Star Watch Exploration and Research

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Star Watch Exploration and Research

Educating and sharing with others the joy of astronomy and exploration of the universe. Bieser in Garland, Texas about 1968 as youths.

Star Watch was originally founded as an astronomical club by Mischa (Michael) Stuhler-Safdie' and Scott H. Mischa started out with a Tasco 2.4" Refractor tekescope his dad had purchased and Scott began with a 4.5" Reflector telescope. The club was dedicated to our exploration of the universe. Over the years Mischa and Scott moved to different locations and pursued various careers. However, through

out the entire time Mischa continued his hobby of astronomy, joining various astronomical societies, upgrading equipment and continued to use the Star Watch name in forming his own astronomical society.

06/28/2023

Well, I was back at it early this morning after letting my back heal up a little. I still need some time, but I took these photos through my 6" Nexstar telescope. All of these are unfiltered and the original viewing colors. The first is the Eagle Nebula (M16)...stacked 130 times, the Trifid Nebula (M20)....stacked 300 times and the Andromeda Galaxy (M31)...stacked 150 times. All were 10 second exposures at 5 second intervals. I used a ZWO camera, a Starizona hyperstar to decrease telescope focal length and an Asiair Plus imaging computer on my telescope.

05/14/2023

NGC 2403 and M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy)

I heard it was difficult to take photos of deep sky objects with a full moon so I thought I would try last night through early this morning....and I will never do it again. lol. I also got ambushed by occasional bands of thin wispy clouds while already underway taking these photos. I found that it takes about 4 times the effort and time to get these photos below than if I shot them under a dark and perfectly clear sky. But at least I got two pretty nice galaxies. With NGC 2403 I stacked 750 photos..if you can believe that just to get this image when I could have done the same thing with 150 photos under a dark sky. That does not even count the thousands of photos my Asiair Plus astrophotographic computer rejected as I shot 10 second time exposures at 5 second intervals for several hours. With M 51 I stacked 150 photos. If I ever stacked 750 photos of any space object I shot under a clear sky instead of tonight it would probably be one amazing photo! I will try it soon as I think my record so far is 800 to 850 stacked photos. :-)

05/14/2023

Tonight a close up photo from
my telescope of M101 (The Pinwheel Galaxy). I took several hours of 10 second time exposures every 5 seconds apart and then auto stacked 800 photos to bring as much light and detail to me as possible for this picture. The moon was out so it was a bit difficult fighting off all the light on a deep sky object and so it was a bit time consuming to get this photo. A dark sky would have been twice as good but you work with what you have. 🙂 In the end, when you consider that this galaxy has over one trillion stars in it and is 21 million light years away from earth, I think my 6" Schmidt - Cassagrain did a pretty good job.

05/14/2023

I love to share with all my friends the wonders of the universe. Galaxies millions and perhaps billions of light years away...some larger than our own Milky Way Galaxy with trillions of stars in them and no doubt many of these suns called stars have planets like ours orbiting them that could sustain intelligent life. We see the nebulas where stars have died along with their solar systems and where also new stars are being born. We not only enjoy viewing the planets and their moons in our own solar system but we look at clusters of stars in our own galaxy and we can observe a great many stars where solar systems with orbiting planets known in many ways to be similar to our earth have already been discovered. Welcome to space...the undiscovered and yet vast and unexplored country. Whether in a space ship or grounded on this planet, each night somewhere astronomers leave the planet with their telescopes to explore the universe....many having made and still make very important scientific discoveries and contributions to space exploration. And so we continue! 🙂

Last night was a great night in my Yuma, Arizona backyard for observing so here are some photos taken through my 6" SCT Nexstar SE telescope. The objects in sequence are a beautiful deep space galaxy known as NGC2903 with the dark blue original picture and a filtered enlargement for more detail. The next is the original shot of the Sombrero Galaxy in the upper left corner, known as M104 along with a streak below it that was either a meteor (doubt it though because of the angle it was travelling) or possible satellite (sort of dim for that though).....but then, we see very strange objects in our Arizona skies quite often, and I personally see them fairly often because I am always looking up and watching the sky. So we will just put this one in the catagory of a UAP (unidentified arial phenomena) until or unless I can ifentify it. Look closely for the streak! I next enlarged the galaxy itself because looking at it edge on you can see a distinct line of brown galactic dust and debris reflected by the light of the many, many stars in this galaxy. Next is a beautiful globular star cluster known as M56. And finally a photograph of a distant galaxy known as NGC2906.

I hope all of you enjoy the photos I post. And if some of you out there have free time and are looking for a satisfying hobbby, astronomy is it. You don't need expensive equipment or you can get extravagant if you want to....but I encourage you to step out and try it. Chances are you will love it. The universe is the limit and somewhere beyond what we see lies heaven and the great celestial Kingdom where many of our loved ones dwell.

04/29/2023

Hi everyone. Another night of exploring the universe as I prepare to introduce the universe to the public here in Yuma, Arizona on the night of May 5th, using one of my two telescopes. We will be celebrating International Space Day and the director has asked me to provide a viewing to those attending...and all are welcome to attend. Anyway, practice makes perfect, as they say! Right?

So, last night and early this morning I took these 3 beautiful photos below! And yes! This is the real color. The first is NGC 2175. It is an open star cluster in the constellation Orion that also consists of red cloud or gaseous matter known as a "diffusion nebula". Isn't this beautiful? God is amazing.

Next is NGC 2404 and this is a nearby spiral galaxy and a member of the M81 group of three galaxies appearing in close proximation to one another in our end of spring and beginning of summer skies.

Finally, we have M101,known as the Pinwheel galaxy. It is a beautiful spiral galaxy viewed face-on and resembles our own Milky Way Galaxy! This and the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) are two of my favorite galaxies to observe and photograph.

For those interested in technical astronomical matters, all photos were taken by me from my backyard in Yuma, Arizona using a Celestron Nexstar 6" diameter lens Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with computerized "go-to" and tracking capabilities. The telescope is equipped with a Starizona Hyperstar focal length reduction device, a Asiair Plus photographic mini computer with A.I. automated stacking capabilities and a ZWO camera. An anti-light pollution or light reduction filter was used on the telescope. All photos were shot with the telescope tracking in altazimuth mode.

04/21/2023

Hi everyone! Last night and early this morning I used my 6" Schmidt Cassegrain Celestron Nexstar 6SE and Asiair- ZWO astrophography equipment to try and improve two photos of objects I previously took plus I added a new one I will want to retake soon. All photos I shoot are always shot in altazimuth mode. Yup you read correctly. You no lomger really need to take photos from an equatorial mount or mode to get good detail...although I have the capability to use both.

The new photo is of M57, known as the "Ring Nebula". What happened is the dark donut hole in the middle is blow out vacuum from a star that went super nova and exploded long ago. If I can retake this and stack more photos we might be able to see what is left of the dead star in the middle of the hole. The circular form or "donut" outside of the hole is basically debris from the exploded star and debris from any orbiting planets destroyed in the explosion of their sun that was pushed outward in all directions in circular form by the explosion.

I next reshot M64, known as the black eye galaxy. I wanted to use a different light filter and add contrast to see if I could sharpen up some detail. The upper view of the center of this galaxy gives a pea or black eye appearance because you can see a half-moon shape slit of steller dust particles and galactic debris that reflect light and therefore give a brown appearance.

The final photo is a rekake of M64 and M65 known as two galaxies in what is called "Leo's Tripletts". The third galaxy was a bit above these two and out of my field of view. These are twin spiral galaxies much like our own Milky Way Galaxy and our neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

04/18/2023

M101...a spiral galaxy. I stacked over 500 photos using my telescope to get this photo last night and this morning, combining them with filters for detail. I took several but liked this one the best.

04/16/2023

Last night and early this morning between 9:30 pm and 1:30 am I shot these beautiful pictures with my Nexstar 6SE. I used a hyperstar focal length reducer, an Asiair and ZWO computer/ camera combination to take programmed auto exposures with built in automatic stacking. Tonight all photos were shot as 10 second exposures with a break of 5 seconds between shots.

Picured here first is the M64 Black Eye Galaxy. It is called that because the full, normally round bright nucleus of the galaxy is partially obscured by dark galactic dust lanes which somewhat block out total view of the eye or nucleus. I stacked 200 photos to get this image.

Next is the beautiful M5 globular star cluster. I stacked 275 photos to get this picture.

Finally, my last photo was a spiral galaxy known as M83. Because of it's distance, I took my time with this one and stacked about 416 images of this galaxy to help bring out the details!

And you know, if it get's too cool outside, sometimes I will go in where its warm, let the telescope do the work outside and just watch the photos develop on my cellphone monitor while most of the time I just enjoy sitting outside by my telescope! 🙂

Enjoy and have a blessed Sunday!

04/14/2023

Hi everyone! I now have a second telescope and tried it out in my Yuma, Arizona backyard on some galaxies last night and early this morning. The photos are of M51 (Whirlpool Galaxy), M81 (Bode's Galaxy) and M104 (Sombrero Galaxy). While shooting photos of the Sombrero Galaxy at about 12:50 am, I caught and posted a mysterious object that appeared to be deep in space. I just posted a small segment. You can see it as a small straight line because it was moving....very slowley. It was way too slow to be a meteor or conventional aircraft. Too slow to be a satellite. It is possible I caught the trail of an asteroid but am not sure. By the way it moved it appeared to be deep in space. I will be contacting an appropriate astronomical agency to see if I discovered something inadvertently or if they know what it is. If not, we have a UAP (Unidentified Arial Phenomena).

For those interested in the technology, I was using some high quality professional equipment that included a 6" Celestron Nexstar 6SE Schmidt- Cassegrain telescope, equippied with a Starizona Hyperstar focal length reducer, an Asiair -ZWO CCCD computerized astro camera system, and I used a light pollution reduction filter. All 3 objects except the pic of the UAP consisted of about 30 to 40 approximate minutes of 10 second time exposures at 5 second intervals with automatic computerized photo stacking of between 150 to 250 frames....depending on the object.

I hope you enjoy these. I am still learning but travel to Tucson often and pick the brains of the Starizona staff of professional astronomers and scientists. Thank you, Dean (a brother in Christ)...Starizona owner..for all the free and discounted stuff as well as late night telephone guidance while I learn all this.

04/13/2023

Hi everyone. Here on Yuma, AZ I gave been busy learning astrophotography. Using my Celestron Nexstar 4 SE Maksutov 102mm, FL 1325 telescope, I recentlly bought an Aisair and ZWO CCD camera and shot all these photos within the past 2 weeks in altazimuth mode.

03/29/2023

Hi everyone! I took these same photos two nights ago and am reposting them today because I had forgotten to turn on and adjust the color settings! lol. So HERE are the same photos with proper color. 🙂. The first is M42...the great nebula in Orion. The second shows both M42 and it's neighbor below it...M43...another nebula. The final is an open star cluster known as M103. I used my Celestron Nexstar 4SE with attached ZWO CCD camera and Asiair astro computer, and automatic photo stacking to shoot these photos.

Thanks everyone..

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