The Lunar Shadow

This is a single channel image of the Western Veil Nebula that I took from the heart of Silicon Valley on Friday night. This image consists of 60 minutes of data from a single channel (hydrogen-alpha). I’d intended to also image two other channels to create a color image like the one I previously posted, but clouds rolled in around midnight forcing me to quit.

The Western Veil Nebula is a portion of a remnant left behind from a supernova explosion 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. A cloud of heated and ionized gas and dust in the constellation Cygnus, it has a radius of 50 light years and lies 2,400 light years from earth (one light-year = 9,460,730,472,580.8 km).

The source supernova was a star 20 times more massive than the Sun which exploded between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago. At the time of the explosion, the supernova would have appeared brighter than Venus in the sky, and been visible in the daytime.

M-20 imaged in narrowband (Ha, SII, and OIII) and then assigned to the Hubble palette.

M 8 imaged in narrow band Ha, SII, and OIII with the channels mapped to the Hubble palette.

Road trip to darkness has begun!

Patches, stickers, and eclipse glasses are packed!!

Solar eclipse patches are back in stock!!

Considerably less gear than in 2017, primary owing to the new smaller imaging platform!

We just restocked our Ultimate Eclipse package in the online store, and thru the entire weekend you can get $5.00 off by using the code BLACKFRIDAY at checkout!

First light with the new astrophotography rig. William Optics APO, ZWO AsiAir, MD5, all running from my iPad! This is crazy, plate solving for polar alignment, and when you GOTO an object it plate solves to center it! I’m just amazed ant how much this has evolved since I got my first scope when I was 14.

Dunluce Castle in - part of the 17th century town of Dunluce founded in 1608.

I have been walking around Ireland in this Euler shirt and the looks I am getting 😂😂😂