Randolph County Astronomy Club

Randolph County Astronomy Club Just a wee club for people who enjoy the night sky in and around Randolph County, Alabama.

IC 434 and B 33, the Horsehead Nebula. Just a quick and dirty image from last night before the clouds rolled in. About 3...
11/06/2024

IC 434 and B 33, the Horsehead Nebula. Just a quick and dirty image from last night before the clouds rolled in. About 30 minutes of data.

Messier 45, The Pleiades, commonly referred to as the, "Seven Sisters". A fairly new cluster of freshly newborn stars wh...
11/06/2024

Messier 45, The Pleiades, commonly referred to as the, "Seven Sisters". A fairly new cluster of freshly newborn stars which could be as young as only 75 million years, as evidenced by the reflecting of their hot, gaseous clouds in my image. This means that when dinosaurs roamed the planet and perhaps looked up into that particular area of the constellation Ta**us, this cluster simply did not exist yet!

Interesting fact... if you have ever noticed the logo for Subaru vehicles, it is in fact the Pleiades, albeit with only 6 stars shown. Subaru is the Japanese word for the Pleiades.

Messier 33, the Triangulum Galaxy. About 2.73 Million Light Years away from us. Part of our local group of galaxies, and...
11/04/2024

Messier 33, the Triangulum Galaxy. About 2.73 Million Light Years away from us. Part of our local group of galaxies, and home to around 40 billion suns.

The light that you see when looking at this image, has been traveling for nearly 3 Million years before reaching your eyeballs, essentially looking back in time for those years.

This is only about 80 minutes of data.

I managed to get around 45 minutes of total integration/exposure time on M42, The Great Orion Nebula tonight.Approximate...
11/03/2024

I managed to get around 45 minutes of total integration/exposure time on M42, The Great Orion Nebula tonight.

Approximately 1,350 Light Years distant from us, it is our closest large, "Stellar Nursery". An immense and intense factory, if you will, of star formation.

The second image is actually from the Hubble Space Telescope, circa 2006. Although my version is soberingly less defined, it is nonetheless interesting to see just how far imaging equipment has come since 2006!

Now I need to acquire a few hours of data, just to see how close in detail that I can get with a simply tiny, but modern telescope and imaging equipment!

The pillars of creation. Only 15 minutes of integration time. This tiny telescope never ceases to amaze me in what I can...
08/13/2024

The pillars of creation. Only 15 minutes of integration time. This tiny telescope never ceases to amaze me in what I can allow it to do.

I'm actually taking a huge risk in leaving it at a place in the public realm overnight, whilst it images the Universe for hours on end.

I'll pick it up in the morning but, the more data the better. I'm looking at accumulating a good 6 hours of photons on the subject and then processing said data.

This image I share is but 15 minutes of that data, pre-processing.

The Pillars reside within the nebula M16, and were forever famed in infamy by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The often overlooked Messier 15 / NCG 7078, in favour of the, admittedly more aesthetically pleasing Messier 13, Globula...
08/11/2024

The often overlooked Messier 15 / NCG 7078, in favour of the, admittedly more aesthetically pleasing Messier 13, Globular Cluster.

M15 is a compaction of upwards of 100,000 stars stuffed into a diameter of only 176 light years across.

One of the oldest Globular clusters known, and located at around 36,000 light years from us, it's visible as a tiny fuzzball in small telescopes and binoculars, but is just slightly out of reach for the naked eye.

Imagine for a moment living on a planet orbiting one of those suns... It would be so bright all the time, in every wavelength, that you probably would never be aware of the universe around you.

08/09/2024

Active Region 3780 near the centre is a massive sunspot area. Approximately the size of 8 Earth's currently.

Looking at the particularly active Sun at the moment. If anyone wants to take a wee look, I'm at O'Reilly Auto Parts un...
08/09/2024

Looking at the particularly active Sun at the moment. If anyone wants to take a wee look, I'm at O'Reilly Auto Parts until about 6:30pm.

A look at the centre of the Great Andromeda Galaxy, Messier 31. Our nearest large spiral galaxy neighbour that sits appr...
08/08/2024

A look at the centre of the Great Andromeda Galaxy, Messier 31. Our nearest large spiral galaxy neighbour that sits approximately 2.5 million light years distant.

Just a quick wee shot of NGC 6960, The Western Veil. Part of a Supernova remnant located in Cygnus.
08/08/2024

Just a quick wee shot of NGC 6960, The Western Veil. Part of a Supernova remnant located in Cygnus.

We have a new telescope to help show folks the wonders of the night sky. It's a fully-computerised model, that records ...
07/26/2024

We have a new telescope to help show folks the wonders of the night sky. It's a fully-computerised model, that records what it is looking at directly onto a phone screen in, "relatively" real-time, so to speak. So you don't actually look through this telescope, instead it let's you look at what it's observing.

The benefits of this are that the camera is much more sensitive to light than eyes, and that it can find, point, and focus at pretty much anything that you would like to see, whilst showing you a live image.

I haven't had much time to mess with it, only about half an hour through some clouds. But, this is the Dumbbell Nebula, M27 after pointing at her for just a few minutes.

One of these nights whenever it clears up, we will bring her out so that people can see things that they otherwise never could!

We still have the big telescope too, if you want to look at planets, etc. 😉

We are out at O'Reilly Auto Parts in Roanoke, Alabama... Come have a wee look at Saturn and her rings!
10/29/2023

We are out at O'Reilly Auto Parts in Roanoke, Alabama... Come have a wee look at Saturn and her rings!

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Atlanta, GA

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