First, I must ask in advance your forgiveness for such a lengthy, and picture-intensive post. If someone wants to mod it, I'd be okay with that.
This has been one crazy, crazy summer. First year of real college ended, shortly after my mother disowned me, leaving me facing homelessness. I worked at school, so my job ended with the year. It seemed like everything was caving in at once. What's more, the way college funding works in the US, I need parental info to get any kind of financial aid, and my mom wasn't even talking to me. Going to a 30,000/yr school is impossible without aid...
I live in a town with nearly 20% unemployment. Finding a job has proven impossible. Luckily, the school was willing to work with me on staying in the dorm for the summer. On top of that, I had enough savings/random, out-of-the-blue gifts/odd jobs to sustain myself for the last 4 months, though there were times when the bank account was down below $4...
I had two cancer scares in two months, which led my mom and I sorta making amends, but then a little argument exploded, and no more. I'm still fighting to secure financial aid, still don't have a stable job, and am barely getting by. Oh. And I'm supposed to have knee surgery before the summer's over.
All that said, I'm getting by, and am very, very grateful for that. I got to spend a week working/playing on a house boat out on a lake mixing sound for an event band, which is one odd job that I love and will NEVER say no to. Met some cool people, found out that people aren't all as bad and evil as people would have us believe,
Pretty much the biggest consequence is that I'm now a rather frequent insomniac. However, this hasn't been so bad, as it's allowed me to pick up a new, awesome hobby I'm sure all of you can appreciate: Astrophotography. One of my professors set me up with observatory access in the beginning of the summer through the tzec-maun foundation. I have access to three observatories, two in New Mexico and one in southern Australia.
The following is a series of photos, some of which I took, some of which I merely analyzed and colored. One was taken by the Hubble, the rest were taken by either myself or my prof.
Here's some of my work:
The following were taken on an E180 telescope, with a simple Canon 50D.
That green dot near the middle is Uranus.
This, is the Andromeda galaxy.
I happened to catch a full moon one night.
Now the rest of these are a bit more... intricate. The equipment is as follows: a 14 inch Maksutov-Newtonian telescope with a SBIG ST-10 camera, a 16 inch Ritchey Chretien, and a 6 inch refractor, both with a SBIG STL-6303. They take FITS images in black and white, and we use filters to take black and white pictures of specific wavelengths. We then take the pictures, match the wavelengths to their colors, and layer them.
Here's an undoctored shot of the moon, using an S-II filter, for reference:
Now, I haven't finished putting that one together, as I currently lack photoshop with the FITS Liberator plugin. But here's some I did on the school's computers in my astronomy class:
Eta Carinae Nebula:
M20 the Trifid Nebula:
M42 the Orion Nebula
M8 the Lagoon Nebula
NGC 5139 The Omega Centauri Globular Star Cluster:
And my personal favorite, the one from the Hubble, which I analyzed and colored, M77, NGC 1068, a nearby spiral galaxy. (Don't ask me why panels are missing, ask the guys that manage the Hubble):
Sorry about the fuzziness. If I had had more time to work on these (they were a class project) I could have fine-tuned them a bit more. But you really can't get rid of it without sacrificing some of the cloud detail.
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the happy side-effect of my stress-induced insomnia.
When the observatories reopen in September, I plan to get a few more galaxy shots, like M81.
Also, I can take requests. Let me know what you want a shot of, and if I can see it in the sky, I'll take some pics for ya.
