Saturn Nebula - NGC7009

Here's a closeup of the Saturn Nebula that I took last night:

From Wikipedia:

The Saturn Nebula (also known as NGC 7009) is a planetary nebula in the Aquarius constellation. It was discovered by William Herschel on September 7, 1782 using a telescope of his own design in the garden at his home in Datchet, England and was one of his earliest discoveries in his sky survey. The nebula was originally a low-mass star that transformed into a rather bright white dwarf star, magnitude 11.5. The Saturn Nebula gets its name from its superficial resemblance to the planet Saturn with its rings nearly edge-on to the observer. It was so named by Lord Rosse in the 1840s, when telescopes had improved to the point that its Saturn-like shape could be discerned. William Henry Smyth said that the Saturn Nebula is one of Struve's 9 "Rare Celestial Objects."
The Saturn Nebula is a very complex planetary nebula and contains many morphological and kinematical sub-systems in three dimensions. It includes a halo, jet-like streams, multiple shells, ansae, and small-scale filaments and knots. The ansae are expanding non-radially from the central star.^[2]
The distance to the Saturn nebula is not known very well because there are no reference stars in its neighborhood that have been detected and could be used to accurately gauge its distance. Therefore, any distance is somewhat suspect. Sabbadin et al. 2004 estimates it to be 5,200 light-years (1.6 kpc) distance from earth. In 1963, O'Dell estimated the distance to be 3,900 light-years (1.2 kpc) which gives an approximate diameter of 0.5 light years for the object as a whole.
The central star (a very hot bluish dwarf with a temperature of 55,000 K) from which the nebula is believed to originate has an absolute magnitude of +1.5 (which equates to about 20 suns luminosity and a visual magnitude of 11.5). This strong ultraviolet pounding from the central star is believed to create the characteristic fluorescent green tint of the nebula via the radiation of doubly ionized oxygen. The object overall has a visual magnitude of 8 and a radial velocity of 28 miles per second in approach.
The nebula can be spotted 1 degree west of the star Nu Aqarii. The middle central portion measures 25" X 17", whilst the outer shell extends to 30" X 26". It is a peculiarly beautiful object with a high surface brightness.

M17 Omega Nebula

Here's this years attempt at M17. I'm much happier with the results this year from last. 36 images at 1 min each.

M20 Trifid Nebula first data

Here's the 1st data I collected for the Trifid Nebula last night. My plan is to capture more data tonight (hopefully more of the bottom area) and mosaic the two images together. This will be my first attempt so we will see how it goes. I was actually able to capture 5 minute images last night with no star trails, however it over saturated the image so I went to 2 minute captures for this (15 good ones out of 25). I also caught a satellite in one of the images and saw it coming in Stellarium. That was kind of neat. (Update) After taking a look as some other images of Trifid, I decided I have probably captured about all I'm going to get so moved on to something different for tonight.

This years Dumbbell

Here's this years attempt at M27 the Dumbbell Nebula. The autoguider is working much better now and therefore I can take nice long exposures without losing the framing. I still have a few more bugs to work out but it's much better than last year. Also the "dog house" is coming along nicely and was able to store the scope on the pier outside now, so setup times should be much better.

M16 Eagle Nebula

I was able to capture guided 2 minute images of the Eagle Nebula tonight. Here's the results.

Just a note the dark "spire" in the middle of the photo is the "Pillars of Creation".

NGC6826 The Blinking Nebula

Finally had some clear skys tonight, so had a chance to fine tune the alignment of the mount to the new pier. Figured I would give it a quick test. Found the Blinking Nebula and snapped of 15 mins of images.

From Wikipedia:

NGC 6826 is a planetary nebula located in the constellation Cygnus. It is commonly referred to as the "blinking planetary", although many other nebulae can exhibit such "blinking". When viewed through a small telescope, the brightness of the central star overwhelms the eye when viewed directly, obscuring the surrounding nebula. However, it can be viewed well in the peripheral vision (averted vision), which causes it to "blink" in and out of view as the observer's eye wanders.
A distinctive feature of this nebula are the two bright patches on either side, which are known as FLIERs, or Fast Low-Ionization Emission Regions. They appear to be relatively young, and moving outwards at supersonic speeds. According to Bruce Balick (University of Washington), "some of their observed characteristics suggest that they are like sparks flung outward from the central star late in the very recent past (a thousand years ago). Yet their shapes ... seem to suggest that they are stationary, and that material ejected from the star flows past them, scraping gas from their surfaces. Future Hubble observations will monitor any changes in the positions of FLIERs to resolve this issue. In either case, the formation of FLIERs cannot be easily explained by any models of stellar evolution.

M65

While I was out doing some 'testing' of the software and mount I decided to try to image something. I was on the "other side' of the meridian  (I normally shoot everything on the east side) and just picked something bright.
Here's my 1st attempt at M65. (only 5 images stacked / 30 seconds each).