Catherine Ryan Hyde
@catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
9.9K followers 140 following 1.4K posts
Author of 50+ books. Dog, cat, and horse lover. Amateur astrophotographer.
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catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
Just for fun, the moon with M44, the Beehive Cluster. I had to wait for the clouds to briefly part, and there was still a bit of cloud action down by the moon. #Astronomy #Astrophotography
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
It's really small, but it's there. Even the colors, to some degree.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
Photometric color calibration? I can say/type it, but I haven't figured out how to use it yet. But I added three hours of data that didn't have the problem, and that helped a lot. That one wasn't a final anyway.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
Thanks! I remember you from my old Twitter days.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
Quick cell phone pic of the moon with Jupiter this morning. The clouds are coming back.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
I was able to get another three hours of NGC 7293, the Helix Nebula, and I think I'm ready to call it done. Especially in light of the coming rain. #Astronomy #astrophotography
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
I can't type today. DBE, I meant. In PixInsight.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
I actually ran DBA on this twice. I'm not sure why that gradient is so stubborn.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
It's really a balancing act sometimes.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
Thanks, Bernd. I hope to work on it a bit more tonight. Last night the seeing was garbage, and where I live it's never very high over the horizon.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
In case it doesn't go without saying, when I said you can see the Double Double, I just meant the two pairs. I wasn't suggesting I resolved all four stars at 250mm of focal length.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
This is a lightly annotated image of the constellation Lyra. Even at this short focal length you can see the Double Double and the Ring Nebula. It gets pixellated when you zoom in to see, because no way could I post the full image. Even the jpeg was 35MB. #astronomy #Astrophotography
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
You were probably smarter than me.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
This is NGC7293, the Helix Nebula. I got a couple of hours of it last month, but that didn't feel like enough. I got another couple last night. I'd like to double the exposure time, but the seeing is supposed to be awful tonight, and there's rain coming. I'll try. #Astronomy #Astrophotography
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
An hour of the open star cluster M39. It's what I was doing while waiting for the moon/Pleiades to rise. #Astronomy #Astrophotography
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
A fool's errand right from the start: a bright moon occulting the Pleiades. Of course the moon nearly obliterates the stars in the Pleiades, so this is a composite of five different lengths of exposure, plus I had to brighten the stars. Worth it for the challenge. #Astronomy #Astrophotography
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
This is a different comet. There are two in the northern hemisphere now. This is C/2025 A6 LEMMON, a single 60-second exposure on very low ISO so it wouldn't be too noisy. Kind of noisy anyway. #Astronomy #Astrophotography
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
A couple of tries at the comet C/2025 R2 SWAN, neither of which turned out too well. Background is mucky because it's down by the horizon, and I only got the barest hint of the tail. In the longer exposure the stars look stretched because I was tracking on the comet. #Astronomy #astrophotography
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
Thanks! It's because I was all set up with a 4X barlow to do planetary.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
Yes, that's Titan. The way you know is that star charts/apps will show you exactly where Titan is at any given time.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
It's hard living in the coastal fog zone. I have a little private observatory in the high desert inland, but at the moment I don't have a big enough scope out there for planetary. I'm glad you got a clear shot.
catherineryanhyde.bsky.social
In a quick 15 years I'll get another try.