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Posted November 24, 2018
NGC 7000 - ZWO ASI585MC Air First Light
Setup and polar alignment for the portable astro rig was super fast. I was using the bluetooth connection to the AM3N mount, but switched to USB (short USB C to A cable from the back of the saddle to the 585MC Air). North America nebula (NGC 7000) is always a good bright test target for a new camera (when M42 or M31 aren't available). Clouds moved in around 2:30 in the morning and I ended up with 81 x 120-second clean subs, no calibration frames, no filters (other than the built-in UV/IR cut). So, this is pretty close to real color as captured by the camera, the stars and a nice mix of hydrogen-alpha and oxygen 3 (ionized oxygen). The "Cygnus Wall" is well-defined. I ran the ASI585MC at -10C with a gain of 250 at the low noise drop. #astrophotography #astronomy #night #space
The articulated arm in the from holds my phone for polar alignment. The battery is the ECO-WORTHY Portable 12V 20Ah (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GXVL4JRF). I'm still testing it out, to see if I can run this rig the whole night with 20AH capacity--okay so far. We'll see how it does in the winter with longer colder nights. The size and weight are perfect and it has a 5.5mm x 2.5mm jack for power and charging. The whole setup runs on one 12v line from the battery to the AM3. I have a bag just for the tripod and the polar alignment arm. Everything else fits in a backpack.
Posted June 20, 2026
The ZWO AM3N is here!
I think this is the final component needed to complete my super portable astro rig. I now have a new EQ mount, the ZWO AM3N. I bought this last week and it showed up last night. I've been using ZWO mounts for almost five years. I pre-ordered the original AM5 when it was announced in 2021. The AM5 has always been an amazing mount, and this one, the AM3 is its little brother, smaller but still very capable with the same strainwave (harmonic drive) gearing. It only weighs 3.9kg/8.6 pounds but can handle up to 13kg/28 pounds of astro gear. (Not planning to get anywhere near that). My plan is to be able to have a full ultra-portable setup, with EQ mount, William Optics RedCat51 refractor, cooled camera, and power in one medium-sized backpack. The AM3 mount will be the heaviest component, with a 20-30Ah LiFePO4 battery second, coming in around 3kg. I powered it up last night, changed the access password, updated the mount firmware to the latest, and then played around with slewing to different targets, letting it track for a bit before returning to its home position. Everything behaved flawlessly. Can't wait to get this under clear night skies!
Posted April 17, 2026
The Iris in the wee hours of the morning
I started capturing imaging data for the Iris around 2 in the morning, and ended up with 61 good subs around 4:45am. The Iris Nebula (LBN 487, NGC 7023, Caldwell 4) is about 1300 lightyears away in the constellation Cepheus. Imaging notes: April 11, 2026 astro session in the backyard, CarbonStar 150 imaging Newtonian (600mm FL, f/4), ZWO ASI715MC camera (gain 0, 2x2 binning), ZWO AM5 EQ mount, 61 3-minute subs stacked in PixInsight 2x drizzle, 12 dark calibration frames.
Posted April 12, 2026
The Hamburger in Leo
One from last night's session, the "Hamburger Galaxy" (NGC 3628) is a spiral galaxy, about 35 million lightyears away in the constellation Leo. We're seeing it edge-on from our perspective on our planet. Imaging notes: April 11, 2026 astro session in the backyard, CarbonStar 150 imaging Newtonian (600mm FL, f/4), ZWO ASI715MC camera (gain 0, 2x2 binning), ZWO AM5 EQ mount, 83 3-minute subs stacked in PixInsight 2x drizzle, 12 dark calibration frames. I think the combination of binning and drizzle makes this scope and camera combo work.
Posted April 12, 2026
The Owl Nebula (M 97)
The “Owl Nebula”, M97 (NGC 3587) is a planetary nebula in the constellation Ursa Major (Big Dipper), about 2000 lightyears away. The Owl is relatively new, forming in the last 8000 years or so from a small to medium sized star, ejecting ionized gasses, including hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur, toward the end of its life. This image is from my April 9, 2026 astro session in the backyard, CarbonStar 150 imaging Newtonian (600mm FL, f/4), ZWO ASI715MC camera (gain 0), ZWO AM5 EQ mount, 129 3-minute subs stacked in PixInsight, no calibration frames.
Posted April 10, 2026
M 101 Pinwheel Galaxy
A little frosty this morning after the imaging session. I'm still using the same mismatched (sort of) setup, with the Carbonstar 150 (600mm fl) scope and the ZWO ASI715MC camera. I spent the entire night capturing 120-second subs of M101, the Pinwheel Galaxy.
Galaxy M 101 (NGC 5457), the "Pinwheel Galaxy" in the constellation Ursa Major (Big Dipper) is over 21 million lightyears away from us. M101 is almost twice the size of our galaxy, the Milky Way, with over a trillion star systems. Imaging notes: This image is from the April 8, 2026 astro session in my backyard, Apertura CarbonStar 150 imaging Newtonian (600mm FL, f/4), ZWO ASI715MC camera (gain 0), ZWO AM5 EQ mount, 160 2-minute subs stacked in PixInsight, no calibration frames.
Posted April 9, 2026
Galaxy M 106: Water Masers and Supermassive Blackholes
It’s 5am, we’re just coming out of astronomical dark, and I’m reading through the following article while I’m capturing the 206th sub-exposure of M106/NGC4258 Galaxy:
An Improved Distance to NGC 4258 and Its Implications for the Hubble Constant, M. J. Reid, D. W. Pesce, A. G. Riess, 2019, Volume 886, Number 2, The Astrophysical Journal Letters. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ab552d
The first line of the abstract says it all:
NGC 4258 is a critical galaxy for establishing the extragalactic distance scale and estimating the Hubble constant (H0).
And it doesn’t stop there. The first line of the intro to this article tells you how much fun astronomers are having: “The nucleus of NGC 4258 [M106 galaxy] hosts a [water] H2O megamaser in a sub-parsec-scale accretion disk surrounding a [supermassive] 4 × 10^7 M⊙ black hole.”
A megamaser is a galactic scale maser, or Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Okay, cool name, and that you get to add "mega-" to it makes it that much cooler. Megamasers can act as markers for astronomers to detect and study galaxy evolution, measure rotational speed, relative distances, all kinds of interesting information. And this galaxy, M 106, NGC 4258, is particularly useful for this.
I captured 212 subs of M 106 (NGC 4258), a spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici. Integration time is about 7 hours. M106 is 7.576 megaparsecs or a little over 24 million lightyears away from us. I stacked 189 together with minimal processing in Pixinsight and the result is pretty nice, given the constraints of the setup—an inexpensive camera and OTA.
Posted March 28, 2026
New Astro Video up on Youtube!
How to capture galaxies millions of lightyears away and have fun doing it!
https://www.youtube.com/@ChrisHoward/videos
