Jedolby

Sometimes when I'm searching for supernovae, my telescope-pointing software reveals an asteroid in the area of my target galaxy. If it's a brighter asteroid, and if there is something appealing about the naming of the asteroid, I'll take a detour from my primary interest and grab some images of the asteroid. Other times, I might come across in my reading a reference to an asteroid that was named after a famous person or place, which makes me want to seek out and get an image of the asteroid to add to my collection. This requires that I do a little homework to determine the best viewing window of the asteroid, which often requires waiting up to a year or more. I typically mark these on my kitchen calendar, so that I'll have a reminder. My image above, of asteroid (1052) Belgica, falls under the category of the latter. As discussed in my post about Terence Dickinson last year, there are thousands of famous persons who have been honored by naming minor planets after them,...

A YouTuber (Tsula's Big Adventures) recently posted a video about trying to find a small planetary nebula known as M1-64, an object that she referred to as "The Little Ring Nebula." She made several attempts to find it with various telescopes, and when she finally was able to see it through the eyepiece of her 15-inch Dobsonian, she made a sketch (above, left side). I was curious about M1-64, so I took a picture of it tonight (right side), to find out what it looks like in my 12-inch telescope. I added the lines to some asterisms to make the comparison between her sketch and my photo easier. The sketch Tsula made of the starfield surrounding M1-64 is quite good, but it reveals some of the pitfalls of astrosketching. Many years ago, whenever you'd come across an amateur astronomer's sketch of a celestial object in the astronomy magazines, it usually would be accompanied by a photograph of the same object. But often times, the emulsion-based photograph was a deep (o...

Recently, I watched yet another YouTube amateur astronomer introduce his series of astrophotography "how-to" videos. There is a plethora of such videos on YouTube. They're all well done. I can't complain about the quality of their information or the quality of their productions, but one thing I always gripe about (if only to myself) is their dismissal of visual (regarded as old-fashioned) astronomy.  Astrophotography has gained quite a following since the invention of the digital camera, the auto-guider, and the Go-To telescope. I might also include, since the invention of the "smart telescopes," like the Unistellar, SeeStar, Dwarf, and Celestron's Origin. All of these inventions can be compared to AI tech. They have removed much of the work and, sadly, the human talent and understanding from traditional astrophotography.  The computer is the lowest common denominator to astrophotography in the "smart era." Computer algorithms have invaded all ...