Whirlpool Galaxy from my backyard using a $229 color camera. I captured 133 120-second subs of M51 last night with the ZWO ASI715MC camera and the Apertura CarbonStar 150 (600mm focal length). I stacked 115 good subs, no calibration frames, and the result is pretty good.

Trouble I ran into with this combination--ASI715 + 600mm OTA:

1. I had serious trouble plate solving with a resolution: 0.5"x0.5" per pixel and a Field of View of 0.54° x 0.3°. It may have worked once and I found my FL set to 505mm on the 600mm scope, but I couldn't get any plate solving to work for polar alignment or after a meridian flip. The ASIAir minimum FoV is 0.4° for solving (possibly 0.2°), and I don't see a way to help that out. I will try blind solving next time I'm out, setting the focal length for plate solving calculation to 0, which lets the ASIAir run through a series of FLs to solve.
2. Focusing worked as well as can be expected with the 0.5 arcseconds per pixel resolution, but stars are bloated and very soft, oversampled.

Posted March 18, 2026

One sub from tonight's test session. I'm playing around with the ZWO ASI715MC on the 600mm focal length CarbonStar 150. Seeing is crap, guiding is terrible, but I'm going to take as many 120 second subs as I can and see how it turns out. M51 and it's companion galaxy (NGC 5195) are about 25 million lightyears away. With this camera-scope combination, I'm running at 0.5 arcseconds per pixel, which is why the stars are bloated. I'm 11 subs into this imaging run and the galactic structure is pretty good. Half the fun of astrophotography is trying some crazy camera and scope combos just to see it works.

Posted March 17, 2026

Astro setup tonight. We still have some snow, even with the warmest day we've had in a while, high of 74F/23C. I don't know if the weather's going to hold, but I might start on M51, Whirlpool Galaxy with the Apertura CarbonStar 150 (150mm diameter primary mirror, 600mm focal length at f/4) and the ZWO ASI715MC, which isn't the best camera for this, but we'll see how it does. I also have the ZWO ASI220MM off-axis and the 2inch Antlia UV/IR cut filter in the drawer.

Posted March 11, 2026

I went through some of my astro imaging data and processed this set focused on M42 in the Constellation Orion. William Optics SpaceCat 51 and ZWO ASI071MC-Pro cooled camera.

Posted February 28, 2026

The Tulip in Hydrogen-alpha: Tulip Nebula Sh2-101 and the surrounding HII region in Cygnus, centered on the open star cluster NGC 6871. Most of this is around six or seven thousand lightyears away from us, and to give you a sense of the size of this region: that bright tulip shape is over 600 trillion kilometers wide (top to bottom in this rotation).

Gear details: William Optics SpaceCat 51 Apochromatic refractor (250mm fl, f/4.9), ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro cooled monochrome camera, ZWO AM5 Harmonic Drive EQ mount, Antlia 3nm Ha filter, 60x300-second subs, 5 hours total integration time. Location: my backyard, coastal New Hampshire, US.

Posted August 3, 2025

The Space Cat was already set up and ready to go, so that's what I'm imaging with tonight. The William Optics Space Cat 51, 250mm Focal length, F/4.9 Petzval Apochromatic Ref. and the ZWO AM5 Strainwave EQ mount on the backyard pier. I have the ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro Monochrome camera with the 3nm narrowband 48mm filter set on tonight, Ha, OIII, SII, but haven't picked a target yet!

Posted August 1, 2025

The IC1396 Region with the Elephant's Trunk in HaOIIISII narrowband. The view from my backyard, given a specific set of equipment, time, and clear skies: around 60 x 300-second exposures for each of the 48mm Antlia 3nm Ha, OIII, SII filters, ZWO ASI2600MM-Pro monochrome camera cooled to -10C, William Optics Space Cat 51 apochromatic refractor (250mm FL @ f/4.9).

Posted October 26, 2024

A spectacular night with the glow of the Aurora Borealis. This one came as a burst of energy across the sky that reached across the zenith and headed south. Ursa Major/Big Dipper at the lower left.

Posted October 11, 2024