It's Galaxy Season, Take 2. Topic Started BELOW.

M94. NOT a barred galaxy. Can you see the difference with M91?

M95. Also very faint, but appears to be a barred spiral.

M98. Finally, This LOOKS like a galaxy. Notice the satellite "streak" top to bottom to right.

M99.  A spiral, but looks "unbalanced" to me.

M44 wide field. Beehive circled.This is the 18mm image.

Finally, M44 closer up. This is the 40mm image. Beehive pretty much centered.

It's Galaxy Season

I have two projects I'm currently working on, astronomically related, that is. The second one is imaging the Herschel 400 list, on which I've made at least some progress, having imaged about 129 of the 400 so far. The first project, which is much closer to completion, is imaging the Messier catalog. Checking back through my list of imaged targets, I have about 30 left to go (of the 110). That is, until a few nights ago. On the night of the 17^th, I was able to image another 11 objects. On the night of the 20^th, I got another one. For those of you who are math challenged, that leaves 18. I've already plotted when I should be able to finish the list, which will be September or October. I should be able to image all but one target by June, and if I wanted to stay up all night one night, I might be able to get the last one then as well. If my medicine lets me continue sleeping as well as I am now, that's a possibility.

As with the Herschel list, these are very short exposures (usually 3, 1 minute exposures), stacked, dark and flat calibrated and finally stretched so we can see what is actually there. The exception is the image of M44, the Beehive, in the constellation of Cancer. That one was taken with the Canon Xsi mounted on the telescope to help with tracking (and finding, since the constellation is essentially directly overhead; and area that I can't see with my current problem). M44 is a stack of 11, 30 second images, that have been dark calibrated, but no flat correction. I took two images, one at an 18mm focal length, the other at a focal length near 40mm. The 40mm is an estimation, since I am using the only lens I have for that camera, which is a zoom lens. Per the lens markings, it was somewhere between 35mm and 50mm. The 50mm image will be the one that looks “zoomed”. I'll circle the Beehive in the 18mm image so you can find it. See if you can see it for yourself in the 40mm image.

OK, I know I said it's galaxy season, but this is the globular cluster M3.

So, to make up for it, here are TWO galaxies M65 (left) and M66 (upper right)

M63 (centered). Lower left, for the sharp eyed, is UGC 8313, UGC = Uppsala General Catalog of Galaxies)

M85, no so impressive, huh?

M88. This might be one to come back to.

M91. Dim, small barred spiral galaxy. Interesting to see, however.

 Looks like I've reached a limit of images to post at one time. So, I'll continue with images above? This is awkward.

Some Time Under The Stars

I find that time spent under the stars, even when the skies are not very good, as they are not around Starlight Observatory any more, is time for me to recuperate, especially since the diagnosis. Last night I was able to take the Canon DSLR out for an hour to try something different for me: nightscape imagery. Basically, this amounts to pointing the camera at the sky, and taking as long of an exposure as you think you can get away with and not have star trails; ie, the stars remain round looking, not as streaks. I had been wanting to take a time lapse image of the sky to show the grandkids how the sky moves, so last night, I did. Basically, the time lapse is just multiple nightscape images.

The start time was about 9PM EDT, with obvious clouds. The sun set almost an hour before I started, but you can see the sky still getting darker as we come to the end of astronomical twilight. You can also see a change in color, as the light dome from the college town to my south (we are looking south, towards the town) emerges and grows prominent. This was fun, and I might try it from other locations, should I be able to travel again. It wasn't hard to do. The area of the sky is around Canis Major (the big dog) and Orion, to the right (west). Best seen full screen.

The second thing I wanted to try was ultra short imaging, by which I mean lots of short exposures to see how that might stack up against fewer longer exposures. Below is a stack of 50, 5 second exposures, same area of the sky, with only dark subtraction applied for calibration frames. Each of the frames in the video are 20 seconds each, while each frame used for the image below is only seconds each. I think I can see more stars in the stacked 5 second image than the 20 second image. I could also work on the 5 second image a little to decrease the effect of the light dome. Over all, though, I'm pretty impressed.

50, 5 second images stacked. Sorry about the large file size.

Is This A Discovery?

Or Why It's Probably A Good Idea To Take A Closer Look At Your Images Sooner Rather Than Later

Well, much has transpired since the last entry; we've traveled to middle Georgia to work at a children's home for 3 weeks, and I've managed to come down with an autoimmune disease for starters. That will severely limit my activities for a while. On the up side, however, I've looked at one of my images taken in February and found something interesting; or is it?

M108, mine on left, compared to Palomar DSS on right showing "star" in circle

This is the area around M108 taken the night of February 5^th. Hopefully, you noticed there are two images. Mine is the one on the left, the other is one taken by the Palomar 48 inch Schmidt telescope (which is 6 times bigger than my scope and collects 36 times more light). Notice also the circle I've drawn on both. On my image, there appears to be a “star” which is absent in the Palomar image. So, what did I find? Anything? Some possibilities are 1) a nova (or supernova), possibly, 2) an asteroid passing through the neighborhood, 3)a cosmic ray hitting the camera, or 4) ???? It is quite dim, on the order of 18^th magnitude or so. On close examination, the “star” is one pixel wide, and 2 high. That implies, somewhat, that it probably is not a cosmic ray strike. But what else? If I had found this sooner, I could have re imaged the area quickly. If it were an asteroid, it would have moved. But, M108 is nowhere near the asteroid belt, so probably not that. If it were a nova, it would still be there, most likely, since they seem to stick around for about 3 months or so. Cosmic ray hit; not likely to get exactly the same pixel two nights in a row. We will never know what this is, unless another astronomer just happened to have imaged the same area, seen the same thing and reported it and it has been tracked down.

Lesson learned.