Monday October 10, 2005
Bobcat

Jeff passed along a link from his friend who works up at Sunkhaze Meadows in Milford, Maine. One of their remote cameras picked up a great video of a bobcat



NGC 884, NGC 869
NGC 884 869

This is a fuzzy photo taken of open clusters 884 and 869. If you were to look to the north at Cassiopeia, and envision her as a large W proceeded by a period, like .W, these clusters would be located somewhat below the period.

Despite how they look in my amateur photo they are, as Dave Bowman would say, "full of stars." We had a string of beautifully clear nights last week before the tropical depression moved in and I spent a few nights exploring. On the last night I rigged up the camera to try a few shots only to find that I'd left the mount's tracking motors on the night before and the batteries were almost dead.

Any attempt at a long exposure ended up with stars transformed into long, colorful streaks. To compensate I cranked up the ISO to 1200 and took a series of short exposure shots. In photoshop the images were then stacked to reduce the noise.

For a really nice shot of the double cluster check out APOD for Oct 11th.