Thursday, December 14, 2023

My Trifid Nebula image featured in national astronomy magazine

Received a surprise in the mail, this week!
Honored!!!
My M20 nebula image featured in a printed national astronomy magazine!
"Reflector" magazine is published by the Astronomical League. My original image that they featured is here: http://jeffjastro.com/dso/M20_24May23.htm
#astronomy

Monday, December 4, 2023

Composite from the Total Annular Eclipse

On 14 October 2023, I went to Roswell, New Mexico to view the Total Annular Eclipse with my loved ones. It was AMAZING!!!

Friday, November 10, 2023

Email from BBC Sky at Night Magazine!!!! (and my FIRST LIGHT image!)

Super excited after receiving this email the other morning!!! 😍💪🔭

"Hi Jeffrey I’m emailing because we’d like to use your image of NGC 7331 in the January issue of BBC Sky at Night Magazine, in our Gallery section."

🤩🤩🤩 THIS one --- and this (NGC 7331) was also my First Light image with my completely new setup: TPO 12" RC Truss-tube, Astro-Physics AP1100GTO Mount!!!

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Galaxy NGC 3718 --- and friends!

Here is my latest result from the TOA scope and from my backyard in New Mexico, USA - this is two nights of data from back in May. This was my FIRST time to try this interesting target!
Here (below) are some notes on it. I have more info/capture details at my site: http://jeffjastro.com/dso/NGC3718_24May23.htm
Galaxy NGC 3718 --- and friends! 52 million light years distant...and that small group of galaxies next to it is 400 million light years away 😮 😊 🤩

From wiki:
NGC 3718, also called Arp 214, is a galaxy located approximately 52 million light years from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major.[4][2][5] It is either a lenticular or spiral galaxy. NGC 3729 is a barred spiral galaxy located in the constellation Ursa Major. It is located at a distance of circa 65 million light years from Earth, which, given its apparent dimensions, means that NGC 3729 is about 60,000 light years across. It was discovered by William Herschel on April 12, 1789.
There are several theories and model results of the possibility of past gravitational intereaction between NGC 3718 and NGC 3729, one paper is here: https://arxiv.org/abs/1504.03691
#deepsky #galaxies #ccd

Sunday, September 10, 2023

M20 - Trifid Nebula

Hi all ... here is my latest result from my backyard in Las Cruces, NM (using a portable setup that I setup each night, and take down again each morning).
- the Trifid Nebula (M20) - approx 4,100 light years away!

More info/details: http://jeffjastro.com/dso/M20_24May23.htm

Thursday, August 24, 2023

NGC 5907 - Knife Edge Galaxy.

NGC 5907 - Knife Edge Galaxy. Distance: 53 Million Light Years (my first time capturing this object) TOA-130F, AP1100GTO, QSI 690wsg. Las Cruces, NM USA (from my backyard) Even at 1000mm focal length, this is a small/dim/tough target. More details: http://jeffjastro.com/dso/NGC5907_7May23.htm

Saturday, July 15, 2023

More Scotland!

Urquhart Castle here! Castle dates back to the 1200's ... and was occupied until 1692!

Sunday, June 25, 2023

Scotland, Harry Potter, and Castles!

Slight sidebar from astro stuff :)
Just returned from a trip to London and Scotland (focus on Scotland)!
Here are just two photos that I took - one of Dunnottar Castle (east coast of Scotland) and one from the Jacobite Steam Train along the viaduct (featured in the Harry Potter movie)!

Visited several castles and also the BEAUTIFUL Scotland Highlands areas where both Braveheart as well James Bond "Skyfall" were filmed! Hope to post more pics soon!

Monday, April 3, 2023

Featured in Astronomical League's PRINTED magazine!!!

Honored!! My NGC 206 image is featured in the Astronomical League's "Reflector" magazine (Mar 2023, Vol 75, No 2). (and featured as First image in Gallery!!!)

"Reflector" is a *printed* magazine where my work has been featured before (for those of you tracking) :) The Astronomical League consists of over 240 amateur astronomical societies across the United States.

The original version I have here on my page as well as at my main site. This is the image where you can "see stars in ANOTHER galaxy!"

Woohoo!!!

Original: http://jeffjastro.com/dso/NGC206_28Oct22.htm
#astronomy #astronomical #galaxies #deepsky

Saturday, February 25, 2023

Published twice in UK Magazines

Hi all,
Well, as is often the case I found out wayyyy after the fact --- and by accident --- that I have had three of my images (from my backyard in Las Cruces) published in two different volumes of an astronomy magazine in the UK! (printed publication)
A mix of a galaxy, a reflection nebula, and a planetary nebula. M101, M78, and M27, respectively.
Super honored. They did have errors in that for all three of the images I in fact used my TOA-130F scope, not the FS-60C.
Here are screengrabs from the publication - I am going to order the backcopies of each and have them sent just for memories.

Saturday, February 4, 2023

Some believe "RGB only! We don't need Lum" ... but, data disputes that.

As a professional research scientist (career), I am against arbitrarliy throwing away data (in this case, photons). There are some trying to convince others that, "You don't need Lum...you can simply use RGB alone" ... Well, I will let the spectral plot speak for itself. There are some who want to use "AI" and "noise reduction" to essentially INVENT missing data that they decided wasn't important enough to collect (aka, they want to "skip Lum data").
Why ignore photons? I have no idea. As a scientist conducting basic research, in my mind ignoring data and attempting to re-create it later is just an exercise in futility.

If one wants the full visible spectrum of data...then one needs to collect the full visible spectrum of data - else, DATA WILL BE MISSING. And no amount of "AI" or so-called "noise reduction" will ever bring it back. Period.
In the past, I experimented with 1x1 binning with BOTH Lum and RGB. Same night, same camera, same telescope, and exact same data collection period/window. Even when RGB had a total amount of photon collection GREATER than Lum, it still was missing data (as expected). I want to emphasize...this data collection was nearly a decade ago (and collected for a different purpose - but it still hammers the point home).

RAW FITS DATA ONLY ... ZERO processing... ZERO.

Again... I'll let the data (image - uncompressed TIFF) speak for itself.

LUM (70mins total) on Left ---- RGB (75mins total) on Right

Thursday, January 12, 2023

Huge honor! My image on SPACE.COM (reference article)

Hi all ... HUGE HONOR...
SPACE.COM has a featured article specifically on the Pleiades star cluster (M45) ... and for the main/lead-in photo... they used MY image of Pleiades!

You can see their article here: https://www.space.com/pleiades.html

So honored!!!
-Jeff J.