My astrophotography 2021

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Just to add one last photo edit. The big dipper, again.

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2021-6-30

Venus bids farewell to June of 2021.

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Coma galaxy cluster is among the top objects that most fascinate me. But difficult to photograph. Tried shooting it with a small refractor (115mm) but only captured some barely identifiable smudges. So this year decided to try the remote iDK20. Even after 100 minutes of total exposure time, the galaxies are still quite dim -- low signal to noise ratio.





Anyway, one more item has been ticked for this year.

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2021-7-3 The weather turned bad in the afternoon and there was little hope for a chance of observing Venus in the midst of transiting M44. Fortunately it turned out better, and Venus became visible briefly through the gaps of the clouds.

I regret not closing down the aperture -- otherwise the brightest planet here would not look nothing more than a bright blob.

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2021-7-6

AT2021pit, a very bright supernova for 2021, in the galaxy NGC1488.

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C101, a large spiral galaxy similar in form to our home galaxy, sits 30mly away.

Very beautiful spiral arms.

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2021-7-8 after s series of disappointing evenings/mornings (bad weathers always), this morning saw cloudy skies at 4AM. But there seems to be a possibility that the weather would turn a little better, or worse. I took the chance and went up to the bridge near Lorong Halus --- a site I had never used before to watch and photograph night skies. Reached there but no visual of already risen Moon and Mercury. Today's conjunction was my last chance to capture the two together before both move too close to the sun.

Luckily, Moon was first spotted in the cloud gap. Time went by to see the sky was cleared slowly but steadily. Thanks for the fantastic twilight views!

My first astrophoto with the 70mmAPO and a FF camera (just received the T2 adapter yesterday afternoon!)





Today I carried and tested most of my prime lenses + the small APO. Here is one taken with Rokinon 10mmF2.8 (for APSC cams, equav. to 15mm on FF). Not bad at F4, excellent at F5.6.

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2021-7-10 Early morning. Clouds again destroyed my plan to photograph M45-Haydes rising. But the M31 region was relatively clear until past 6. Some mistakes spoilt a couple dozens of frames, and I managed to collect 24x30s exposures only. To my pleasant suprise, the stacked image shows the form of M31 well, against all the odds (135mmF2 lens and stock camera Sony a7RII, definitely not a good combination for this target -- and heavy cropping is necessary)



Anyway, this marks the not-too-bad beginning of my 2021 campaign to collect M31 image data.

Shot a super wide angle image of the stars. The image helps me recognise the constellations.

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Seriously, how do I delete a post?

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2021-7-10 No show of sunset thanks to the clouds again. But in the twilight the clouds slowly dispersed and Venus began to dazzle.

It has got a sizable halo.