Kevin FreitasI finally did it! I was able to find a clear morning and caught a glimpse of comet 3I ATLAS before it leaves our solar system forever. So pumped!
#DwarfII #Dwarf2 #AstroPhotography #Seattle #3IATLAS #Comet3IATLAS #CitizenScience
rdmAnother target from last Friday up in Beacon. This time it is one that I often target, M8 - the Lagoon Nebula. I almost never get to see it like this, though, and especially not with the DwarfII!
The Lagoon is an intense star forming region and emission nebula.
This was my first target of the night with the DwarfII, so I gave it 90 minutes with the Ha/OIII filter. The results speak for themselves!
#DwarfII #SmartTelescope #Astronomy #Astrodon #astrophotography #M8
Looking back on last weekend in Beacon, here is a closeup of one of bits of the Milky Way that I shot in wide-field.
This is the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud - M24 - which is actually in the next spiral arm to ours, visible through a rare gap in the dust clouds.
This region is framed by a pair of dark nebulae, Barnard 92 and 93.
What is great about this shot is the amount of detail I managed from only an hour's exposure. This is something I would not be able to get in the suburbs, certainly not in that short a time. Even with a Smart Telescope, true dark skies make a huge difference.
#DwarfII #Astronomy #astrophotography #Astrodon #SmartTelescope
One of my last shots from Friday night. This will be a familiar sight to everyone North of the Equator, but it is a rare visitor around my latitude. In fact, the last time I shot this was in December of 2023. In a bit of an amusing twist, this image, like the one in 2023, was shot with my Dwarf2. This time I got much more than 10 minutes though, and have access to much better post-processing options.
Andromeda is the closest spiral galaxy to our own, and the source of a lot of what we know about the structure of galaxies like ours. Here we get Andromeda and the companions M32 and M110.
So, here we have 120x15s@60 exposures, post processed in Stellar Studio and finished in Snapseed. We also have the original version from 2023, 40x15s@80 post processed in Snapseed only. My, how far we've come!
#Astronomy #Astrodon #Astrophotography #DwarfII #SmartTelescope #Galaxy #Andromeda #M31
Towards the end of last night I decided to shoot M45 - The Pleiades. For me this is a very special cluster because it has almost the same story associated with it across the entire world. Almost everywhere in the world it is some variation on seven sisters being chased by a man (Orion). This consistency is unique in the myths and stories associated with the stars, and the sort of thing that makes amateur cultural anthropologists overly excited.
Here I have used two similar telescopes, but with different filters. The blue one was shot using a basic light pollution filter, and the green with an Ha/OIII filter. The overall exposures are similar (50-59minutes), and the post-processing is similar. The green one was shot on a #DwarfII, and the blue on a #Dwarf3.
The different orientations are because I had packed up the DwarfII, expecting clouds that had appeared earlier to build up, whereas what actually happened was they dispersed. So I set it out again, but only in Alt/Az mode rather than EQ.
#Astronomy #Astrodon #astrophotography #Snapseed #M45 #Pleiades
I've written a bit more of a long-form post about my #astrophotography post-processing procedures.
https://rdmasters.lympago.com/2025/08/adventures-in-astrophotography-post.html
#Astronomy #Astrodon #SmartTelescope #Dwarf3 #DwarfII #DwarfLab #Snapseed
Last night was the last night of clear weather for a week or so for us, so, despite the full moon, we popped the Dwarves up on the roof.
First up let's look at what I got the #DwarfII to do. I thought I'd revisit my old favourite, #C63 the #HelixNebula . What I got surprised me greatly.
Here is the same scene - about a fortnight apart - one shot on the #Dwarf3 and the other on the DwarfII. In both cases there is about 7 hours of exposure, at gain 80, and both are using a dualband #OIII / #HII filter.
Both were post processed in the #StellarStudio and finished in #Snapseed .
I am utterly amazed at just how good the Dwarf2 stands up. No, it is not as good as the Dwarf3, but it is still a solid image, and one I am very pleased with.
#Astronomy #astrophotography #Astrodon #SmartTelescope #BackYardAstronomy
leece@buddhawilliams well, I've had an exciting time with my clusterfudge. Firstly my final one just kept closing when I went to check on it, so, unlike the Titanic, was unsynchable.
So I quickly entered up another, well as quick as I could, on another tablet in case my first one wasn't stable because of the Beta Dwarf App. Phew, got that done.
Then my DwarfIII tried and tried to calibrate, but it looked like something was wrong with the focus, so @rdm found the option to reset the 0 point for the second target to my immense surprise. I had no idea it was THAT resilient!
Hope yours is going well too!
My Dwarf 2 has settled on the VDB 102 reflection nebula for much of the night and the Great Winter Solstice-ish ClusterFudge is underway!
#astrodon #LeecesClusterFudge #astronomy #SmartTelescope #DwarfII #DwarfIII #dwarflab #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotography #Astrophotography #LCFCatalogue #BackYardAstronomy
In between the clouds, I snapped a shot of the #Sun . Some impressive #SunSpots visible today.
#DwarfII Baader Solar Continuum filter, Dwarf ND1e6 solar filter. 10x1/40s
Post processed in #Snapseed
I am officially impressed.
As you all know, I own a bunch of Dwarflab telescopes along with @leece .
Two years ago, Dwarflab made the DwarfII available to the general public after a successful Kickstarter campaign. Last year, they released an updated version, the Dwarf3.
Since then they have been releasing updates to the Dwarf3's firmware roughly once a month. Cool.
What has impressed me more is that roughly every two or three months, they have been releasing many of the same updates for the DwarfII.
Today I noticed that DwarfII had an update pending - this time they added the post-processing and multi-session stacking features, giving it almost the same feature set as the newer telescope.
This level support for a discontinued product is amazing in this day and age, so kudos to Dwarflab!
#Dwarf3 #DwarfII #Dwarflab #Astrophotography #SmartTelescope