Astronomy photos from the Dwarf 3 telescope

I returned to the Sombrero Galaxy to see if there had been any improvement of skills since it was last visited. this galaxy has a prominent dust lane in its outer disk, which from Earth is viewed almost edge-on. The dark dust lane and the bulge give it the appearance of a sombrero hat (thus the name). Here is the image from last night 4/25/25: Enlarged version:

This is a string of galaxies in the constellation Virgo. M84, M86, and M87 are the largest galaxies of the group, cataloged by Charles Messier. The galaxies may appear small, but each of them contains more than 400 billion stars or more. Messier was a comet hunter who lived in the 1700's. If you are the first to discover a new comet, you get to name it. Messier would name the latest comet after the King's newest girlfriend and would then in exchange recieve a nice gold token from the King. Today we look at those fuzzy objects that Messier discovered and realize that they are a mix of nebulae and galaxies that we can resolve with our more powerful modern telescopes.

Went back to the Sombrero Galaxy last night and did a 3 hour image with a shutter speed of 60 seconds. Disappointed with the drifting creating a slight oval to star shape even though the calibration of the EQ Mode had been excellent. Should have stayed at a 30 second exposure. Longer exposure doesn't equal more information collected. Did some post processing with the JPEG image as fits and png both seemed beyong my basic skills at this time a good project to return to once skill set is upgraded.

An unexpected clear night before some thin clouds rolled in. Caught the Cigar Galaxy, Messier 82 and its partner Bodes Galaxy (M81) both located in the constellation Ursa Major, The Big Dipper. The Cigar Galaxy is edge on vs. Bodes which is face on.

I was hoping to capture the incoming bad weather, but the telescope ran out of juice before the storm arrived. See if you can catch the rainbow.

Finally had a clear night and needed to relearn how to set up the Dwarf 3. In addition, I used a new location that wasn't very dark due to neighbor's lights. This nebula is located in the constellation Cassiopeia. 60 second shutter, 60 gain and 180 images stacked.

I was headed to bed last night and while shutting down the first floor lights, I peeked outside and realized that the skies had cleared. I set up the Dwarf 3 and grabbed these stacked images of the Hercules Cluster, M 13. This was a 30 second exposure with almost 200 images stacked. This star cluster consists of several hundred thousand stars and is located in the constellation Hercules. The stars are so densely packed that at first it was thought to be one solid object. Then in 1779, telescopes became good enough to resolve the cluster into individual stars. The packing is so dense that stars are colliding with each other within the cluster.