Astrophotography (mostly) and Other Space Stuff…..

Sweetman Astrophotography

A Barred-Spiral Galaxy in a Gibbous Moon

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mike

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A Barred-Spiral Galaxy in a Gibbous Moon

The weather here has not been great lately so I went for it on a marginal night. The moon was at about 60% which can make for some difficult broadband imaging. I also chose a somewhat difficult target. This galaxy NGC 3359, is about 59 million lightyears from earth. It has a reasonably bright core, but I was really hoping to pick up more of the fainter detail at the outer edges. Unfortunately, with the strong moon, that was rather difficult. The background was very bright, and I struggled to get good separation of the galaxy from the background. All in all, not too bad, but this one won’t end up in my top 10 this year unless I go back to it and collect more data.

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Hello,

I’m Mike

I hope you’ll join me as I explore the amazing universe of astrophotography. This hobby can seem overwhelming at first, but it I find it to be perspective changing and inspiring.

NGC 1499, the California Nebula. This is the first image that I’ve completed with the two sequence dual narrowband filter. I used the DB-Xtract PixInsight plugin to separate the Ha, SII, and OIII channels and then processed with a narrowband workflow. First Quarter Moon from 12/27 Interstellar Comet 3I/Atlas captured November 28, 2025 Getting started on the California Nebula (NGC 1499)…still have to add in the SII data. Had some spare time waiting for other targets to rise, so I returned to Andromeda, about 7 hours total captured over 3 nights in late November. Last full moon of 2025.... 98.6% moon from a few hours ago Messier 45, or the Pleiades, is one of the most recognizable asterisms in the early winter sky. It is a star cluster of nearly 1000 stars located at a relatively close 445 light years from earth. It contains young stars which give the blue color. Thanksgiving moon…from 11/27. 47.1% Illuminated.

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