With appealing colouring and good detail, Shelley Jackson’s image of the waning gibbous “mineral Moon” won our Photo of the Week title for November 5, 2021.
Jackson, a member of RASC’s Sarnia Centre, said she captured the Moon on October 23, 2021, under Bortle 6/7 skies. She used an 81mm William Optics Gran Turismo apochromatic triplet with a field flattener/0.8 reducer, a 50mm guide scope, a ZWO ASI120 mono guide camera, a Sky-Watcher AZ-EQ6 pro mount, a Pegasus FocusCube and a Atik mono CCD camera cooled to 0 C.
She captured data using Hydrogen-alpha filters, as well.
She said she stacked the best 75-per-cent of 200 images exposed at 0.001 seconds each with Autostakkert and processed the results with PixInsight.
Our honourable mention this week goes to an image of LDN 1082 by Kimberly Sibbald.
“Barnard 150 is a dark molecular cloud of dust in the Cepheus constellation,” Sibbald wrote. “This molecular cloud is part of our Milky Way galaxy and it lies at about 1,200 light years away. [The cloud’s] location on the Milky Way’s plane makes it stand out on a background completely filled with colourful stars.
“The distinctive, Seahorse like shape of this molecular cloud can be more easily observed by rotating the image by 90 degrees. This nebula is about one degree in size, or the width of two Moons.”
Sibbald collected six hours and 41 minutes of data from Seven Persons, Alberta, over four nights: May 9-11 and October 11, 2021.
Sibbald used a SharpStar 140PH triplet and a ZWO ASI2600MM Pro camera to capture the image.
Every week, SkyNews publishes the best image from among those sent in by readers from all across Canada. Whether you’re an expert or a beginner at night sky photography, we’re looking for your pictures! Enter today for your chance to win a Photo of the Week title and one of our annual prizes!
