Mastodawn

🗽 Despite not being in Western Australia, I imaged #NGC3579 anyway. This is about two hours last evening with the #seestar S30 Pro.

The field of view on that is quite big, so I could fit in a lot more. The actual target is the bright nebula at the top. The little nebula at center is NGC3572, sitting behind the open cluster Collinder 240. Finally, at bottom left is NGC3532 aka the Pincusion Cluster.

For comparison, the pincushion cluster is half again as large on the sky as the disk of the full Moon.

All of this is in the constellation Carina in the southern Milky Way. The carina nebula sits just out of view on the left.

As-is off the device.

#astrophotography #space #astrodon

cafuego 🔭🤦🏼‍♂️3h ago

🦢 🦅 And one from last month, which I think hadn’t posted yet. The Milky Way core is back from around midnight, so all the shiny things near it are too.

This pair are the Swan / Omega nebula in Sagittarius (M17, top) and the Eagle Nebula in Serpens (M16, bottom).

The latter is more well known because of the Hubble “Pillars of Creation” photo. You can *just* make out those pillars at the center of the nebula.

So yes, you can image them yourself from home with a $600 phone-controlled “toy telescope”.

Being red nebulae, they are of course star forming regions :-)

#astrophotography #space #astrodon #seestar

cafuego 🔭🤦🏼‍♂️4h ago

🦁🦁🦁 The Leo Triplet

Three galaxies, two of which were classified by Charles Messier as “not comets” which I suppose means he mistook the third one for a comet.

They sit at a distance of just over 30 million light years away. Close together, but about 4 million light years from each other, near the hindquarters of the constellation Leo. More or less as if they’re being pooped out.

#astrophotography #space #astrodon #seestar

cafuego 🔭🤦🏼‍♂️18h ago

Omega Centaurus A

The biggest brightest globular cluster - Omega Centauri and the biggest brightest (in radio) galaxy - centaurus A. They sit, not far from each other, next to the Milky Way in Centaurus.

#astrophotography #space #astrodon #seestar

BernardCH 18h ago

#seestar #zwoastro
The altitude gear had three teeth broken in the middle, so I cut the middle of the teeth, hoping the sides would be sufficient to drive the arm, and it worked.
Then, I had a contact with ZWO. I enclosed a drawing of the problem and I got a replacement gear.
The tricky part was to separate this connector from the mother board and to reconnect it firmly afterward.
Now, my S50 works perfectly. Do I really need EQ mode ?

BernardCH 18h ago

#seestar #zwoastro
I broke my Seestar S50 when trying EQ mode !
Last year, my S50 felt open down the balcony when in EQ mode. After that, it made an horrible crack noise when trying to open or close past the 45° vertical position.
On the web, I found this tutorial on how to open the telescope : <<Going Inside the ZWO SeeStar S50 smart telescope! - YouTube.webloc>>
More in the next post.