Monsoon Madness!

Get 20% OFF Imaging Credits and Starbase Image Set Subscriptions on Insight Observatory's 16" f/3.75 Dream Aerospace Systems astrograph reflector (ATEO-1)!

Offer valid from June 1, 2020, Thru August 31, 2020.

Now that the summer months are arriving in the southwest, US, they may bring us fewer clear nights. However, when the nights are clear, the deep-sky gems in the summer Milky Way are there for the taking.

Insight Observatory has decided to celebrate the "rainy season" with a summer discount of 20% OFF imaging credits and Starbase image set subscriptions on our fast and wide field of view 16" f/3.75 Dream Aerospace Systems astrograph reflector remote telescope located at nearly 7,800' in the dark skies of New Mexico.

Insight Observatory's 16" f/3.75 Dream Aerospace Systems astrograph reflector (ATEO-1) remote telescope is housed in Gamma Observatory at SkyPi Remote Observatory located at nearly 7,800' in Bortle 1 dark skies of New Mexico.

ATEO-1 Discounted Imaging Rates:

• Standard: $48.00 USD per imaging hour - Savings of $12.00 per imaging hour
• Education: $39.00 USD per imaging hour - Savings of $10.80 per imaging hour

ATEO-1 Starbase Image Set Subscriptions:

• Standard: $0.08 cents per minute of image set exposure time
• Education: $0.06 cents per minute of image set exposure time

Get quality image data acquired from ATEO-1 to process images like these...

M13 - The Great Globular Cluster in Hercules, M16 - The Eagle Nebula, and M63 - The Sunflower Galaxy all imaged on Insight Observatory's 16" f/3.7 Dream astrograph reflector (ATEO-1) remote telescope. M13 and M63 images were processed by Utkarsh Mishra and M16 images were processed by Bubba Daniels.

If you have any questions regarding our "Monsoon Madness" summer discount, please Contact Us.

Sign-up or log in to access your ATEO Portal account to take advantage of this special offer.

Enjoy and Clear Skies!
The Insight Observatory Team

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What's In The Sky - August 2019

Warm summer nights seem like they're tailor-made for backyard astronomers. Evenings throughout August are great opportunities to get the whole family outside for summer stargazing fun with a telescope or your favorite pair of binoculars. Here are a few of Orion Telescopes and Binoculars' top picks for August stargazing...

Perseid Meteor Shower 2012. Image by David Kingham.

Perseid Meteor Shower

Go outside on the night of August 12th-13th for the best chances to see the peak of the Perseid meteor shower! Some may be visible each night from July 23rd through August 20th, but the peak is on the 12th -13th. Unfortunately, the Moon will be 12 days old at this time, which will limit visibility due to its brightness. However, with up to 80 meteors per hour expected at maximum, this is still one of the most popular meteor showers of the year.

Mercury high in the sky

On the morning of August 9th Mercury will be at its greatest Western elongation, rising early before sunrise. Because Mercury is so close to the Sun, it is best viewed during an elongation like this, since it is at its maximum separation from the Sun. Look above the Eastern horizon before sunrise to catch a glimpse of the innermost planet!

Messier 16, the Eagle Nebula imaged by Utkarsh Mishra and Zhuoqun Wu.

Nebulas

Many excellent examples of gaseous nebulas are on display in the skies of August. The brightest are M16 the Eagle Nebula, M17 the Swan Nebula, M20 the Trifid Nebula and the very bright M8, Lagoon Nebula. All are visible in binoculars from dark locations with good seeing. Use a small to moderate aperture telescope with the aid of an Oxygen-III eyepiece filter or SkyGlow Broadband Filter to see these nebulas from locations plagued by light pollution.

New Moon

New Moon is August 30th and therefore the best time to observe the more faint objects like galaxies and star clusters. Grab your gear and enjoy!

August Challenge Object

Orion's challenge this month is a surprisingly easy object to see with a telescope, but not so easy with binoculars. Look for M27, the Dumbbell Nebula in the constellation of Vulpecula, just south of Cygnus. M27 is one of the nearest and brightest planetary nebulas visible from Earth. It's so big that it can be spotted in humble 7 x 50 binoculars, but it does present a challenge! Try to track M27 down this August with your astronomy binoculars; it will be a small dot, slightly larger than the surrounding stars, but definitely visible through 50mm or larger binoculars.

All objects described above can easily be seen with the suggested equipment from a dark sky site, a viewing location some distance away from city lights where light pollution and when bright moonlight does not overpower the stars.

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Eagle Nebula Collaboration Project

Insight Observatory's remote telescope was recently involved in a deep-sky imaging collaboration between two experienced astrophotographers. Utkarsh Mishra and Zhuoqun Wu teamed up to combine and process datasets resulting in the image below of Messier 16, The Eagle Nebula. The Luminance, Red, Green, and Blue data was acquired by Utkarsh with Insight Observatory's 16" astrograph reflector (ATEO-1) hosted in Pie Town, New Mexico, and the H-Alpha data was taken from Chilescope by Zhuoqun using a 20" ASA Newtonian astrograph. The data files were stacked using PixInsight and processed in Adobe Photoshop.

Insight Observatory has recently had an increase in deep-sky dataset subscribers that are involved in image collaborations with other astrophotographers using equipment at other locations around the world. Very exciting!

Messier 16, the Eagle Nebula imaged by Utkarsh Mishra and Zhuoqun Wu. 10 300-second Luminance, 14 300-second Red, 11 300-second Green, and 10 300-second Blue frames taken from ATEO-1 along with 50-Minutes of H-Alpha data acquired from Chilescope.

The Eagle Nebula (cataloged as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611, and also known as the Star Queen Nebula and The Spire) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Chéseaux in 1745–46. Both the "Eagle" and the "Star Queen" refer to visual impressions of the dark silhouette near the center of the nebula, an area made famous as the "Pillars of Creation" imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The nebula contains several active star-forming gas and dust regions, including the aforementioned Pillars of Creation.

The Eagle Nebula is part of a diffuse emission nebula, or H II region, which is cataloged as IC 4703. This region of active current star formation is about 7000 light-years distant. A spire of gas that can be seen coming off the nebula in the northeastern part is approximately 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion kilometers long.

Source: Wikipedia

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