While we were all oohing and aahing over the Southern Lights on Saturday night I had my trusty Dwarfii with me. We'd been joined by a middle aged lady with a cellphone and enthusiasm but no knowledge, so between Aurora visits I cast about for an interesting galaxy to show her.
Rob suggested Centaurus A. This amazing celestial spectacle might be a spiral galaxy colliding with a larger elliptical galaxy, and there's a relativistic jet emitting from the supermassive black hole in the middle of it - heady stuff.
What is known for certain, from the party observing on Saturday night was that it looks a lot more like a hamburger than the galaxy nicknamed the Hamburger Galaxy ( NGC 3628 looks more like a hotdog to me) - specifically something from the Hungry Jack's / Burger King stable.
So I'm going to call it the Aussieburger Galaxy. It's possible that the supermassive black hole is the beetroot. We could definitely see the sesame seeds and the pickles.
This image is less than 200 frames, but with a bit of tweaking in Google photos it's acceptable viewing, and a bit of fun. I think the cloud coming in might have halted my stacking. I'd like to revisit this one again soon.
And the nice lady who'd wandered down to get a shot of the aurora with her old iphone? With the help of some advice and my monopod she caught it, and apparently is all fired up to get a Dwarfii of her own, and we have already set a stardate with her this week. Lovely!
A revisit of Antares, from a night or too ago, which I'd previously visited in dark sky country in March. But this is from my driveway. One with, and one without post processing. Post processing care of me thrusting my tablet at @rdm and saying "Have some fun with this" while I was doing something else. Probably Snapseed and Google Photos.
So, I bet you're all wondering whether the stars were right for me yesterday - or rather were the clouds right?
So last night I wandered out onto the driveway after dinner and looked West, and there was a definite band of cloud smudging there. But it seemed thin, and there were gaps, so I said, oh well, let's go down there [personal profile] rdm and give it a burl.
So like any astrophotographer seduced by what I'm told is called a Sucker Hole (that gap in the clouds just big enough to get you to get all your gear out that then closes up on you just when you're ready) we drove on down to Brighton Beach where there's a grassy sward, and close parking.
And there was cloud, but only close to the horizon. We couldn't see Comet Pons Brooks with the naked eye, but the DwarfII's were picking it up just fine once we got them calibrated. The wind was making things tricky, and I was sweating bullets for a few minutes as the calibration needed a couple of goes.
But I got a few shots! I'm so pleased, I didn't want to have to do this all again 71 years from now.
Check it out! There's some satellites or space junk photobombing here and there. These photos aren't cropped or have had any work. The comet is apparently about 1/4 the size of the moon in apparent size - but I had difficulty spotting it with the binoculars, car lights behind me and watering eyes. This is why I really appreciate the Dwarfii. I'll have to try again, because I would like to see it. Don't think it'll happen until perhaps the weekend when the rain is said to perhaps stop for a bit. But we'll see.
Later when I tried to get my usual shot of SN 2024ggi the stacking was really playing up so only about half of the 224 frames stacked properly. All 224 frames are there, though, so I should be able to use Siril to get it to stack later.
And here's the attempt at the Supernova. No post prod, but it's there. Still.
We had settled next to a bunch of Chilean expatriots who were very interested so we talked to them for a bit before I gave up on trying to shoot the supernova at the windy beach and departed for my somewhat less windy driveway. Still had the stacking problem but not quite as bad.
Luckily the comet only needed about 10 frames.
So I'm a very pleased leece, yesterday I finally got the comet, and today I got rain! I'd been feeling a bit down yesterday, but I felt quite uplifted paying my respects to this 71 year infrequent flyer, and talking to the Chilean folks, and wrapping myself around a nice thermos of chai [personal profile] rdm made us and a couple of chocolate biscuits.