Sometimes I feel like I have three full time jobs. The day job at LunarG, writing for Sky & Telescope takes more time than you’d think, and I’m heavily involved in this new gizmo that is being made by Pegasus Astro. Another small treat each month is writing an article for the folks at Sky Safari on some astrophotography target of the month. This month is Messier 81, or Bodes Galaxy as it is sometimes listed. If you have Sky Safari and the Premium subscription, click on the ‘Tonight” icon, and you’ll find these under “Featured Story” for a couple of weeks each month.
While working on Junes edition this last weekend, I was looking for a good image of this galaxy, and I really wasn’t satisfied with anything I’d done recently. Then I remembered 9 years ago while working on a review of Sky-Watcher’s 12″ Quattro reflector, that I had gotten a great image of this galaxy with my Starlight Xpress Trius 694 CCD. The image still just didn’t seem up to my standard. Recently however, I’d gone through the process or organizing all my astronomical data, and I quickly found the original data from that night. May of 2016. That’s some old data, but it was great data and with 9 more years of experience processing with PixInsight and friends, I was able to quickly produce the above image, which I’m not too ashamed of. If you want to know more about this galaxy, you should get yourself a copy of Sky Safari 😉
Keep your original data folks. I remember that night too. It was only a few months after loosing my youngest son in a skiing incident in Montana. The loss of a child makes everything wonderful taste like ashes for a while, and I thought a night under the stars might bring back some light. It did not. If you are struggling with this, get some help. Some time, and some help did in fact eventually bring back singing sillily in the car, and the joy of being under the stars for me. The original processing of this data was no doubt rushed and robotic at that time too. It’s been lying in wait all this time waiting for me to give it the treatment it deserved. Finally, here it is. This one is for you Alex.