Michael Verdi

Category: Astronomy

  • Eagle Nebula

    Another photo taken with my Dwarf 3 telescope. This is the Eagle Nebula.

    And here’s a crop of the Pillars of Creation. Not quite as cool as the one from the Hubble but pretty amazing that I could get this from my backyard.

  • Rosette Nebula Processing Examples

    The Rosette Nebula processed in PixInsight.
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  • Dwarf 3

    It took 5 months to get here but I finally got my Dwarf 3 telescope and had a chance to take some images. Now the images right from the telescope don’t look this good but you can download the .fits files and process them yourself. So I figured I try to learn how to do that. I used this tutorial as a starting point (I skipped re-stacking the images myself) and got some nice results. These are taken from my backyard in light-polluted Dallas, TX.

    M42 – The Orion Nebula
    The Horsehead Nebula
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  • The Phantom Moon

    I’ve always been fascinated by the view of the moon in the daytime sky. Years ago I began calling this “The Phantom Moon.” It’s one of the inspirations for the film I’m working on.

    The Phantom Moon – view from my bedroom/backyard – June 24, 2024

  • Corona Borealis before

    Checking a long overdue item off of my list. I got a photo of the Corona Borealis constellation before T Coronae Borealis goes nova.

    Corona Borealis on June 23, 2024 – click to expand

    T Coronae Borealis should be just below the second star on the left (at about 8 o’clock). It’s circled in red in the diagram below.

    Location of T Coronae Borealis (circled in red)

    Hopefully, once this star goes nova I’ll be able to get a photo before it fades.

  • 2024 Eclipse

    The sky cleared up just moments before the start of totality.

    The audio consists of me and Dylan saying “fuck” a bunch of times.