A Clear Night in February
I have been wanting to see comet 19P Borrelly but the weather was not cooperating in early February until the nights of 18th and 19th when the skies were beautiful, clear, and cold. I went outside, rolled off the roof of my observatory, synced my LX200 to the sky and then went back inside where it was much warmer and proceeded to find the comet and begin imaging.
I admit it is not much to look at but it shows a dim tail to the right. On the 18th the comet was 1.4 AU from the Earth or 11.3 light minutes which ever you prefer. This comet was visited by the Deep Space Spacecraft in 2001. The P in front of its name stands for Periodic. It orbits the sun each 6.8 years.
Next I imaged Messier 36, 37, and 38 in the constellation Auriga that is overhead in the Winter months.
After Imaging these three clusters I thought I would attempt Messier 42 and Messier 43 because the sky was so clear. I thought the image came out with a lot of beautiful subtle detail.
Messier 82, the cigar galaxy, was lower in the eastern sky above the Big Dipper. Some years ago I imaged a supernova in this galaxy that could be seen in with the unaided eye through my telescope. The supernova was a thousand times farther away than any of the other skies I could see in my telescope that night, being about 12 million light years away.
NGC 2392, a planetary nebula also known as the Eskimo nebula, was a pleasant surprise to me. The striking subtle and bright shades of blue are a wonder to look at.
Another open cluster NGC 2158 just to the right of Messier 35. When you move your scope to the right of Messier 35 you will be pleasantly surprised to see this dimmer, smaller, and condensed open cluster.
Finally I took this very deep image of Abell 426. This is a group of galaxies from 200 to 350 million light years distance from us. Nine of the brightest galaxies are labeled while there are others that are not.
As I concluded my evening of imaging I felt satisfied that I had touched the infinity of the night sky in a small way.
