Daniel's Astro Archive

After 8 months, I finally decided to bring out the camera
again. Included here is a GIF of my exposure from May 1st
last year compared to the exposure I took today. The GIF
shows the slow movement of Barnard's Star.

- Barnard's Star is the 4th closest star to the sun.
- It moves 10.3 arcseconds per year relative to the sun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard's_Star

Included is a tar.gz file including the lights/ and darks/
used to generate the resulting image.
ISO 6400, 1s, F5.6
Lights: 78
Darks: 20

Processed with DeepSkyStacker on Windows
https://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/5945450

Smith Mountain State Park, Virginia
Bortle 4

Another exposure of Barnard's Star, just to check
if I could notice any small movements.

I compared it with my picture from May.

I think I see a variable star

RA 18h 05m 25.8s
DEC +05:13:15

J2000: 271.3575 5.22083333


Also, I think I may have gotten some movement out of
Barnard's Star. It might not be movement, but if it is,
then it's a very small amount of it.

A second exposure confirms that my recent
finding was not a camera error, but a variable star.

ISO 6400 1s f/5.6
50 light / 10 dark
Bortle 8

variable.gif:
All of my pictures of this star. You should be
able to see the star changing in brightness.

closer.gif:
In case the first one is too small, this
compares two shots, showing that the star
clearly dimmed in the later one.

I scoured tons of star catalogs, and I could only find one
source documenting this star:
http://astro.corlan.net/stars/OPH/SV-OPH.html

It's right beside Barnard's star, a common target.
Surely this star should be more popular...

While taking a picture of Barnard's Star, I noticed this.
These were taken 50 days apart, and the star is not there in the
newer picture.

ISO 6400 1s f/5.7
50 light frames, 20 dark frames
Stacked in DSS

Explanations sorted by likelihood:
- crud on camera sensor
- processing glitch
- Variable star, or dust
- It just disappeared or something
- Aliens???

https://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/4792721

RA: 17h 56m 24.6s | Dec: +03:22:41

Barnard's Star

> Barnard's Star is a red dwarf about six light-years away from Earth in the constellation of Ophiuchus.
It is the fourth-nearest-known individual star to the Sun after the three components of the Alpha Centauri system,
and the closest star in the northern celestial hemisphere. Its stellar mass is about 14% of the Sun's.
Despite its proximity, the star has a dim apparent magnitude of +9.5 and is invisible to the unaided eye;
it is much brighter in the infrared than in visible light.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnard%27s_Star

Canon 1300D
ISO 6400
1s
f/5.6
50 Light frames
20 Dark frames
Stacked in deep sky stacker

I didn't use a star tracker, only constellations and public data.
This was very difficult in a Bortle 8 city with a target near the horizon.

You can find additional information at:
https://nova.astrometry.net/user_images/4605499

December 20-21
The "Christmas Star"
Saturn and Jupiter align. This happens once every ~20 years, but
this happens to be the closest since the 1700s.

The GIF was made from 8 frames, ISO 6400 4s f/5.6, manually
stacked with GIMP

The JPG is just a compressed image from my camera, edited slightly
with GIMP

ISO 3200 f10 1/800s Manually tracked, 300mm Canon DSLR
I took ~40 pictures of the ISS, removed the bad ones, and ended up with ~30.
I manually aligned them in GIMP, and exported to GIF.

ring.jpg
The Ring Nebula is tiny. A real telescope would be needed in order to get
details. But you can see, it is a blue thing, with a hole in it.

dumbbell.jpg
Dumbbell Nebula
~70 1 sec exposures
stacked with 20 dark frames
bortle 7

Very good visibility. I was near a big lake, and in one picture you should be able to see
the Milky Way reflection in the background. From the pictures I took that night, I am making
a map of the milky way.

90 light frames:
90mm
2 second exposure
f/5.7
6400 ISO

50 Dark frames
(same with lens cap)

Taken at home (bortle 7/8)

Messier 32
A simple image showing a long exposure of Messier 32, near the central galaxy.

Greensboro North Carolina.
Bortle 8.

Trip to Blue Ridge Parkway, testing light pollution
on the milky way

ISS and moon photography

Moon

Photo dump from Blue Ridge Parkway

Common spring targets

Jan 2019 Blood Moon