August – Andromeda, a Blue Moon and a Very Shy Comet!

Andromeda Galaxy (M31) – again!

With the summer ‘galaxy season’ over, some of the favourite targets are becoming well positioned in the sky and darkness is falling earlier and for longer, so DSO shooting is back on the cards.

The Andromeda Galaxy was the first real Deep Sky target that I shot last year – at around the same time I think, and I decided to take advantage of a couple of clear nights to capture it again. I also made sure I shot at the same focal length and with similar settings to last year with the intention of stacking the whole lot together.

I was pleased that it worked really well – I tried out stacking each night’s subs then stacking the resulting DSS output files and this worked like a dream as well as saving time by not having to re-stack all the old subs.

So here’s the result of about 7 hours total integration and there’s certainly more detail than my previous attempts. Maybe I’ll do another couple of nights and add a few more hours to see how much more detail I can get.

Blue Moon

The Super Blue Moon at the end of August was much photographed – and many rather gullible types coloured their results blue to make it look ‘genuine’!! Oh dear – a Blue Moon refers to a second Full Moon in a month, which is rare. It’s not blue in colour! It was a Super Moon because it was closer to the earth.

A Full Moon is not really that spectacular as a photo unless you capture some scenery to give it context (buildings etc). However, I did ‘join the crowd’ and take a couple of shots. The one I prefer is the one wider shot with some cloud.

For more on Moon Photography, see my previous post here
https://www.p-wilson.com/photo/index.php/2022/09/10/moon-photography/

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Comet Nishimura

C/2023 P1 (Nishimura) was discovered in early August by an amateur astrophotographer in Japan using a similar setup to me (no telescope, DSLR camera etc)

There was the usual reports of a possible ‘naked-eye’ sightings, but it was pretty disappointing. It was very close to the sun and was only ‘visible’ for two short time windows just before sunrise and just after sunset. It then stayed in our skies – throughout the daylight hours! A few astrotogs managed to get some good images, and it was pretty stunning as it developed an amazing tail (which you can see in this image by Gerald Rhemann, courtesy of skyandtelescope.org)

Well, I had three attempts then gave up – I’d researched a site with a good view of the Northern horizon, so went there at 3:30am – just as the cloud rolled in. I then calculated that I might be lucky to get a short view near my house, so tried again – just as it was due to come up from behind the trees at 5am, the street lamps came on! Then on another night, I was thwarted again by cloud.

Oh well, only another 430 years to wait for it again!