Hersey – Page 9 – The Suffolk Sky

Penumbral Lunar Eclipse – March 25, 2024

March 25, 2024 by Hersey

In the early morning of March 25, 2024 there was a penumbral lunar eclipse. At 3:12 AM EDT around 95% of the Moon was in Earth’s penumbral shadow. I captured images of the Moon from just after the start of the eclipse…

No comment

Looking Back… STS-133 Space Shuttle Discovery Final Launch

March 19, 2024 by Hersey

Back on February 24, 2011 Sandy and I took the opportunity to travel down to Titusville, FL to witness the final launch of Space Shuttle Discovery on Mission STS-133. We actually made the trip down twice to see Shuttle Discovery fly this…

No comment

Planning for the April 2024 Solar Eclipse

March 13, 2024 by Hersey

On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will be visible across a good portion of North America: passing over Mexico, the eastern half of the United States, and Canada. Even though Virginia is not in the path of totality we still…

No comment

03/11/2024 – Headphone Nebula March 2024 TOTM

March 12, 2024 by Hersey

It’s been a bit since we have had a nice Moonless clear sky. Monday night, 3/11/2024, was a very nice night for looking up. Cool, but not too cold, with temperatures in the mid-to-low 40s. Very clear, no Moon, and only a…

No comment

02/13/2024 – Couple of Favorites… The Horsehead and a Flame…

February 14, 2024 by Hersey

Earlier in the day it was windy, stormy, and we even lost power for a little over an hour, but as it got later in the afternoon the wind died down and the skies cleared up. It was a bit cooler than…

No comment

Learning KStars/Ekos – Using Flags

February 12, 2024 by Hersey

Weather has been pretty crappy, looks like our next chance for clear skies is on Tuesday. Hope to get a bit of time on Goofi’s February 2024 challenge, IC 434 (the Horsehead Nebula) when the sky clears up. With all the clouds…

No comment

02/07/2024 – More Time on a Couple of Planetary Nebulas

February 8, 2024 by Hersey

A nice cool and very clear Moonless night. I was able to capture a little more than 3 1/2 hours of light from the planetary nebulas PK 136+05 and PN G136.1+04.9. The planetary nebula PK 136+05, aka Hechathorn-Fesen-Gull 1 of HFG1, is…

No comment

02/05/2024 – Planetary Nebula PK 136+05 and PN G136.1+04.9

February 6, 2024 by Hersey

Clear and cold night with no Moon! Great night to collect some light from Hechathorn-Fesen-Gull 1 (aka HFG1 or PK 136+05) a planetary nebula located in the constellation of Cassiopeia. HFG1 is the SkyWatcherUSA Target of the Month (TOTM) for February 2024….

No comment

Automating Image Processing Using Siril Scripts…

January 28, 2024 by Hersey

Siril is a powerful freeware astronomical image processing tool. One of the features of Siril which I find very useful (and fun to tinker with) is the ability to automate image pre-processing and processing tasks using scripts. Automating things like creating master…

No comment

Observation Planning… What is there to see?

January 26, 2024 by Hersey

There are countless (thousands, 10s of thousands, millions, billions) objects in the night sky. There are many object catalogs (NGC, Messier, IC, Caldwell, Barnard, LBN, PGC, UGC, Abell, etc…). Not all of these objects and catalogs are available in every planetarium program,…

No comment