Summer Monsoons -vs- New Astronomy Camera
Kelly Carroll
One exposure of the Elephant’s Truck Nebula.
New astro camera.
It is said that if you obtain a new piece of astronomical gear you will tempt the weather to be cloudy and not be able to use said new astronomical gear.
This is of course what happened.
I have converted over to a dedicated astronomical camera (ASI2600MM) to be able to image in more radiation bands than just visible light. This setup allows me to image objects not only in red, green, and blue (visible color), but also in the Hydrogen Alpha, Oxygen III, and Sulfur II plasma bands. These new bands have the bonus of being able to photograph through light pollution. When you combine these three, you can display your astronomical objects in false color (this is the way we “see” color images from the Hubble Space Telescope).
Thankfully, the summer monsoons have been strong this summer. It has been cloudy every night for all most three months, but it is bringing some much-needed precipitation to the area. It also has not allowed me to photograph all summer. You can see one 10-minute exposure in Hydrogen Alpha in the picture above from my first project through the new camera - the Elephant’s Trunk Nebula.