M1 The Crab Nebula from Spain - 30th September 2016

M45 from Spain - 30th September 2016

Messier 29 from Spain - 25th September 2016

I took this image of M29 remotely from Spain last night

T07-lenadam-M29-20160925-223826-Luminance-BIN1-W-300-001.fit (300 seconds)

This is the low res preview image.

From Wikipedia about M29:

"Messier 29 (also known as M 29 or NGC 6913) is an open cluster in the Cygnus constellation. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1764, and can be seen from Earth by using binoculars.

The star cluster is situated in the highly crowded area of Milky Way near Gamma Cygni, at a distance of 7,200 (most sources including Mallas/Kreimer and Burnham, and agreeing with early estimates or R.J. Trumpler 1930) or 4,000 light years (the latter from Kenneth Glyn Jones and the Sky Catalogue 2000.0). The Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner gives a deviating value of 6,000 light years – the uncertainty due to inaccurately known absorption of the cluster's light.

According to the Sky Catalog 2000, M29 is included in the Cygnus OB1 association, and approaching us at 28 km/s. Its age is estimated at 10 million years, as its five hottest stars are all giants of spectral class B0. The Night Sky Observer's Guide gives the apparent brightness of the brightest star as 8.59 visual magnitudes. The absolute magnitude may be an impressive -8.2 mag, or a luminosity of 160,000 Suns. The linear diameter was estimated at only 11 light years. Its Trumpler class is III,3,p,n (as it is associated with nebulosity), although Götz gives, differently, II,3,m, and Kepple/Sanner gives I,2,m,n. The Sky Catalogue 2000.0 lists it with 50 member stars; earlier Becvar gave only the number of 20 members.

This cluster can be seen in binoculars. In telescopes, lowest powers are best. The brightest stars of M29 form a "stubby dipper", as Mallas says it. The four brightest stars form a quadrilateral, and another three, a triangle north of them. It is often known as the "cooling tower" due to its resemblance to the hyperboloid-shaped structures. A few fainter stars are around them, but the cluster appears quite isolated, especially in smaller telescopes. In photographs, a large number of very faint Milky Way background stars shows up.

M29 can be found quite easily as it is about 1.7 degrees South and little East of Gamma or 37 Cygni (Sadr). In the vicinity of M29, there is some diffuse nebulosity which can be detected in photographs."

Join the Society for the History of Astronomy(SHA) - 24th September 2016

The Autumn edition of the SHA Bulletin is about to be delivered. Don't miss out on this issue which is now in full colour. https://societyforthehistoryofastronomy.com/

Messier 31 from New Mexico - 24th September 2016

I used telescope T14 with a photometric V filter to take an image of M31. This is a snip of the low res preview image. I also took FITS and TIFF images yet to be processed. A 180 second exposure.

From Wikipedia about M31:

"

The Andromeda Galaxy (/ænˈdrɒmᵻdə/), also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224, is a spiral galaxy approximately 780 kiloparsecs (2.5 million light-years) from Earth.^[4] It is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way and was often referred to as the Great Andromeda Nebula in older texts. It received its name from the area of the sky in which it appears, the constellation of Andromeda, which was named after the mythological princess Andromeda.

Being approximately 220,000 light years across, Andromeda is the largest galaxy of the Local Group, which also contains the Milky Way, theTriangulum Galaxy, and about 44 other smaller galaxies. Despite earlier findings that suggested that the Milky Way contains more dark matterand could be the largest in the grouping,^[12] the 2006 observations by the Spitzer Space Telescope revealed that Andromeda contains one trillion (10¹²) stars:^[9] at least twice the number of stars in the Milky Way, which is estimated to be 200–400 billion.^[13]

The mass of the Andromeda Galaxy is estimated to be 1.5×10¹² solar masses,^[7] while the Milky Way is estimated to be 8.5×10¹¹ solar masses. In comparison, a 2009 study estimated that the Milky Way and M31 are about equal in mass,^[14] while a 2006 study approximated the mass of the Milky Way at 80% of the mass of the Andromeda Galaxy. The Milky Way and Andromeda are expected to collide in 3.75 billion years, eventually merging to form a giant elliptical galaxy ^[15] or perhaps a large disc galaxy.^[16] The apparent magnitude of the Andromeda Galaxy, at 3.4, is among the brightest of the Messier objects,^[17] making it visible to the naked eye on moonless nights, even when viewed from areas with moderate light pollution."

Messier 33 from New Mexico - Saturday 24th September 2016

I used the 6 inch refractor with a single shot colour camera to image M33 a moment ago.

T3-lenadam-M33-20160923-005027-Color-BIN1-E-300-001.fit (300 seconds)

This is the preview image.

 

From my Bookshelf - Herschel at the Cape

Book 1: Herschel at the Cape - Diaries and Correspondence of Sir John Herschel 1834 - 1838

Orion over the rooftop in Spain

I was looking at images from my last time in Spain and this caught my eye. Taken with a modfied Canon 40D.

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko this morning.

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko this morning. Remote image from New Mexico.

Comet 81P/Wild