Astrophotography at Bortle 5

 As the nights get longer, I have been enjoying getting some more time in the evenings with my telescope.   This past week with the waxing gibbous Moon brightly illuminating the sky, I decided to use my new ZWO Dual band filter on the Cocoon Nebula (IC5146). So what is a filter?  Filters are like sunglasses for your telescope, except these are engineered for very specific wavelengths of light.   Dual band filters are allowing two bands of light through.   They are best for imaging emission nebulas in a light polluted sky location, or when the moon is particularly bright in the night sky.   They work great with one-shot color (OSC) cameras, such as my ZWO 183 MC Camera.  The ZWO Dual Band filter passes light in the visible spectrum in the wavelengths for Hydrogen Alpha (656.3nm) and OIII (500.7nm) through to your camera.    I wanted to image something in the night sky that was maybe a little creepy looking, as Halloween is nearly here.   So I picked the Cocoon Nebula in the constellatio

It's been a great year overall for me in imaging the night sky and our Sun through my telescopes.  I started this journey in 2008 with my first professional telescope.     I saw some amazing sights in those first few years.  Then I hit a wall.  I couldn't get my telescope mount polar aligned, ever!!   It would never slew to my selected night sky target.    Even on my best nights, I could not get any  meaningful images through my DSLR camera through my telescope.    Then the polar lens shattered.      I gave up in utter frustration.  I sold half my equipment away in anguish. Time went by and technology improved.   Astrophotographers like YouTuber Trevor Jones seemed like he was egging me on the through his channel to dive in again. So I jumped into the hobby again.   Got some new equipment, read alot, watched a lot of YouTube videos from fellow astrophotographers.   I finally started getting the images I have been hoping for.    Between diaper changes and bedtime stories with my

Our daughter loves to blow bubbles and pop them!  But I never thought I would see a "bubble" in the night sky.      Nestled in the constellation of Cassiopeia is the Bubble Nebula, NGC 7695, located around 7,100 light years away from Earth.    This bubble is being created by a  massive star that is 45 times larger than our Sun.   It's shed gases are being spread into the surrounding space by the stellar wind from the Star.    The stellar wind is moving at 4 million miles an hour!   Now that's FAST!    This wind is sweeping up other interstellar gases and has formed an edge that we can observe.   This "bubble" is estimated to be a whooping 7 light years across! IMAGE CREDIT:  Stellarium, free open source planetarium Discovered by British astronomer William Herschel in 1786, this massive O-type star is fusing helium into heavier elements.   Eventually the star will run out of fuel and detonate  as a supernova. In 2016, NASA used the Hubble Space Telescope take

Eclipses of the Sun are hard to catch in our life times.   On average, they only occur at a given location every 360-410 years.  A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon comes in between the Sun and the Earth.  The alignment occurs approximately every six months, always at the "new moon" phase.  Unlike lunar eclipses, you can only view a solar eclipse from a relatively small portion from our planet.  On October 14th, 203, we were treated in the United States of America to an annular eclipse of the Sun.  The word "annular" comes from the Latin language meaning "little ring".   In mathematics, it is the region between two concentric circles, shaped like a ring or hardware washer. Image Credit:  Griffin Observatory The moon is nearly at its farthest point in its orbit.    Therefore, the Sun is not completely blocked like a total solar eclipse.      The path of the eclipse entered the United States through Oregon and exited at Corpus Christi, Texas.  However, from