Well I finally have an new image to share. I have experienced some technical difficulties (my NEW laptop had a system crash) and flaky weather has been a problem, but I managed to get this galaxy imaged and processed.So you are asking yourself, "what is the deal with those funky names for galaxies and such"? Well, the "M" stands Messier... Charles Messier. Who the heck is that?
Well ol' Chuck was an 18th century French astronomer who really dug comets. I mean this guy just looked and looked for comets. Sometimes he would find a bright fuzzy object in his telescope and get all excited, then he would would discover it was NOT a comet and get all pissed off, record its position, and give it a number -- that way nobody would be fooled again! After a while he had a whole catalogue of "not comets". This catalogue is now refered to as the Messier Catalogue of objects and contains some of the best and brightest deepsky objects (nebulae, galaxies, star clusters).
So here is my image of the "not comet" M63 -- a beautiful galaxy (also known as the Sunflower Galaxy).
Vital Stats:
FSQ 106ED f/8
EM 200 Autoguided
QHY8 camera
DSS, CS3
13 x 15min
3 comments:
Fantastic, as always, John...
WOW what an astounding Who am I description you wrote. Your so excited about the nite sky ! A reader of mine passed it along to me and very interesting to visit. Love the photo of the night sky, 2 people , telescope and computer screen, cozy picture.
Keep up the great sharing! Enjoying it.
Thanks for the comment Bob!
And thank YOU NiteSkyGirl for your nice comments. Yup, I love this stuff. Whenever I feel myself getting "old and cynical", I get out in the country and do some star gazing. It really re-connects me to the big picture and makes me excited about the universe we live in.
There are so many mysteries and questions we will never be able to answer. But THAT is what makes life so enchanting -- the eternal quest for answers. We live in a fascinating universe!
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