This picture was taken through my telescope (150/1400) from Tripoli (north of Lebanon). Briefly, the story of this picture is that when I was taking arbitrary pictures of the sky with my camera which was connected to my telescope, I saw something strange -maybe never seen before- (a group of blue stars surrounded by a group of red stars, attached photos). I thought that the blue dots were “Neptune” planet, but after focusing I have deduced that my thought was false because I saw a group of blue stars surrounded by a group of red stars. I didn't recognize what I saw but I was sure that it wasn't an artifact or an out of focus picture. To identify this picture, I have asked many specialists and amateurs of astronomy for help and explanation. None of them gave me a convincing answer. Some of them told me that it was a globular cluster, others talked about planetary nebula like ring nebula or owl nebula. Many specialists asked me about the coordinates of that location (RA/DEC) but the problem is that I didn't take into consideration these parameters and I can't review it now because I don't know its exact location in the sky. Keep in mind that there were no lights in the street, the place was totally obscured. The size of these points in the picture is not their actual size but red points appear only after enlarging it many times. So, before zooming there was only blue points and after zooming red and blue stars could be seen.
Are you certain about the quality of the optics? Was the system well focused?
This does not look like any astrophysical object I know. Is the display in false colours?
The image appears to be that of a very bright blue and out-of-focus star which is off-axis. Is your telescope a 6" (150mm) F/9 refractor with a 1400mm focal length? If so, then this explains the image since I see chromatic aberration, pure off-axis astigmatism, and some vignetting caused by one of the refractor's internal field stops (light baffles) or by the field stop of the eyepiece if the camera was attached to the telescope via eyepiece projection. I don't see any actual in-focus stars in the image since none of the small pinpoints have a valid PSF which would be produced by an in-focus star. How was the camera attached to the telescope?
The image appears to be that of a very bright blue and out-of-focus star which is off-axis. Is your telescope a 6" (150mm) F/9 refractor with a 1400mm focal length? If so, then this explains the image since I see chromatic aberration, pure off-axis astigmatism, and some vignetting caused by one of the refractor's internal field stops (light baffles) or by the field stop of the eyepiece if the camera was attached to the telescope via eyepiece projection. I don't see any actual in-focus stars in the image since none of the small pinpoints have a valid PSF which would be produced by an in-focus star. How was the camera attached to the telescope?
Unfortunately the most important thing when making observations is to annotate carefully the Equatorial Coordinates (RA and Decl.) of every object imaged; so now there are unknown. Without this imformation it will be impossible to repeat the observation with other telescopes that may establish what kind of object has been spotted. Several observations taken in different conditions and from different places are absolutely essential to understand what the object could be. Remember next time... sorry about that.
Ahmad replied to me and confirmed that the telescope is a 6" F/9 refractor and that he positioned a digital camera behind the telescope's eyepiece. I wouldn't mind having a 6" F/9 refractor since no other telescope design can beat the contrast due to no central obstruction and assuming that the telescope has optimized field stops inside its tube.
Dear Ahmad,
as you know alt-azimuthal coordinates are geographic and time dependent. If you can provide azimuth, elevation from horizon, time (UTC) AND (it's very important) the DATE of the observation; then it is still possible to compute equatorial coordinates. Of course the precision depends of how accurate those necessary data are.
Regards, Cesare.
For sure is a bright star out of focus plus artifacts from the camera.With that instrument you cannot have colors like that neither a globular cluster big like that
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