Starlight Sandia Astronomy

Home
United States
Tijeras, NM
Starlight Sandia Astronomy

This is a page for me to post my Astrophotography images and discuss any Astronomy related topics.

08/16/2026

Here we have NGC6888, The Crescent Nebula located 5000 light years away in the constellation of Cygnus. The bubble of gas is shaped from the stellar winds from a dying Wolf-Rayet star.

This was a tough session. I haven't had a clear sky in a long time so I had to take advantage of less than ideal skies. That all worked out nicely until my powertank battery died mid-session. This tank should last me well over 8 hours with everything running. I think it might be reaching it's end of life.

Image Details:
Telescope: Celestron C8 EdgeHD with 0.7x reducer
Camera: ZWO ASI294mc Pro at -10C and unity gain
Exposures: 24 x 300 seconds, 2 hours total integration
Filter: Askar C1 dual narrowband Ha-OIII
Mount: Sky Watcher CQ350
Processing: PixInsight, Topaz Denoise

06/26/2026

Here we have the Spindle Galaxy M102 found 47 million lightyears away in the constellation of Draco. I saw a really awesome image from the Hubble of this galaxy showing a really cool dust lane that reminded me of the Hamburger and Sombrero galaxies. While I wouldn't call it a bad image I did find out why you don't see a lot of amateur images of this galaxy. It's just way too small even when using a fairly long focal length SCT. The details of the dust lane are barely there as seen in my extreme crop image. I was not sure I considered this image worthy of publishing as the main image doesn't show much and the detailed crop is effectively zoomed in to the point of pixel peeping but I decided to go ahead and do it anyway just for fun. What do you think?

Image Details:
Telescope: Celestron C8 EdgeHD with 0.7x reducer
Camera: ZWO ASI294mc Pro at unity gain and -10C
Exposures: 40 x 180 seconds
Filter: Baader UV/IR cut
Mount: Sky Watcher CQ350
Processing: Pixinsight

06/25/2026

It's been a while since I've been able to image anything. This weekend I took some data on M102. I'm starting to see why you don't see a lot of images of M102 that aren't from the Hubble. It's very small even for an SCT and the interesting dust lane is even smaller. We'll see if I can process a decent enough image to publish.

As a quick bonus, I shot this image yesterday of the 71% waxing Gibbous moon.

It's a pretty nice sharp image but I seem to have a hot pixel problem with my camera that I also saw in my M102 data. For some reason it didn't average out with stacking 😔. At least with Facebook, you can't zoom in close enough to see the problem.

Image details
Telescope: Celestron C8 EdgeHD with 0.7x reducer
Camera: Zwo ASI294mc Pro at -10C unity gain
Exposure: 300 frame, 2 minutes AVI video
Best 30% of frames stacked with Autostakkert
Processed in Registax and PixInsight.
Mount: Sky watcher CQ350

04/21/2026

Here we have the barred spiral galaxy M61. It located 55 million light years away in the constellation of Virgo. Also in the frame are a couple of other small galaxies NGC4292 and NGC4301. M61 is one of the larger galaxies in the Virgo cluster at about 7 arcminutes across. This image is a pretty heavy crop for a close in view.

Image Details:
Telescope: Celestron EdgeHD 800 with 0.7x reducer
Camera: ZWO ASI294mc Pro at -10C and unity gain
Filter: Baader UV/IR cut
Exposures: 33 x 180 seconds, 1.65 hours total integration
Mount: Sky Watcher CQ350
Processing: PixInsight

Address

Tijeras, NM
87059

Website

https://www.cloudynights.com/user/290371-rydeen-98/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Starlight Sandia Astronomy posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Want your business to be the top-listed Engineering Company in Tijeras?