2015-08-29

A warm and dark summer night in August, what could be a more delightful startup of the season? Ok, the sky was not perfect as the moon lit it up after a while, but a large and bright cluster always delivers 😉 Looking forward to a dark a clear autumn!

M13 – Hercules cluster

2015-04-19

I took a chance to get a last picture of this season when I got to Gothenburg. The expression “a shot in the dark” got a new meaning this night as the skies was getting to bright to capture deep sky objects with good results. Anyway I decided to try capture Jupiter next the the open star cluster M67. I used my ordinary DSLR with the zoom lens mounted on the Astrotrac. In the rush to get all done and go to bed I forgot to take darks so the resulting picture is quite noisy 🙁

Jupiter with moons & M67

2015-04-25

I have just added a new TIMELAPSE movie to the library. Me and Jakob put it together last night using material from our last astronomy session at Ekerö 13th &14th of March.

I am quite pleased with the result and those of you who don´t know what astrophotography is all about could get a glimpse here.

2015-03-20

This was just pure luck for a brief moment 🙂 I went skiing with my employer knowing I was going to miss a solar eclipse of over 90 percent. Of course…if the weather turned out to be on my side a was probably going to see it but I had no hope of catching it in a picture. But what are you know 🙂 …when the eclipse was at its maximum the clouds let just enough light through for me to get a snapshot. It is not a superb picture, but I am pleased with the result knowing that it is taken with my mobile phone!

Solar Eclipse

2015-03-13, 2015-03-14

At last a weekend with acceptable weather and a lot of spare time 🙂 This was the first serious session of this season. All other weekends there has been either lack of time for stargazing, or bad weather which almost have driven me nuts. But this time all seemed to be right and we planned for two nights in a row to get as much as possible out of the situation. The only sad thing is that from now on it is starting to get to bright at nights (when we get closer to the summer) to shoot dim objects, so this was probably not just the FIRST good nights this season but also the LAST.

Anyway…the first night it was clear and good skies and I decided to make a more serious try of M81 than done before. The object is quite small so the big 12″ SCT with its long focal length seemed to be perfect for this purpose. I also tried out with a new object, the NGC6543 nebula. With this object however I discovered that the nebulosity around the center is very dim so the next time I am going to use a much longer exposure. The other night was a little bit blurry, and the smoggy atmosphere was lit up by the city lights. This is far from ideal conditions for shooting galaxies but I made a try of NGC891 anyway and I am quite pleased with the result I must say. The M105 object however is not a pretty site. But it was a first try in poor conditions so I am not very surprised.

I had a serious problem stacking the pictures as Deep Sky Stacker couldn´t detect any stars. Friendly souls on Cloudynights forum tried to help me with various tips but in the end I realised that it was the program that was corrupt. After I reinstall it all worked out just fine 🙂

The last 5 pictures was taken with a different optical line mounted on Jakob´s EQ6-mount. We used two different APO-refractors with two different field flatteners. Sadly we had some problems with the William-Optics telescope getting a clear picture resulting in a couple of mediocre pictures. But overall I think the pictures was a success, especially the Jellyfish 🙂

M81 – Bodes galaxy

NGC6543

NGC891

M105

Barnard 33 region

IC443 – Jellyfish nebula

NGC7023 – Iris nebula

M78

NGC2903

2015-02-08

I have just added a SLIDESHOW that I have been working on this autumn together with Jakob. It is a recall of our astronomy experiences over the last 12 years. From the first session ever together and as far as september this autumn.

I must say there has been quite a journey and I have learned a lot since the time when the first photos in the show were taken 🙂

2015-01-02

We went to a ski resort called Tandådalen to do some skiing and to celebrate the new year. One night we took a short walk and stumbled over a spectacular show in the sky. I didn’t have much time nor the right equipment to get a good picture so the result (at the well chosen viewing site) is due to that. But these occasions are rare so I just had to go for it.

Aurora borealis in Tandådalen

2014-11-22

I have added a MOVIE FUNCTION to the website 🙂 From now on you can watch my own produced film material, both regarding astronomy and also other occasions. The first film out is a timelapse movie me and Jakob produced from our camping visit this summer.

2014-10-28

The weather is driving me nuts! Two weekends straight it has been a Venus-like atmosphere. Me and Jakob have wished for a sky free of clowds for three weeks now and we really had hopes for the coming Friday. This was going to be the first real astronomy session of the year. The weather this week has been good so far with clear skyes both day and night, but the weather forecast is now talking about clowds just in time for the night we planned for. This is humiliating! 🙁

In the absence of the real deal I made a try this Tuesday from my balcony again. The main goal was to try out the new field flattener which arrived last week, and I must say the difference from the last picture is clearly visible. Can you see it? 🙂

NGC281 – Pacman Nebula

I really hope now that the weather will be a little better from now on because the sky quality is mostly limited from Älvsjö!

2014-10-17

This night was going to be the first serious session of the season. Me and Jakob went out to Ekerö in hope that we were going to catch Eris for the first time. As usual the weather was not on our side, but we also had a couple of things to do indoors to optimize the equipment so this was not a critical issue. I had a problem with the optical line of the APO that needed to be fixed and we also had to update the astro-computer and install some new programs.

It was an exclusively indoor night with a lot of geeky discussions and internet surfing on new equipment and issues. One new problem that came up was when we were trying to remote control my LX200 from the computer. For Jakobs EQ6-mount from Skywatcher there is a brilliant program from ASCOM for that purpose called EQMOD, but we weren’t able to find a good substitute for the LX200 🙁 Anyone who knows about such a program ??