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Astronomical image manipulation software |
Touring the Universe and returning with pictures |
Tips & tricks for the Meade Deep Sky Imager |
Astrophotography Blog
Can I See a Galaxy? |
9/6/2008 |
Looking at the sky through a telescope is a lot like reading—you need to use your imagination to complete the picture. That bright pale orb? That’s the planet Jupiter, large enough to swallow a dozen Earths and home to the largest hurricane in the solar system. That ghostly smoke ring? That’s a star exploding—a cataclysm that must have destroyed its planets and that awaits us in less than a billion years. And that fuzzy patch of oval light? Yes, that patch of light is a galaxy! Nothing in the sky stretches our mind quite like a galaxy. A hundred-thousand light-years across, yet so far away that all we see is a smudge. Its billions of stars spin silently away, out of sight and out of mind to approximately 100% of the world’s population. Seeing a galaxy is the closest we will ever get to grasping the vastness of the universe. So how can I see a galaxy? |
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M27 |
11/23/2007 |
I took this image more than a year ago, but I didn't have a chance to process it until now.
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Reprocessed M51 |
11/16/2007 |
I recently reprocessed an image of M51 that I took back in February 2006. I have learned a lot more about processing since then, and I think the new version is a significant improvement. |
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NGC 891 |
2/15/2007 |
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Two Versions of M1 |
2/2/2007 |
The image on the left was taken with the Meade DSI in December 2004. The image on the right was taken last week with the Meade DSI Pro II. |
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M81 |
10/23/2006 |
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Penumbra 0.5 |
10/21/2006 |
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Three Spirals |
2/27/2006 |
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M104 |
5/5/2005 |
The dark central dust lane gives this beautiful galaxy a three-dimensional appearance. This is my favorite edge-on galaxy, but its small size and overwhealmingly bright core make it a very challenging object to capture with the DSI. |
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M106 |
2/27/2005 |
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M51 |
2/25/2005 |
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M94 |
2/19/2005 |
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M81 and M82 |
1/19/2005 |
 Today, anyone with a modest telescope can easily see the fuzzy patches of light from these two galaxies. So why did it take a hundred years for them to be discovered? As with so many things in life, it's easy to find something if you know where to look. In 1774, before telescope go-to computers, before "Sky Atlas 2000.0" and even before "Astronomy for Dummies," finding a deep sky object was strictly trial and error. More... |
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NGC 891 |
1/12/2005 |
The central bulge is the core of the galaxy, where (very likely) a massive black hole is gorging itself on star systems and belching out X-rays and gamma-rays. The dark band across the middle is a dust lane along one of the galaxy's arms. If this were our galaxy, the solar system would be two-thirds of the way from the central bulge to the edge of the galaxy. More... |
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The Orion Nebula (M42 and M43) |
12/22/2004 |
 What would the Orion Nebula look like if we could see it up close? Probably nothing like the image above. The human eye is probably not sensitive enough to see M42's winged mantle of nebulosity, even if we got a lot closer. The nebula would get brighter as we got closer, but since it would also get larger, its light would be spread out over a larger area and would be just as hard to see. Most likely, any future astronaut-tourists would just see the central core of the nebula, where newborn stars have carved out a diaphanous web of illuminated gasses. More... |
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The Horsehead Nebula |
12/18/2004 |
In some alternate timeline in which the descendants of horses, rather than of monkeys, evolved into telescope-wielding beings, perhaps fringe groups of conspiracy-lovers might look at this picture and believe that super-intelligent, alien horses created this stellar monument. Instead, in our timeline, conspiracy-lovers are more interested in a different picture. |
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The Crab Nebula (M1) |
12/17/2004 |
 On a summer day in A.D. 1054, Chinese astronomers looked up at the sky and saw a new star. At first, it was brighter than the planet Venus and visible even in daylight, but month after month the “guest star” dimmed until it finally faded beyond their power to see. Almost a thousand years later I captured the image that you see above. Now known as the Crab Nebula, it is all that remains of the brilliant explosion that the Chinese astronomers saw, visible to me now only by using a telescope, a digital camera, and a personal computer. More... |
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The Orion Nebula (M42 and M43) |
11/23/2004 |
 Even with the naked eye, the Orion Nebula is visible as a fuzzy patch of light in the center of Orion's sword. The nebula is a young star-forming region only 1,600 light-years away. Entire star systems are being born and the light from the new-born stars illuminates the cocoon of gas that surrounds them and from which they came. Perhaps our solar system was born in such a place. More... |
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M15 |
11/19/2004 |
 M15 is a globular cluster in the constellation Pegasus. It is not quite as large or as bright as M13, the Great Hercules Cluster and not nearly as impressive as Omega Centauri (at least, that's what I've read—Omega Centauri is only visible from the Southern Hemisphere). Nevertheless, M15 is an easy telescopic destination and one of the best Autumn deep-sky objects. More... |
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The Meade Deep Sky Imager |
11/19/2004 |
 The new Meade Deep Sky Imager (DSI) is an entry-level CCD camera designed for beginner and intermediate digital astrophotographers. When combined with a fast (f/4) Newtonian like the 8" LXD75, the DSI is capable of some decent images. Of course, they can't compare to the pictures streaming out of a fat SBIG chip looking down the barrel of a Takahashi apo, but for that kind of money, I'd rather rent time on Hubble. More... |
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First Light |
8/26/2004 |
 The first lesson of amateur astronomy is patience. Most of the time we wait for the weather--a month of muggy New England days can seems like a million years to an amateur astronomer waiting for a dark and crisp fall night. And then there's waiting for UPS. Fortunately for me, only a month and 117 days after ordering a new 8" Meade LXD75 Schmidt-Newtonian telescope, I signed for two boxes bearing those magic phrases: "MEADE INSTRUMENTS" and "MADE IN CHINA". Yes, my telescope had arrived. More... |
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A Picture of the Moon |
6/27/2004 |
 The magnificent desolation of the lunar surface is visible even through a small telescope. I created this image by stitching together eight separate close-up pictures. I took each picture with an Olympus D-40z digital camera looking through an 8" Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. Then I arranged the pictures into a mosaic in Adobe Photoshop. The resulting image was 25 megapixels, but I've scaled it down for the web. |
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The Transit of Venus |
6/8/2004 |
 The secret to amateur astronomy is to manage your expectations. The Whirlpool Galaxy in the eyepiece? Don't expect more than a glowing smudge. The greatest comet since Halley's? Don't bet on it. The first transit of Venus in 122 years? It will probably be cloudy. More... |
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The Moon |
3/14/2004 |
 I take the moon for granted sometimes. I spend hours trying to take a picture of Mars or Saturn and end up with nothing more than a blurry disk a few hundred pixels across. My 4 megapixel camera ends up using 3.9 million pixels to record the color of deep black space. It's almost enough to make me give up astrophotography and take up a more rewarding hobby—maybe building perpetual motion machines would be less frustrating. But then I remember: The moon! More... |
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Jupiter |
2/16/2004 |
 On any clear night you can look out into space and see the other planets that share our little Solar System. You don't need any special equipment—five planets are visible to the naked eye—all you need is the knowledge of how to recognize a planet when you see one. More... |
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Saturn |
12/29/2003 |
 I took some pictures of Saturn on Sunday. The result is not impressive, even by the standards of amateur astronomy, but it's the best image of Saturn that I've made. More... |
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A Lunar Eclipse |
11/8/2003 |
I've never been interested in lunar eclipses. Even a partial solar eclipse can be an unforgettable event, and watching a total eclipse of the sun can count as one of life's most amazing experiences. But for some reason I have never been able to get too excited about a lunar eclipse. The moon starts getting dark. Then it turns sort of reddish. Then it starts getting bright again. Whatever. More... |
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Mars from Earth and from Space |
9/20/2003 |
 Mars from Cambridge, MA through a 20 centimeter (8") Meade SCT. |
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