Chris Howard's Blog, page 20

bookwormingparty:

bookwormingparty:

Narrowband (3 nanometer hydrogen-alpha) crop of the central...

Narrowband (3 nanometer hydrogen-alpha) crop of the central region of the California Nebula (NGC 1499) in the Constellation Perseus. I used the neural-net based StarNet to remove the stars from the final image. So we’re only seeing the trillions of miles of hydrogen, along with dark bands of dust and interstellar debris.

Here’s M31, the Andromeda Galaxy without any stars from...

Here’s M31, the Andromeda Galaxy without any stars from our galaxy, the Milky Way. The two bright objects orbiting Andromeda are captured galaxies, M101 (bottom right) and M32 above Andromeda. Almost everything in this frame that generates light is a star in another galaxy.

The large HII region, the Rosette Nebula (Caldwell 49) in the...

The large HII region, the Rosette Nebula (Caldwell 49) in the Constellation Monoceros, with the stars removed from the image. This just shows the roughly 500 trillion miles of hydrogen clouds with the surrounding empty space.

A wide-field narrowband (hydrogen-alpha) image of the Pacman...

A wide-field narrowband (hydrogen-alpha) image of the Pacman Nebula in Cassiopeia. This emission nebula is a little under 10,000 lightyears away in the Perseus Spiral Arm of our galaxy, and it doesn’t seem quite large enough for this view–except to show that Pacman is alone out there in this region of space (from our perspective). And that’s one of the many cool aspects that makes NGC 281 fascinating to capture–there are so many others, an intense star-forming region, it’s a great Hubble palette target, large examples of bok globules, X-ray imaging reveals a dense molecular clouds of hydrogen and carbon, feeding the process of star-creation, to name a few.

The double star eta Cassiopeiae (η Cassiopeiae) is the bright point of light above Pacman/IC 11 (brightest in the frame). Eta Cass. is made up of eta Cassiopeiae A, a sun-like G-type main-sequence star, and its smaller K-type orbiting companion, eta Cassiopeiae B. With a little research, this might be a cool SF world to tell a story around–the main star is like ours, but with an additional sun orbiting. And it’s only 19.5 lightyears away.

Imaging notes: 57 x 300-second subs in 3 nanometer hydrogen-alpha. No calibration frames. Guiding was better than expected, with total RMS hovering between .7 and .9 arcseconds. Seeing was below average–astronomical seeing, which is impacted by turbulence and temperature differences in the atmosphere. It’s pretty common to have a clear night with terrible seeing. There’s a time and place for twinkling stars–like writing a song, but they’re the bane of astrophotographers. Gear notes: ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro monochrome camera, Antlia 3nm Ha Pro narrowband filter, William Optics SpaceCat 51 apochromatic refractor, Sky-Watcher EQ6-R Pro mount.

More from my series of Terry Pratchett Discworld character...

More from my series of Terry Pratchett Discworld character studies. See Sergeant Angua in the last post.

We first meet Sam Vimes as a miserable Night Watch captain in Guards! Guards!, when he’s scrambling to keep his sanity as a lowly copper, when all he has are the scraps that remain after the guilds and nobles have divided up the wealth and decided what law and order will look like. As you’d expect, it’s been beaten into a shape that best suits them. He’s often drunk, unable to do his job, but if you stick with Vimes, you see that he knows the streets of his city like few others, he understands the motives of the Ankh-Morpork guilds and aristocracy like an insider, although he’ll never be one. Above all, he’s just a good guy who has never had it easy, but who has learned something at every turn, from his humble beginnings to his marriage to the most powerful woman in the city. We can rely on his solid moral core, and even the need to “go spare” when it’s necessary. That’s Sir Samuel Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, Duke of Ankh–also known by the lofty title, Blackboard Monitor.

Cheery Littlebottom is a disgraced Alchemist who quickly became the forensics expert in the City Watch, and went on to spark a gender revolution. We first meet Lance Constable Littlebottom in the book Feet of Clay. She’s a new recruit in the Watch. She’s originally from Überwald, and was in the Ankh-morpork Alchemist’s Guild for a while, but was a bit careless with the volatile compounds and kicked out. She’s like a one woman CSI department, so their loss is Ankh-morpork’s gain. Even though she’s not a main character in any of the books, Cheery is definitely one of my favorites.

Sergeant Detritus of the Ankh Morpork City Watch. Another one of my favorite Terry Pratchett characters. Detritus is a troll who’s pretty green as we follow him through the book Men at Arms, but he’s already a sergeant in Feet of Clay. One of the weapons he favors is a re-purposed siege crossbow named the “Piecemaker” that he’s modified to shoot multiple bolts at once.

Carrot Ironfoundersson was raised in a mine near Copperhead but ends up making the journey to the great city Ankh Morpork to join the Watch. Commander Vimes and a few others in the Watch possess a strict and streetwise morality, Carrot enters with an edition of The Laws and Ordinances of the Cities Ankh and Morpork–and he’s ready to use. What makes Carrot unique–and so different from anyone else wielding a book of laws–is his ability to interpret a law and balance that against an examination of his own perspective and the motives of others to resolve any problems. It’s this simple wisdom that usually carries him through the fray–that, and his joyful spirit. Carrot approaches his position in the Watch with such cheer and honesty that everyone around him has no choice but to get swept up in the sheer force of his upbeat will. His genuineness and optimism balances out and sometimes runs roughshod over the cynicism and distrust that’s the baseline sentiment of the Ankh Morpoork City Watch.

My favorite witch, and quite possibly my all-time favorite Terry Pratchett character, Esmerelda Weatherwax, ‘Esme’ as Nanny Ogg calls her, and 'Granny Weatherwax’ at some point to those living around Ramtops. She is said to embody all three roles in a coven (maiden, mother, and crone), and although she’s always pictured as the last, in the book Lords and Ladies, we get a glimpse of just how badass she was when she was younger. So for this study I wanted to paint her as she was in her mid-fifties, out for a stroll through a mountain meadow with her favorite swarm, at a time when she earned the name 'Aaoograha hoa’ from the trolls (She Who Must Be Avoided).

Havelock Vetinari, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork. Lord Vetinari is the definitive benevolent dictator. He’s an honored graduate of the Guild of Assassins, rebel fighter against Homicidal Lord Winder, killer of tyrants, and friend (possibly more) of the vampire Lady Margolotta of Überwald. Pratchett kept his cards close with Vetinari, and all of us–readers and Ankh-Morpork citizens alike–remain in the dark about most of the details of Vetinari’s life, habits, vulnerabilities. This may be one of the reasons Night Watch is one of my favorite Pratchett books–because we get to see Havelock when he’s a young man, at school, learning the guild craft of assassination and camouflage. We get to see a side of the future patrician that we’ll never see again, but after one read of Night Watch the character hints and pieces of his nature you pick up will follow you and fill in the shadows of every scene with Vetinari in every other book. He’s one my favorite fictional characters.

Another painting from a couple years ago. This is Sergeant Angua...

Another painting from a couple years ago. This is Sergeant Angua of the Ankh Morpork City Watch (Terry Pratchett, Discworld books), or what I think she looks like. I spent several months painting some of my favorite Ankh Morpork characters, including Vimes, Carrot, Cheery, Detritus, in a more realistic style.
https://SaltwaterWitch.com 

From last night’s imaging run: The Orion Nebula (M42) is...

From last night’s imaging run: The Orion Nebula (M42) is one of my all-time favorite deep sky objects, and the Constellation Orion is in my top five places to go with a telescope. Imaging Notes: Ha+RGB, Ha: 55 x 240-second subs, color: 123 x 120-second subs stacked in DSS, processed in PSCC2022. William Optics SpaceCat51 Apo refractor, ZWO ASI071MC cooled color camera & ASI1600MM-Pro monochrome camera, Controller: INDI, Ekos, KStars.

M31 in BLUE. From last night’s imaging run. This is the blue...

M31 in BLUE. From last night’s imaging run. This is the blue bandpass of the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), revealing dense spirals of dust that wind through starfields and curl around the galactic core. I have labeled NGC 206, one of the brightest of the star clouds inside Andromeda, along with a couple of M31’s captive galaxies (M32 and M101). Imaging Notes: 51 x 120-second stacked subs from my WilliamOptics SpaceCat51 (250mm FL) and ZWO ASI1600MM-Pro mono camera.

It’s a beautiful autumn evening, going to be mostly clear...

It’s a beautiful autumn evening, going to be mostly clear tonight. Here’s my deep sky imaging setup for the next few days–narrowband plus two thirds of RGB, green and blue. I’m planning to capture some color targets in HaGB.