Thursday, December 14, 2017

Hubble, ISS, Geminids.

(Obviously, the post that I thought was going to be the last one for the year wasn't.)

This entry may be one of my shortest. Last night, December 13, 2017 was the Geminid meteor shower. I usually don't go out for meteor showers, but I decided to have a look last night, and I'm glad I did. The reason I usually don't go out for meteor showers is I usually don't see any. But last night was different. I was out for about an hour and saw at least 11 bright meteors. I saw a 12th , but I think that was space junk burning up rather than a Geminid. It was cold, but worth the effort this time. UPDATE: Tonight, the 14th, the grandkids and I watched the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station go over. Following that, we saw a few stray Geminids fall as well. A first for the grandkids, seeing the satellites and the meteors. That was a fun 35 minutes spent under the stars.

Re post of last night's entry, with more information.

This is an image from November 18, 2016 of M110.

M110 from last post, image taken a year later.

Compare this one to the one from the last posting. What's the difference? The one from November of last year, is a much, much longer exposure plus combining exposures from 4 color bands, LRGB. LRGB, which is luminance, red, green, blue, were exposure times of 60L, 9R, 9G, 9B, so a total time of 60+9+9+9 = 87 minutes vs. 3L for the one from this year ( 3 minutes in L band). (What's the L band, really? It's basically a clear filter, except it doesn't allow infra red (IR) light through. That's important because the camera sensor will respond quite well to IR. This can throw off the focus, sense we mostly look for the greatest response of the chip, ie, most output, to help determine then focus is achieved.)
You can read about M110 in the post from November 20, 2016.


NGC 404
This image shows a very bright star called Mirach, which is the brightest star in the image, and a galaxy to the star's lower left, which is the “fuzz ball”. The fuzz ball is actually the intended target for this image and is NGC 404, which is also know as the Ghost of Mirach. NGC 404 is about 10 million light years away and is described as a lenticular or elliptical galaxy. The fuzz (nebulosity) around Mirach is a bit of a puzzle. Mirach is a bright star, about 2nd magnitude. Because it is so bright, the light from it fills the sensor receptors and then spills over to adjacent receptors (pixels, actually). So, instead of the star appearing round, it has a tail going off to the right, which is where the extra light has spilled. That much I understand. It's possible that a similar phenomena is the cause of the dark curved streaks, but I don't know.


NGC 891
NGC 891 is an edge-on galaxy that is about 30 million ly away. From side to side, it's about 100,000 ly across.


And now the 10 second images.

NGC 752

NGC 752 is an open cluster that's about 1300 ly away and contains about 100 stars.


NGC 7662
Nebula, Shells visible, but not central star

NGC 7662 aka the Blue Snowball Nebula is a dying star, much like M57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra. There is a central star that has shed some outer layers of gas. Images with greater resolution can show the central star. It's presence is hinted at here, showing a somewhat darker center than outer edges of the nebula. Distance is not know with any accuracy. Estimates range from 1800 ly to 5600 ly.

NGC 7686

NGC 7686 is an open cluster containing about 80 stars. I've found little information on this cluster, including no estimate of it's distance.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

I'm Probably Closing Out The Year A Little Early

After much traveling and some surgery, I may not have much time or energy to do much more imaging. I did get some done the night of December 10th. As noted earlier, I'm trying to image the Herschel objects on the Herschel 400 list. What I'm finding is that some of the objects are turning out to be things I will want to come back to when I get the time. One such object was found Sunday, NGC891, a cool looking galaxy in the constellation of Andromeda. Of course, Andromeda also has many other galaxies, such as the huge M31 galaxy. Mostly, it's just I didn't know this one was here, and it's looks like a nice one to take a longer look at. In this “run” of 6 images, 3 of the images are stacks of 1 minute, the other images are only 10 seconds, but stacks of 5 images. The 10 second images do not contain any galaxies. I hope to be able to give more information on these objects at a later time.

Lets start with the 1 minute images.

NGC205, aka M110, Elliptical galaxy, Stack of 3 1 min frames F6.3, 8" LX200GPS

NGC404 lenticular galaxy. Stack of 3 1 min frames. I need to find out about the nebulosity around the bright star.

NGC891 This is the one I'm coming back to. Obviously a galaxy with a dark dust lane thru the center.

And now the 10 second images.

NGC752 Open cluster.

NGC7662 a planetary nebula aka at the Blue Snowball Nebula


NGC7686 another open cluster.

Saturday, September 30, 2017

The End of a List

Last night two things happened that were quite enjoyable for me: 1) the grandkids got their first look through the telescope, and 2) I completed imaging the Astronomical League's Lunar List. The last two entries are below.

The grandkids got to see a few craters on the moon; specifically Copernicus, which was just off the terminator and was actually the best I've seen it. I should have taken an image of it, but didn't think of it at the time. They also got to see the really nice “star” Alberio. Naked eye we see it as one star. However, telescopically, it's two stars; one is blue and the other appears gold to me. It's a “goto” object to show people and I happen to really like it myself.

Well, here's the last two entries for me on the AL Lunar list.

Rupes Recta
Rupes recta, also known as the Straight Wall, is a linear rille (a fissure or narrow channel on the surface of the moon) that's about 100Km (about 62 miles) long.


Sinus Medii

Sinus Medii means Central Bay and, according to Wikipedia, is so called because it sits at the intersection of the moon's equator and prime meridian. Obviously, it's in the circle.

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Herschel 400, The Beginning

At this very moment, there are no Messier objects in the night sky that I haven't seen or imaged. There is also very few nights when it has been clear enough to do either view or image, but on the nights that are clearer, I would like to have something to be looking for or at.

One of the usual lists that amateur astronomers start on after the Messier list (which is about 110 objects) is the much dimmer Herschel list. One of the lists, anyway. The Herschels found thousands of galaxies, nebulae, and start clusters that they put in their catalogs. The list of 400 was compiled around 1980 by a group from the Ancient City Astronomy Club in St. Augustine Florida. Since there is some overlap with the Messier catalog, including last night (the 18th) I have imaged 33 of the 400. Of the targets that are not primarily nebula, I'm going to image them in black and white. So, last night I imaged about 10 in about an hour (actually 11, since one image contains 2). All from last night were either globular clusters or open clusters. All were in the constellation of Sagittarius, and are about ½ of the targets in Sagittarius.

For more information on the list and to know what's on it see

Since Sagittarius is in the Milky Way, expect to see lots of stars and star clouds.

NGC6544 globular cluster

NGC6440 globular cluster
NGC6520 Open cluster. Notice dark nebula to left of cluster.
The dark nebula in image above is Barnard 86. The Barnard catalog is a catalog of dark nebulae.

NGC6522 Middle, NGC6528 to right, both globular clusters.

NGC6540 Open cluster (in the center)

NGC6553 Globular cluster

NGC6569 Globular cluster

NGC6624 Globular cluster

Monday, September 18, 2017

Two Twofers (two fors)

After diagnosing a problem with the Declination “transmission” in the scope, and subsequently deciding to do nothing about it, I tried some more imaging. I also found a potential problem with the Right Ascension as well, and that may lead to a disassembly and greasing of the part of the drive. We'll see.
At any rate, I tried imaging a “bright nebula” in the constellation of Vulpecula known as NGC6820. Some of these nebulas (or nebulae, if you will) have nicknames (ie, M17 aka the Omega Nebula, and 3 others as well) 6820 has none. It's a twofer because there is an associated open cluster, NGC6823; image one and you get both.


NGC6820 and NGC6823 (basically dead center)

NGC6820 is an emission nebula; hence, the predominately red color, and it lies about 6000 light years away.

The other twofer is two images of Saturn which shows the increased value of more frames (images).


Saturn, 200 frames

This image has only 200 frames (the images are taken as a movie and the the frames processed as though each frame is an individual picture), the best 75% were processed and used for this image.


Saturn, 2000 frames

This image used 2000 frames and the same processing. I think shows more detail and is clearer. What do you think?

Saturday, September 16, 2017

Sun and Stars

This is sort of “how did the processing go” type entry. No real revelations, just making notes to myself, I guess. I'm pretty sure no one but me reads this anyway.

Three sun entries to start.



This was the sun taken September 7th with interesting and very large sunspots. For the sun to be nearing a solar minimum, this is unusual activity. On the same day this was taken, IF I remember correctly, there were 5 coronal mass ejections recorded by NASA, one of which was headed toward earth and should have produced a nice aurora.


The sunspot kinda looks like an eye, doesn't it?

This image, taken on September 15th shows a sunspot, and what I think is the beginning of a filament. A filament is, as far as I can tell, a flare or prominence that is seen “face on”, ie, coming towards us. Compare this filament to the prominence on the next image, taken the same day.



The most notable thing about this prominence, other than its giant size, is the detail. This is one of the more detailed images of the sun I have every gotten. I did things a little differently this time. I mounted the solar scope on the LX200GPS scope in the observatory. This allowed me to more accurately track the sun. Usually, I just put the solar scope on a tripod type mount with no tracking. The second thing I did was to make a slight change in the processing. The image file, which is a movie or .avi file, was 1st processed in PIPP (a program, app to you younger readers, if any, that does planetary image pre processing; hence the name PIPP.) PIPP takes the .avi file and tried to arrange the frames (about 2000 in this case) so that any chosen interesting feature appears to remain steady, frame to frame. The chosen output of this is also an .avi file. This .avi file is then entered into another program call Registax, which takes the frames, aligns them, and then tries to stack them one on top of the other to form a single image, usually a .tiff file, which should have processing and image “noise” (seen usually as some type of graininess) reduced and hopefully the interesting part of the image a little clearer. Then “sharpening”, which tries to change the contrast pixel to pixel to make the image sharper (as well as other things like deconvolution) is applied to render the best, sharpest image possible. The change here was to NOT normalize the separate frames (try to make the histograms the same or similar) and apply the sharpening routine using the default setting rather than using the gaussian setting. Note to self, changing the step size to 1 from 0 also helped. I'm still not pleased with the overall clarity of the image; it's just that this is one of the more clear ones.

Also on September 7th, I imaged other targets: M21, an open cluster and NGC6572, a very small planetary nebula.

M21

As is becoming usual for me, M21 is imaged in only the luminescent channel; so a black and white image.


Ngc6572. Blue dot is the nebula.

NGC6572, however, is a LRGB or full color image. The nebula is seen as a blue dot just above the center of the image. This image target is much more typical of what we would see in the night sky in terms of size and brightness. Most of the other targets I have imaged are of the “showcase” variety. The arrow in the image below points to the nebula.



Saturday, August 26, 2017

Finishing what was supposed to be just one long post...

August 21. Eclipse day!
These pictures were taken by a good friend, Max Armstrong, while we were at the Hinton Rural Life Center near Hayesville, NC. Totality occurred about 2:33. We were able to see the entire eclipse, all 3 hours of it, with no clouds obstructing our view. People as near as 20 miles from us were completely clouded out. 

Before and after totality guests of Hinton (where I had also made an eclipse presentation or 2) viewed the partial phase of the eclipse through my Coronado Solar Max II (60mm) scope.

Me at the solar scope, with others waiting for a view.


Proof that pin hole projection really does work (as though it was needed!).


View through the solar scope.
The image above is a picture taken with the afocal technique, ie, the camera lens pointed at the eyepiece of the scope. It's overexposed. The color of the sun was actually the red color that is the predominant color in this image. For a handheld afocal image, though, this is really pretty good. Four sunspots were easily visible, as were several prominences. Two of the prominences seen during totality (naked eye even), are being covered by the moon.

Landscape at 2:32PM, 1 minute before totality.

Same as above, except taken at 2:34, 1 minute into totality.

Totality
And finally, totality, showing the solor corona, moon, and, on the right side of the moon, the red of the chromoshpere which is brightest where the prominences were visible.

For now, that's all the images and adventures I've had; I'm all caught up. I'll need more clear nights before I can publish more.
For now, though, thanks for reading.

Friday, August 25, 2017

Continuing from previous post

July 30

M5 Globular cluster in Serpens, just west of Ophiuchus



M8 AKA the Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius, just north of the galactic center. Brighter stars overexposed, making them look like they trailed.

M9 Globular cluster in Ophiuchus, just north of Saturn for now



NGC6946 taken October 14, 2015 showing nova area.

NGC6946 taken July 30 showing nova. B/W image. Compare to above image.


August 5. Clouds starting to show up again. Sagittarius is also low on my horizon, so is very susceptible to haze and cloudiness since I'm imaging through the thickest part of the atmosphere and light pollution.
M23 Open cluster in Sagittarius


M24 Open cluster in Sagittarius

M25 Open cluster in Sagittarius


M29 Open cluster in Cygnus (Northern Cross)



Saturn


Grimaldi Taken at nearly, but not quite, full moon. It's the big, dark-ish crater.


Kepler Taken at nearly, but not quite, full moon