Category Archives: Astronomy

Messier 73

This group or asterism of 4 stars M73 (NGC 6994) is also in Aquarius like M72 and M2.

The observatory is mostly working. It has  a pointing problem that is fixed by plate solving. Plate solving is the magic where it takes a picture and compares it to where it thinks it’s supposed to be and moves the telescope to where it is supposed to be. So I just tell it to point to M73 and the system does the rest. Continue reading

Charles Messier

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Charles Messier- source Wikipedia

Charles Messier was born in 1730. Messier was a comet hunter which led him to continually come across fixed fuzzy objects in the night sky which could be mistaken for comets. He made a list of them so that he and other comet hunters would not be misled by the objects. Continue reading

Alpharetz

I had a stroke at the beginning of October 2021. The observatory quit working well and so did I on my left side.

Right before my stroke I replaced the observatory camera with my modified Canon Rebel XT1 color camera. My aim was to make things a little more simple. So to keep things simple and test out the observatory I have chosen to take a picture of a star. The star I have chosen is named “Alpharetz” and oddly shares the corner of constellations Andromeda and Pegasus. Originally Alpharetz was in Pegasus but now makes the top of the “V” of Andromeda. The constellation Andromeda is in the northern sky and is not wholey visible south of about 37 degrees north latitude. The head of Andromeda overlaps Pegasus at the horse’s midriff. Alpharetz uniquely shares the northeast corner position of the “Square of Pegasus.” Continue reading