The Cat's Eye

Hi,

My name is Terry.

Early this year I upgraded Telescopes to a Meade 8" LX-90 from a non goto LX-10. Now if you compared telescopes to cars, the LX-10 would be a Yugo, it has marginal optics and its tracking was never that good and of course the object had to be located first. While the LX-90 is a Chevy Impala, not top of the line but very capable. It has fairly good optics, goto and relatively good tracking.

At about the same time I purchased a Meade DSI imager. Now the weather this year has been mostly cloudy and I have only gotten my scope out a few times. There has also been a learning curve with the new telescope and the DSI imager. I am afraid I am also suffering from Murphy's Law of telescopes (When a new telescope is purchased, cloudy weather will prevail.)

Well the following is the first relatively good image obtained with the LX-90/DSI combo.



The Cats Eye is what is known as a "Planetary Nebula." The name is historical and has nothing to do with planets, earlier astronomers thought they looked like planets forming in deep space. It is now known that they are dying stars, that have exhausted their main source of energy (hydrogen) and are now losing their outer shells of gas to deep space. You can read all about Planetary Nebula's at: http://www.astro.washington.edu/balick/WFPC2/ I read somewhere that a Planetary Nebula is a wreath laid down for a dead star. Now this image is only a few minutes in length and therefore I didn't get a lot of detail.