M65, a few more photons in the mix

Another 38 minutes were added to the previous stack...Given the problems with vignetting (caused by using a 1.25" t-mount adapter; a 2" adapter is in the works) and that I have been shooting the Triplets in a single frame (causing ALL targets to be in an unfavorable part of the frame), I've reached a point of diminishing returns-this is now nearly two hours exposure at ISO 800. The good side of it all is that enough of the dark dust lanes are visible to show the galaxy's orientation, with the left edge toward us, and to show-just a little-how that band of dust is illuminated by the core, toward the bottom of the image.

This is the end of this stack; I'm going to try and get each individual Leo galaxy in the center of it's own image from now on, and give up on the "three-for-the-price-of-one" approach. I think that might be a workable idea, in a darker sky and drier air, so when that opportunity presents I'll try again for a nice picture of all three, M65, M66, and NGC 3628.

Now, if there would only be enough early evening clarity later in the week, once the moon moves on, to get some subs of M46 (one of the more interesting open clusters in a scope, since it contains a lovely little planetary nebula-which was captured beautifully by my friend Scott lately!) and some 10 to 15 second subs of the Trapezium, before it's too late to think about Orion this year. Also, the southwest quadrant of my local sky is the least light-polluted, so perhaps those subs could even be done at slower speeds for a little less noise. I really may need to make a night time drive to the hills next weekend while the opportunity is still there. I'd like to get as much of those targets around 5-6 hours R.A. now, so that I can compare my progress to them next year when they come around again. For now, the goal is to keep tweaking my equipment and shooting technique, continue learning ways to bend DSS and PS to my will, and be ready for a few weeks of collecting poor lost photons from Virgo. Virgo is absolutely the galaxy-lover's Garden of Paradise, from huge Messier Catalog Spirals to backgrounds loaded with tantalizing little oblong flecks, at every level of resolution from backyard hacks like me to the spectacular Hubble Deep Field pictures. Virgo is where you look if you want to glimpse just what "infinity" really means...if those views don't make your head spin a little, you aren't using your head properly.

I mentioned Scott above; a wickedly gifted musician I am lucky enough to play with weekly. It was one of his recent stacks of M42 in Orion that made me decide I simply had to start down this path-too many decades spent wishing I could see more, only to find out that the tools are there now for me to actually do it. Thanks, Scott!

There is a large part of me that can only see my own pictures in relation to those from real observatories, or even more belittling, Hubble. But on the other, hand, while these may not impress, I still am excited that I can pull these images out of the skies and equipment I have here and now, and I still remember college Astro classes where the supplied images actually had even less detail. I'm feeling an honest thrill from each set of exposures as it comes out of the computer; I can only imagine the excitement the great astronomers felt as they looked through the first of the large scopes in the 19th century and saw much of what I'm seeing now. And indeed, many of them were "gentleman scientists" with no more training, often far less, than we amateur telescopists have today. Each in our own way are struggling to make something of the limited number of photons we can get our grubby little hands on, while modern astronomy has moved off into areas we can't touch in our back yards.