Goodbye Comet MAPS

From EarthSky: We just watched a comet die. Comet MAPS (C/2026 A1) plunged through the sun’s atmosphere only 160,000 km (99,000 mi) above the surface. It went in as a comet. What came out the other side was a cloud of dust. You can see the video from the LASCO C2 coronagraph here.

So, it looks like there will not be an Easter comet this year. Discovered last January, MAPS set the record as the most distant sungrazer ever observed at the time. There was genuine hope it was large enough to survive perihelion, perhaps even becoming visible in broad daylight. But the sun had other ideas.

Latest on the Kreutz Sungrazing Comet C/2026 A1 MAPS

Between March 6th and March 9th, C/2026 A1 quickly brightened by almost 1.5 magnitudes, from 12 to 10.5. At the same time, its coma (the comet's gaseous envelope) expanded 50% from 6′ to 9′, and its core became more compact. Exciting news! Then from March 11–17, in a seeming setback, the comet's brightness plateaued and its well-condensed coma shrank back to 6′.

Qicheng Zhang and his team used the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the James Webb Space Telescope to photograph Comet MAPS on Feb. 7, 2026.
NASA, ESA, CSA, JWST MIRI; Qicheng Zhang et al. (Image processing: Melina Thévenot) CC BY-SA 4.0

So, the big question is will MAPS be a great comet?

SkyandTelescope has a good article by Bob King on the expectations for comet MAPS. Great simulation/animation by French optical engineer and amateur photographer Nicolas Lefaudeux is included.

SkyShed POD-S Delivered today

Today, March 23, 2026, marks the official beginning of the construction of NightSky Observatory at the Mangieri residence. OK, earlier this month I received the first actual part, the Surface Adapter and Flat Peir Plate for my mount from Astro-Physics. But the actual observatory building itself arrived today by Saia freight company.

Ordered back in December 2025 from SkyShed, the trip from Canada took a few days and the freight truck arrived this afternoon. Total weight was 1605 lbs. I had a couple of friends of mine on site to help with the offloading from the truck. The dome (in two sections) was the heaviest of the parts coming in at about 175lb a piece. The five pod bays were much more manageable. 

Now I was warned by the folks at SkyShed that the truck driver is only responsible for transporting the freight to my residence, hence the need for some friends to assist in the work. But my driver was an exceptionably friendly, outgoing guy who helped quite a bit in dismantling the wooden crates and getting the parts down to the side lawn of my property. Kudos to Saia!

The SkyShed Pier is still on its way and should arrive soon by UPS. With the weather improving and the ground warming up, it’ll be the perfect time to pour the concrete for the pier. After that, the 12'x12' deck will need to be built. Since the county permit is still pending, there’s no real rush.

Then I can build the observatory building. I already have an electrical contractor retained for the running of the AC and Ethernet lines to the new building. 

Hope to be up and running by early summer. We'll see 😎.

Update on comet C/2026 A1 (MAPS)

On its way to a close encounter with the Sun, with perihelion expected on April 4–5, 2026, comet MAPS is steadily brightening. By mid-March, it had reached magnitude 10—still far too faint to spot without optical aid. However, as it moves deeper into the inner solar system, and if it survives its close approach, it could make an appearance in Earth’s skies around Easter.

Gerald Rhemann and Michael Jäger - March 10, 2026.

In early April, some models predict it might shine as brightly as Venus, the brightest planet. But that’s likely an optimistic guess. It will probably reach a magnitude of 1 to -2, making it about as bright as some of the more prominent stars. These estimates are based on its brightness (18th magnitude) when it was still twice Earth’s distance from the sun. Magnitude 18 is far too faint to see with the naked eye, but it’s actually quite bright for a comet at that distance.

Sungrazers can be breathtaking, but their close proximity to the sun makes them hard to see. Even if MAPS glows as brightly as Venus, it will remain near the sun and low on the horizon. Here's a diagram showing the location of MAPS on April 4, at 6:30pm. Notice how close it is to the sun and only about 13° in altitude. Even at magnitude -4 (Venus' brightness) the sun is 1 billion times brighter! Still, there’s a chance we could witness something truly historic.

If it survives it's close approach to the sun, those in the northern hemisphere will have a better chance to see it as it starts to climb out of the sun's glare. On April 8th it will be 10° high at sunset.

April 8, 7:30pm

As the month progresses, MAPS will get a bit higher in somewhat darker skies. At 8:00pm on April 15th, altough still low in the western sky (10-15° high), it should become easier to see as the sun is now 4° below the horizon.

By the end of April, it begins to drop in altitude and will grow much dimmer as it moves away from the vicinity of the sun.

Plan ahead and pick a spot with a clear view of the western horizon. We just might get to see another Ikeya–Seki.

Soldiers Delight Star Party - March 21, 2026 - Topic: The James Webb Space Telescope

 

Soldiers Delight Star Party - March 21, 2026

Don't miss the next SD Star Party:

"Unlocking the Cosmic Secrets: The James Webb Space Telescope"

Join us on a captivating journey beyond the visible spectrum! The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), one of humanity’s latest cosmic sentinels, has already started to revolutionize our understanding of the universe. Imagine peering through the veil of dust and time, witnessing the birth of galaxies, the dance of exoplanets, and the cosmic symphony of star formation. In this exclusive talk, we’ll delve into the cutting-edge science, awe-inspiring innovations, and mind-boggling discoveries that JWST has provided. Buckle up, stargazers—Webb has already challenged our understanding of the Universe and is continuing to unveil the cosmos as never before!

All ages welcome.

All programs rain or shine. Time machines will be provided by the Westminster Astronomy Club.

You can find out about special local events by contacting us at https://www.westminsterastro.org/

Date: Saturday, March 21, 2026

Time: 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)

Location: Soldiers Delight Environmental Area - Visitor Center

5100 Deer Park Rd.

Owings Mills, MD 21117

Stretching and HDR Processing

Although my previous post using M42, the Orion Nebula, was to demonstrate image stacking in astrophotography, the image based on the 80x8sec stack is quite good and so I decided to redo some of the post processing and make a few additional improvements.

First, the nebula suffers from the large dynamic range in brightness between the inner core and the subtle outer regions, i.e., the core tends to get 'blown out'. This is true of a number of objects that have bright interior regions, such as galaxy cores, and in this case, bright nebulae. M42 has the famous Trapezium Cluster, a young open star cluster with four equally bright stars in a tight orientation, located in the center of the nebula. But because the nebula itself is so bright the cluster is hard to make out.

Second, I did not properly account for the background when applying the Multiscale Adaptive Stretch (MAS) and so some of the fainter outer regions of the gases did not appear as I would like. 

But before showing the result of these improvements I need to explain the concept of stretching.

Stretching  

Both stacking and stretching are always necessary in astrophotography post processing. Whereas stacking helps increase the SNR of the image and gain the benefit of a long integration time without having to take extremely long exposures, stretching is necessary to make the image visible.

In astrophotography, stretching an image means remapping the brightness values in the photo so that very faint details become visible, without blowing out the bright parts. It’s a core processing step for deep‑sky images.

When you capture the night sky (especially galaxies, nebulae, or dust clouds), the camera records light in a linear way. If you have twice the light hitting the sensor, the pixel value where the light is recorded is twice as high. However, most of the signal from faint objects is packed very close to black. Only stars and bright cores of nebulae and galaxies stand out in the image. In fact, if you looked at the raw or stacked image, it usually appears almost totally black, maybe with a few bright stars. But there is a lot of data there; it just isn't spread across the range the human eye can perceive.

Stretching applies a non‑linear transformation that expands the dark tones, where most of the image data resides and compresses the bright tones. In other words, it separates faint structures from the background.

MAS is a form of stretching that has recently been introduced in PixInsight, my processing software of choice. Similar to the other tools in PixInsight I have used in the past, it stretches the image so that the faint data can be brought to light. However, MAS also provides some additional options to make the stretch even better and offers the user a lot of flexibility when it comes to contrast preservation, enhancement of faint details and removal of the background sky glow.

HDR Multiscale Transformation

Handling the large dynamic range in brightness of an object is accomplished with an application of a High Dynamic Range transformation process. Usually this is done by stacking subs with small exposures (to capture the bright areas) and large exposures (for the dimmer regions). The stacking process will then provide a more pleasing result preserving detail across extreme brightness differences. The HDR Multiscale transformation process allows one to do this without the need of exposing subs with different exposure times. You can apply it to the single final stacked image.

Applying the Processes

Here is the original image of M42 right out of the camera with minimal initial post processing. As expected, it is almost totally black. The bright inner core is visible as is the Trapezium cluster.

Applying the MAS stretch reveals the data lurking down in the image. This is the same image as the 80x8sec image in my previous post. The nebula now stands out (note the Trapezium is swamped by the bright emission gases in the core). 

However, the default settings on MAS use the complete image to determine the mean background intensity and so it was not handling the removal of the background as best as it could. By selecting an area of the image devoid of any real signal (I used a section in the lower left) and providing that as the background reference for MAS, the result is much better - the outer extent of the nebula can now be seen.

However, the core of the nebula is now even brighter, and the details of the gas structures is almost non-existent. This is the problem with M42 - the range of brightness between the lightest regions and darkest regions is very large. And this is where HDR comes in. Applying HDRMT with just the right settings (a trial and error manual process by the way) we get the following image.

A run through with Paint Shop Pro yields the final result, ready for printing and hanging on my office wall!. All the wonderful elements of this famous nebula are now clearly visible, from the inner core detail to the outer edges and even the Trapezium.

 

The Science of Image Stacking - Experimenting with Sub Exposure Times

Stacking multiple astrophotography images—often called image stacking or integration—is one of the most important techniques in modern astronomy imaging. It allows photographers to reveal faint celestial details that would be lost in a single exposure.

Instead of taking one very long exposure (which can be ruined by a plane crossing the field or wind moving the equipment), astrophotographers take many shorter exposures of the same object (a galaxy, nebula, star field, or planet). Each image records the signal (real light from stars and deep-sky objects) as well as noise (random fluctuations from the sensor, heat, electronics, and sky background).

Because astronomical objects are effectively static over short time spans, these multiple images contain the same signal but different random noise patterns. Since the signal is consistent across images it adds together as the individual subs are built up, but the noise is random and averages out toward zero. As a result, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improves by the square root of the number of images stacked (√N).

Indeed, the sky background, due to excessive light pollution, limits exposures of under 3-5 minutes in order to prevent the object from being swamped out. In very dark skies this is not generally a problem; but near cities where streetlights and buildings are dense, it is.

Noise is the biggest enemy in low-light imaging. Stacking reduces random noise far more effectively than any single long exposure, producing smoother backgrounds and cleaner detail. In addition, stacking allows bright stars and faint structures to coexist in the same image without clipping highlights or crushing shadows, revealing more tonal information across the scene.

In summary, image stacking works because math beats physics: Physics limits how much light a single exposure can collect without noise while statistics allow many imperfect images to combine into one high-quality result allowing modern amateur astrophotographers to produce images that rival professional observatory photographs from decades ago.

Of course, you need to determine an appropriate exposure time to capture the needed photons (if no photons are picked up by the sensor it doesn't matter how many subs you stack in the end). But you can limit the exposure time by quite a bit depending on the object of interest.

As an example of just how well this works, I imaged the famous Orion Nebula, M42, with my EdgeHD telescope in Hyperstar mode (an f/2 optic train). This nebula is the brightest nebula in the night sky. A single 60 second exposure can give you a nice result (albeit a bit noisy). A ten-minute exposure would really bring out the detail. But 10 minutes is way too long of an exposure in the light polluted sky of my backyard. The science of stacking, however, claims that a stack of ten, 1-minute exposures would provide the same image as a single ten-minute exposure with the added benefit of reduced noise, hence better SNR.

Here are three final photos of the Orion Nebula taken with differing sub-exposures and stacked to provide the total integration time of ten minutes.

 

10x60sec

40x15sec

80x8sec

Can you see any differences? In fact, looking at the original images (these are reduced size JPGs for posting here) the 80x8sec stacked version is noticeably better in terms of SNR, although the post processing software I use has some terrific noise reduction tools that were used in the creation of these images.

The drawbacks of this are few, but worth mentioning. It takes 8 times the storage to hold the 80 8-sec subs vs the 10 60-sec subs and the post processing time (and required storage on the computer) also goes up. But this is a small price to pay for such wonderful results.

Next time I'll target a fairly faint nebula to demonstrate how this really shines!

Total Lunar Eclipse this Tuesday Morning

Although the weather doesn't look like it will cooperate for the Maryland region, you never really know what might be in store, and this is the last total eclipse of the moon for the next 3 years.

The eclipse favors the western half of the country, as well as Australia and the Pacific, where the entire eclipse can be seen. Here on the east coast the total phase begins as the moon is getting ready to set in the western horizon.

The moon will enter the earth's shadow early on Tuesday morning, March 3, at 4:50 EST. Totality starts at 6:04 when the moon will be a scant 6 degrees above the horizon. By mid-eclipse the moon has already set.

So, if the sky is clear, get to a location where you have an unobstructed view of the western horizon. The next total lunar eclipse won't be until Dec 31, 2028, and that one only from the west coast of US.

A very small nebula indeed!

Minkowski 1‑8 is a tiny planetary nebula located about 13,000 light‑years away in the constellation Monoceros. Spanning only about 20 arc‑seconds—which corresponds to roughly half the apparent size of Jupiter—it presents a really compact but visually striking structure. Its outer rim glows more brightly in H‑alpha, while the inner regions are dominated by OIII emission, revealing a multipolar, bow‑tie–like form viewed side‑on. There is a bright central torus that stretches across its core, but no obvious progenitor star is visible in this image. Despite its small size and subtle features, its shape and coloration evoke the well‑known Little Dumbbell Nebula (M76).

Minkowski 1-8 - February 12&13, 2026
EdgeHD11/ASI2600mm
HOORGB - 5hr 12m integration time

So, why did I decide on capturing this elusive PN? Well, it was after I completed the installation of a new auto focuser on my Edge (in the cold I might add) that I noticed a faint patch in the star field while reviewing the test subs. Curious, I loaded the image into PixInsight for annotation, which revealed a small planetary nebula. Over the following two nights, I collected enough data to process a reasonable photo of it. 

Soldiers Delight Star Party - February 21, 2026

 

Soldiers Delight Star Party - February 21, 2026

Don't miss the next SD Star Party:

"Astronomical Phenomena: Eclipses, meteor showers, and other spectacular events in the night sky"

Astronomical phenomena such as eclipses, meteor showers, and other spectacular events in the night sky captivate our imagination and offer a glimpse into the vastness of the universe. Eclipses, whether solar or lunar, occur when the Earth, moon, and sun align, casting shadows and creating breathtaking visual displays. Meteor showers, like the Perseids or Geminids, result from Earth passing through the debris left by comets, producing streaks of light as meteoroids burn up in the atmosphere. Other phenomena, such as auroras, are caused by solar particles interacting with Earth's magnetic field, painting the sky with vibrant colors. These events not only provide stunning visuals but also deepen our understanding of celestial mechanics and the dynamic nature of our cosmos.

All ages welcome.

All programs rain or shine. Time machines will be provided by the Westminster Astronomy Club.

Activity: Dark Sky Wheel

You can find out about special local events by contacting us at https://www.westminsterastro.org/

Date: Saturday, February 21, 2026

Time: 6:30 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time

Location: Soldiers Delight Environmental Area - Visitor Center

5100 Deer Park Rd.

Owings Mills, MD 21117

New Discovery in the famous Ring Nebula

A recent study has identified a previously undetected iron bar within the well-known Ring Nebula, an astronomical object extensively examined by both professional and amateur astronomers for centuries.

Image via Royal Astronomical Society/ University College London.

The Ring Nebula is composed of gas and dust expelled by a progenitor star as it exhausted its nuclear fuel, resulting in the formation of a central white dwarf.

Here is my photo of the Ring taken back in 2024:

And here is the Ring by the Hubble telescope:

Image via The Hubble Heritage Team (AURA/STScI/NASA)

At the core of this nebula, the research has uncovered a bar-shaped cloud of iron. This structure measures approximately 500 times the length of Pluto's orbit around the Sun and possesses a mass comparable to that of Mars. The origin of this feature remains uncertain within the astronomical community.