A Few Photos

Normally, the images obtained at the Mount Tom Observatory are fairly dull to the casual observer - just plain star fields containing an interesting science target or two. However, a home page is not very interesting without pictures so here are two that I made when I first took delivery of my SBIG ST 9 CCD camera in the summer of 2000. They were taken through my 1985 vintage Meade 12.5 inch f/6 Newtonian reflector from my driveway on the second night out. I could only track for 30 seconds but through the wonders of image stacking and processing, I think they came out pretty well.

Here's the galaxy M51 with its companion NGC 5195 in Canes Venatici:

And here's M3, the globular cluster in Canes Venatici:

That's it for now. If I happen to take more pretty pictures in the future, I'll post them here.