Vern’s Weblog

The space turtle, NGC 6210 in Hercules,  is a bright bluish planetary in the constellation  Hercules. In the below image four jets can be seen extending outward from the central gas cloud.

Image taken on April 20, 2006 at 06:30 UT from Louisville, CO with Celestron Nexstar11 telescope, Meade F3.3 focal reducer, and Astrovid Stellacam II video camera. Camera set to integrate 128 frames, medium gamma, and 9/14 gain. Image was dark subtracted, flat field and bias corrected.

NGC 6229 is a faint, 9th magnitude, globular cluster in Hercules with a compact central core and some granulation appearing in the outer halo.

Image taken June 20, 2006 at 05:33 UT, Louisville, CO with Celestron Nexstar11, AptAstro wedge, Meade F3.3 focal reducer, and Astrovid Stellacam II video camera, gain 9/14, integerate 128 , and medium gamma. Temperature was 68°F, no wind, partly cloudy,  transparency good,  and turbulence was 5/10. Dark subtracted, flat field and bias corrected.

The M92 globular cluster in the constellation Hercules is not as impressive as its neighbor M13, but it is still a great object. The core is bright and very compact and surrounded by an outer core.

Image taken June 20, 2006 at 05:33 UT at Louisville, CO with Celestron Nexstar11 on AptAstro wedge, Meade F3.3 focal reducer, and Astrovid Stellacam II video camera at 128 integration (4.25 sec), medium gamma, 9/14 gain. Weather was party cloudy, temperature 68°F, transparency good, no wind.  10 min video was dark subtracted, flat field and bias corrected, aligned and stacked with Registax3.

Last night the sky was clear for maybe 10 or 15 minutes and then totally overcast for about the same time. I either had to put my toys away early or else try for whatever might be in the clear. Never being one to go to bed early, I noticed that Messier 57 happened to be in the clear so I captured a 10 minute video while I checked the lists to see what was open.

Equipment used was Celestorn Nexstar11 mounted on AptAstro wedge, Meade F3.3 focal reducer, and AstroVid Stellacam II video camera set to integrate 128 (4.25 sec), gamma at medium, and gain at 9/14. Partly cloudy, temperature was 68°F, no wind, transparency varied from very good to poor.

I counted about 10 spots in region 10892 near mid-disk with 80mm Stellarvue A1010 refractor with Baader filter and Televue Zoom eyepiece at 8mm.  Region 10893 futher to the east (left) had 8. Both have grown quite a bit since I observed them a couple days ago.  Partly cloudy, turbulence 6-7/10, transparency good, temperature of 85°F at 11:50am MDT when the series of white light images was taken.

The h-alpha showed some brightening around region 10892 near mid-disk when this image was taken at 11:34 am MDT with Solarview 50 h-alpha telescope, Televue 2.5X Powermate, and Canon 300D DSLR.