Scattered clouds, but good views of the partial solar eclipse in-between at home in Cologne, Germany.
Telescope: Skywatcher Esprit 100/550 ED, Televue 2x
Camera: ASI2600MC Duo
Filter: Baader ASTF 100
Mount: Skywatcher AZ EQ6 GT
Image acquisition: SharpCap, 25 of 250 frames, 7 ms exposure at gain 0
Image processing: PixInsight, Lightroom
Since the previous post, SN 2024abfo‘s brightness increased steadily until peak brightness was reached during the night 06 Dec 2024, at 13.81 mag, more than fifteenfold since discovery by ATLAS on 15 Nov 2024 with 16.79 mag. Meanwhile, brightness is back at 16.26 mag on 16 Mar 2025.
Due to using an L filter (Baader UV/IR cut) and not a V band filter, the measurements here overestimate the brightness by approx. 0.2 mag.
IAS – Internationale Amateursternwarte e.V. – Hakos Observatory, Namibia
IAS remote telescope “Dieter”
Data aquisition by Martin Junius and Stephan Messner.
Technical details see previous post. Photometry measurements with L filter.
More strange creatures: lonely cometary globule CG 7 plowing through the dust clouds of Vela, as it seems. Maybe looking for the small planetary nebula NGC 2792? (Can you find it? If not, see the annotated image below.)
Also included in my growing catalog of CGs here.
More details at Astrobin.
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Old data revisited: 3 years ago, back in 2022, I collected a whopping 38 hours of data on Messier 81 and Messier 82, a nice field of view with lots of smaller galaxies for my Esprit 100ED APO at home. But I never managed to get to a satisfying rendition up until now. The new NoiseXTerminator version AI3 was released at just about the right time. Under suburban Bortle 5 skies, this massive amount of exposure time is really necessary to bring out the dust streaks.
More details at Astrobin.
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Still on the hunt for cometary globules, here’s CG5 trying to escape the evil clouds with tendrils already stretching in its direction … ;-)
Meanwhile, I created an extra page in the gallery with some information on CGs and the related astrophotography so far.
More details at Astrobin, as always.
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Continuing the hunt for cometary globules, those strangely shaped dark clouds, mostly in the constellation of Puppis. This image shows CG3 and less prominent CG25 to the right, together with the spiral galaxy NGC 2427.
More details at Astrobin.
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Neu in der Sammlung meiner Fotobücher: die Serie Dellbrück mit einer Auswahl von 100 Bildern zu “meinem” Stadtteil.
Mehr auf der Landing Page zum Projekt, die komplette Serie ist unter Gallery > Photography > Projects > Dellbrück zu finden.
Das Fotobuch ist bei Blurb verfügbar und dort käuflich zu erwerben und einfach nur zum durchblättern.
Aftermath of last night. No comment.
Überreste der letzten Nacht. Kein Kommentar.
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It took me almost a month to gather the data for this 4 panel, 2×2 mosaic of both CG 1 (lower left) and CG 2 (upper right) in the outskirts of the Gum Nebula. This processing uses RGB and Ha data only, merging L didn’t yield good results with the “red wall” on the right.
More details at Astrobin.
Deutscher Beitrag dazu hier unter den SuW Leserbildern.
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Merry Christmas (Tree Cluster) and a Happy New Year to y’all.
Frohe Weihnachten und einen Guten Rutsch in’s Neue Jahr euch allen.
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