Latest Image:
Here's the latest image taken at CitMO. Observing sessions can be few and far between here in the sunny Pacific Northwest, so this image may not get updated often.
5/20/11: Well, we had a three day break in the rain. What a soggy spring so far! I've installed a new primary scope (see the new equipment page) and could finally collimate and test the scope. The first night I primarily collimated the optics and refined my polar alignment. I captured some luminance and RGB frames the second night, but the full moon washed out the color frames pretty badly. The third night I added a little over another hour of luminance. When I did the color synthesis, I wasn't really happy with what I was getting, frankly my color data isn't very good, between short exposure time and the full moon robbing it of contrast, I really just couldn't tease out a color version I liked so I'm sticking with the luminance only image. In any event, this is first light for the new scope, yay! It's Messier object 109 in Ursa Major. It's a barred spiral galaxy about 83.5 MLY away. You can also make out the three companion galaxies, UGC 6923, UGC 6940 and UGC 6969.
Latest CitMO Image