Jupiter, Dec 11 2011

Here's Jupiter and Europa from Sunday night through the 9.25" scope. The Southern Equatorial Belt is back this year!

Supernova SN 2011dh

Last night I took a very brief exposure of the Whirlpool Galaxy supernova that was discovered by amateurs last week. I may be able to observe it visually if it keeps brightening at it's current rate.

Here's an image of the same galaxy that I took in May 2009:

Wednesday's Saturn

We had a clear night last week! It wasn't even that cold. I reassembled the big scope and snapped a pic of Saturn.

The Trapezium

Here are two pics of the Trapezium star cluster. It's embedded in the center of the Great Orion Nebula. These images are from a week ago, we had a nice clear night here. I had imaged the Trapezium previously with my old camera; I don't think I captured any more detail this time but the color balance is much better IMO. The first picture is in true color.



The second is a false color image that includes near-infrared light - this allows you to see more stars that are otherwise obscured by all the dust in the nebula.