And We're Back...

After a break of just over a year and a half it is time for me to start blogging again.

Since mid November of 2020 I have been spending a lot more time under the night sky imaging astronomical objects from my backyard (also while I sit comfortably inside too).  The main reason for my change in behavior has been because I decided to purchase an eVscope from Unistellar Optics.

The telescope, pictured at left with the constellation Orion in the background, is a 4.5" telescope with an imaging system fully integrated into it. It is controlled by an app from a smartphone or tablet and it is amazingly easy to use. It is every easy to set up and its low weight makes it extremely portable (though I pretty much never go anywhere except my backyard). 

My yard is small and there are many tall trees nearby which can block large portions of the sky. This means that some parts of my yard have a good view of the east, others the south and there's one particular spot that has a limited view of the west. For any traditional backyard observing this would be a huge challenge, but not for the eVscope. It is not uncommon for me to finish looking/imaging at one part of the sky and then pick up my telescope to move it to another part of the yard. It is then a simple matter for the telescope to figure out where I've moved it to (an operation that takes less than a minute) and then we're off to the next target. 

With this telescope I have been able to successfully image the Moon, stars, galaxies, asteroids (including making citizen science observations of an asteroid occultation), comets, Kuiper Belt Objects, supernovae and more. 

I post a lot of my pics on social media, but I'll be using this space to put some of them here where I've got the room to talk about whatever moves me. 

So I figure I can't get away from this post without leaving at least one astrophoto here, so have a look at the galaxy known as Centaurus A:

Centaurus A is a peculiar galaxy which lies over 10 million light years away. It is possibly a giant elliptical galaxy, but it has a major dust lane cutting across it, which is not a thing that giant elliptical galaxies usually have. Like most big galaxies Centaurus A has a supermassive black hole at its center (this one has a mass 55 million times greater than our Sun!), but this one is quite active emitting radio waves, X-rays and jets of gas moving at relativistic speeds (none of which are visible here).

I had only seen this galaxy though a telescope just once before and I was a little worried that I might not be able to pick this up with my new telescope as it is a southern object that never gets very high in the sky for northern observers. I looked the best possible time, but even so it less than 15 degrees above the horizon and just over a big hill (some might call it a small mountain) that almost blocked my view. I am happy that my eVscope delivered a nice view of this mysterious galaxy though its electronic eyepiece and I was able to capture the image above. 

I've taken a great many images of astronomical objects in the eight months that I've owned this telescope, so expect to see more of them here soon.