#astrocelltography

October 10: 🩷 aurorae 💚

October 15-17 💫 a comet + Hunter's Moon 🌕

The Strawberry Supermoon 🍓🌕🍓

One more for the night. It wouldn’t be a proper Social Distance Stargazing session without a little astrocelltography! 

This evening, I had a solid observing session. Given all the light pollution, and less than perfect skies, I’m still pretty darn proud of how these turned out. 

Mercury (photo 1-2): first photo was taken with iPhone XR using the NightCap app. Second was with the Canon M50. This little planet just happens to be my favorite. The length of a day on Mercury is about 59 Earth days, but a year is only 88 Earth days, making it the worst place for Monday to possibly exist. 

M44, the Beehive Cluster (partial): these bees aren’t bees. They don’t make honey, but they are known to host these sweet exoplanets known as Hot Jupiters; massive gas giants that closely orbit their home stars. 

M13, the Hercules Cluster: in the 1970’s, we beamed a ‘WYD?’ message towards this massive cluster, from the Arecibo Observatory, with our location and our deets. It’s unknown if M13 ever received our message; if so, it left us on ‘Read’. 

Arcturus: located in the constellation Böotes, its official abbreviation is Alpha Boo, which is kind of hilarious. The light emitted from this red giant is about 37 years old, and its the fourth brightest in the night sky.

The nucleus of a comet. This shot was very VERY hard to get between humidity, light pollution, and my not steady hands. While it isn’t very good, it’s NEOWISE using a Celestron 90mm SLT telescope, a 32mm eyepiece, and an iPhone. Edited in PS Express.