Right in the center of the frame is the globular cluster NGC 7006 in the constellation Delphinus. Its relative size is so small that it could be easily taken for a star unless you zoom in.
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Catherine Ryan Hyde
@catherineryanhyde@tooting.ch
mastodon 4.7.3Author of lots of books. Wrangler of lots of pets. Big astronomy and astrophotography fan.
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Joined November 06, 2022
M45, the Pleiades. I usually like to take this at a shorter focal length so that I can frame all of it. Right now I'm trying to stick with the same equipment from night to night.
Here is another image from later, in the second half of the eclipse. Beyond that, I think they're all going to look pretty much the same.
The full moon setting when we got up this morning. It was awfully nice of the clouds to clear out during the eclipse.
It was 95% cloudy when we arrived, 95% cloudy when we woke up, and almost perfect for the eclipse. This was the only cloud action we had during the eclipse.
The moon at about 97% eclipsed last night. I'll probably have more images, but I'm still going through them.
A revision of M15. I was experimenting with being a little bolder, but not everybody was ready for it.
I finally got enough clear sky to finish that image of (the globular cluster) M15 I was working on.
A not entirely successful (it's awfully noisy) image of the comet 10P/Tempel. It's pretty close to the horizon, which is not ideal. I was shooting at a very short focal length, thinking I'd leave room for a tail, but the joke was on me because I couldn't even bring out a tail. I'll try this again in late November when it's higher over the horizon and I don't have to be up at 1:00 in the morning to try it.
Late in the eclipse.
I had a little bit of clear sky last night to finish this image of the Eastern Veil. I managed to bring it up very close to 9 hours of total exposure time.
The moon with Venus tonight.
n the past I've had really abysmal luck with meteor showers. But I did catch a couple of Perseids last night.
Orion is back in the pre-dawn sky. This is just a cell phone snapshot.
The moon and Venus again with a little extra mood thrown in.
The crescent moon at sunset.
This is five hours of the Eastern Veil Nebula in Cygnus. I wanted a lot more time to work on it. If I get any more, I'll redo this. But it's not looking good. It's looking like clouds and fog.
This is the globular cluster M15 in the constellation Pegasus. I was only able to get a little over an hour before the fog came in. I would definitely work on this more if I could get another clear night, but it remains to be seen whether I will.
EarthSky.org has their best deep sky photos from July collected and I was pleased to see the two of them are mine. https://earthsky.org/todays-image/best-deep-sky-photos-of-july-2026-from-earthsky-community/
I didn't think I was going to have clear skies last night, but I did have five clear hours. I used them to work some more on M27, the Dumbbell Nebula. It allowed me to bring out a little more detail on the very faint outer shell.
This is NGC 6820 in the constellation Vulpecula. It's one of my favorites with its very distinctive single pillar.
M104, the Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo.
The galaxies M81 and M82 in Ursa Major. They are very close together and very easy to frame together, so normally, they appear together in one photo. I decided to try processing them separately.
The moon tonight.
This is the Galaxy M83 in Hydra, sometimes called the Southern Pinwheel. It's primarily a southern hemisphere galaxy, never getting much over 24 degrees over the southern horizon from where I live. That makes it challenging, but I worked on this for six short nights and did my best.
This is the other thing I was working on last night. The Galaxy M101 in Ursa Major. But there was a lot of cloud action in the early part of the night, and I ended up with less than five hours of it. At least they were hours in a very dark sky.
Fortunately, I decided to take another crack at NGC 2683. I'm really glad I did because it came out much better this time.
A not too wildly successful image of the galaxy NGC 2683 in the constellation Lynx. It's sometimes called the UFO galaxy. It's really too small for my equipment, especially my north-facing equipment upstairs.
The globular cluster M5 in the constellation Serpens. A big, bright, beautiful cluster. It almost gives the Hercules cluster a run for its money.
Globular Cluster M3 in the constellation Canes Venatici.
A perfectly nice picture of the first quarter moon last night at sunset. I like the lighting. Trouble is, this was supposed to be an image of the lunar X and the lunar V, and they do not appear. The best time for viewing was during broad daylight, so that didn't help
The moon with Jupiter last night. This is the odd occasion where viewing with your eyes is actually more spectacular than a photo.
I haven't taken many solar images lately, but the sun continues to be interesting. I keep expecting it to get quiet and head for solar minimum, but I guess it's not ready yet.
@VA3DSO@mastodon.social Thanks, Rick. It's my pleasure to share the images. It would be a lot less fun to take them if nobody cared to see them.
This is the globular cluster M68 in Hydra, under a little too much moonlight.
The Spiral Galaxy M64 in Coma Berenices, commonly referred to as the black eye galaxy.
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You read a lot online about how this is brightening as the month goes on, but what they forget to tell you is that it's also dipping below the horizon during any reasonable nighttime hours, when you might... You know... actually see it.
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@mdione@en.osm.town it says 306, but that's ridiculous. At 306, it would just be a little spot. This practically filled the frame. I think somehow the zoom threw it off. It's not like a camera with a fixed focal length that can give you that information.
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@elaterite@mastoart.social Thank you.
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@bisamsee I agree the blob is something. Sometimes I think just the effort is something. So much better than staying inside. If it had a little star cluster at the end of it, it probably was Kemble's cascade.
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@elaterite@mastoart.social Thanks, Bob.
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@bisamsee That's my understanding as well. Young star clusters.
@thepoliticalcat@mastodon.social Wouldn't be the first constellation to leave me wondering.
@VA3DSO@mstdn.ca Sharing is the best part!
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@Mjhall@toot.community thanks, Matthew!
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@khan_gnot@tooting.ch yes, exactly. Two of the Galilean moons.
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@khan_gnot@tooting.ch either you're joking or you're looking at a crop thumbnail.
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@mdione@en.osm.town I took this with the camera I call my day camera. It's a Nikon P1000 with a 125x zoom. Because it's a zoom camera, it's a little hard to say exactly what my focal length was when I snapped this. It actually goes to 3,000 mm, but this wasn't that. If I had to estimate, I'd say 1,500.