
Astrophotographer of the Day!

Your AAPOD submission will be featured all day at Astronomy.FM, and
will be entered into the monthly AAPOD contest, where you could win
200 credits at Global Rent-A-Scope.

Thank you for supporting Astronomy.FM by sharing your photo with us.
We hope you'll continue to submit your favorite images.

Clear skies,
Team AAPOD

This is the image I posted below. Wow! what a day!

Re-processed Cat's Paw and Lobster Nebula

By trying different methods of image processing, I came up with this one that emphasizes the nebula rather than the field of stars. I also cropped the field to frame only the nebulae.

Lunar Eclipse 16 June 2011

All these rainy days and nights drove me to pessimism on the weather on eclipse day. No good set-up was done. In my mind I would sleep through it or I would get up by 2 am when the Moon entered umbra to assess the sky and fire a few shots. Alarm sounded at 2 a.m. pulled myself out of bed and looked up to the sky. Wow! It was clear. Almost tripped at the stairs, I hurriedly took my camera, put on the 300mm lens and opened our porch door towards the southwestern sky. I took shots every 10 minutes until my camera auto-focus cannot pin the eclipsed faint moon. Feeling sorry for not setting-up my scope, I abandoned shooting more of the lovely eclipsed moon and just settled for visual observation with naked eyes. Anyway, here is the result of that early morning rise from cozy bed.

Gamma Cygni Region (IC1318)

I took advantage of relatively clear skies last weekend albeit the almost full moon. I first took h-alpha subs on Saturday then the color subs on Sunday. I had difficulty getting the color subs as the light pollution at our house was so severe and aggravated by a nearby street light. I experimented and settled for just one minute subs for a total of 36 minutes before the clouds rolled in. Image processing proved to be difficult as well due to noise and lack of data. Anyway, just to satisfy the craving for astro imaging, I sacrificed some hours of no sleep to image the nebula in the vicinity of Sadr or Gamma Cygni.

The Rosette Nebula

These past weeks, I've been experimenting with different approaches in combining H-alpha with RGB images. One particular object that I want to improve on is the Rosette Nebula. I tried tweaking the opacity of the blend and using newly discovered tools in Photoshop, I tried to improve the quality of the image and here is the result.

At the stinger of the Scorpion (NGC 6334 & NGC 6357)

A sad limitation of my observing place at home is the "Great Wall" that obstucts my view of the southern sky. I have always wanted to image the beautiful nebulas in Scorpious but its too far south for a target for my scope at home. Luckily, we were treated to a good sky last Monday. So, there's no hesitation that I pointed my 200mm lens towards Scorpious to capture the two elusive nebulas near the stinger of the scorpion. Here lies two large diffuse nebulas named Lobster and Cat's Paw nebulae. I intentionally included in the image the two bright stars, Epsilon and Lambda Scorpii as position reference to the nebulas. The starfields in this region of the sky are dense because they lie towards the center of the Milky Way.

The Seagull in Flight

I finally had the chance to test my new 200 mm lens last Monday night. There were high altitude clouds and severe light pollution at home but I wanted to see how wide will be the Field of View of this lens. So, I set up my astro equipments and started shooting. One thing I learned was that it was very hard to nail the focus at F2.8. A good focusing aid should be next in my to-do list. I hope it will not be too late to image this nebula again in colors next time I head out to a dark site.