Great Nebula in Orion
The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula in the Milky Way situated south of Orion’s Belt in the constellation of Orion,…
Horsehead Nebula
The Horsehead Nebula (also known as Barnard 33 or B33) is a small dark nebula in the constellation Orion. The nebula is located just to the south of Alnitak, the…
Markarian’s Chain
Markarian’s Chain is a stretch of galaxies that forms part of the Virgo Cluster. When viewed from Earth, the galaxies lie along a smoothly curved line. Charles Messier first discovered…
Rosette Nebula
The Rosette Nebula (also known as Caldwell 49) is an H II region located near one end of a giant molecular cloud in the Monoceros region of the Milky Way…
Leo Triplet
The Leo Triplet (also known as the M66 Group) is a small group of galaxies about 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. This galaxy group consists of the…
Planning for Future Eclipses
We had a nice BBQ with some members of the RASC Winnipeg Centre who were in Mazatlan for the April 2024 Eclipse. The theme of the evening was planning our…
A little carried away with Fusion 360
I was modelling the rocker box on my 16″ telescope with Fusion 360 (free download for hobbyists only limited by the number of editable models in your repo) and got…
Eclipse 2024 in Mazatlan
Planning for the eclipse in 2024 actually started several years ago. When I asked my wife Marie if she wanted to go, her first thought was, “Well… we need to…
Creating Threads in Fusion 360
Astronomers use a variety of gadgets threaded together for their equipment, using some standard thread sizes that don’t come with Fusion 360 by default. Recently I decided I would try…
The Owl Lurking in the Dipper
Despite challenges with focus on my Schmidt Cassegrain telescope I do occasionally get a decent image! Here’s the Owl with 1500s of Ha and 7500s of OIII (HOO) using a…