Lunar image(s) from December 6, 2019

It seems that I have imaged, and identified, most of the “major” lunar features, so I thought it might be interesting to look for some of the less looked at features. However, he said chuckling, when you go for the minor stuff, it appears you also get most of the major stuff. The field of view is just too great, I suppose.

Anyway, I took 4 images where the primary target was something minor. One such image is below.

Anaxagoras and Pico area of moon just about first quarter

I've identified two less viewed features here: the crater Anaxagoras, which is about 31 miles in diameter, and the “circular formation” that, as far as I can tell, is identified as Pico, perhaps Pico C. My favorite lunar program, Virtual Moon Atlas, doesn't make identification easy, so I'm making something of a guess here with Pico.

I also thought it would be a good excuse to find out what I could about the “minor” features. And what I found is......there ain't much out there! Virtual Moon Atlas had about as much info as could be found. Maybe I should qualify statement; I could find some very specific geological information that I'm not equipped to understand, so was not as helpful in making a good, generally informational description. There is one geophysicist in the family that could interpret, but that will probably need to wait for a later time. The “circular formation known as Pico” is interesting because it just looks like a crater filled in with lava. However, the mountain near the 7 o'clock position is Mount Pico. Why would there be what appears to be several mountains on the rim? Inquiring minds would like to know.... and so would I. This image also shows what appears to be “folds” (perhaps wrinkle ridges?) in the mare. They seem to show up more clearly in this set of images than perhaps any I have taken. Unfortunately, the conversion and downsizing of the image has removed much of the clarity.

The other images have similar interesting formations, as well as some major ones, just like this image. And, information is just about as hard to come by.

Once In A Life Time Event for Me

 Why Once in a Life Time? Next one occurs in 2049. I won't be around for it!

Small black dot just below and right of center is Mercury

As it so happens, there were also two small prominences on the sun that day as well. One was near the 9 O'clock position (the larger one), and one around the 2:30 position. I took quick pictures of them as well.

Larger Prominence on "left" of sum (about 9 o'clock position)

Snall Prominence of "right" of sun

Quick Entry M15

October 17^th I finally got the scope back out and tried some imaging again. Biggest hurdle this time was the new astronomy computer; basically getting it set up and working. I think I have most of the programs loaded and most of the bugs worked out, so it was time to put it to the test. As far as the computer goes, I think it worked fine. As far as the scope goes, well, it needs some work, namely it needs the PEC retrained after replacing the scope back up battery. At any rate, the target was M15, a nice globular cluster.

M15

Lucy Becomes More Terrestrial

And, Lucy became Percy who is now Ruby. Got that? I'm not going to change the name of the Blog, but the focus will change to our travels. And since we will be traveling more, I won't be in the observatory. So, fewer, if any astronomy entries. You can say Thank You.

After the trade of Percy for Ruby, we noticed that we had put only 5000 miles on Percy in about 2 ¾ years. The travels had been mostly to Red Bay Alabama for some work on him or to our NOMADS projects. Percy was a wonderful motorhome for that type of “stay and work” traveling. He was really a home on wheels. Ruby is different. Since my illness, we are no longer able to work NOMADS projects, but we still have the urge to “go, see, do”, as one of the members of the Lazy Daze forum puts it. Ruby is VERY compact, but easy to drive. Percy was more of a “staymobile”; Ruby is a “gomobile”. After about 2 ½ weeks of preliminary work, putting things like the surge protector on, we have taken her out for the maiden voyage. On the first trip, we have already put over 1000 miles on her, so she is living up to the purpose for which we obtained her.

The first few nights we stayed in her, we stayed in the back yard. We needed to see how things work, and didn't want any really bad surprises on the road. Actually, there was one bad surprise; a nail in the rear passenger tire. We took Ruby to a local tire shop for repair, which is now done only as an “internal patch”. This causes us some concern as there is NO spare tire. Dodge gives you a 12v tire pump and a can of “Fix A Flat”. Not really confidence building, if you catch my drift. We are paranoid about checking tire pressures now, which is probably a good thing, since that tire appears to have a slow leak, as compared to the driver side rear tire. Oh, bother. The other major glitch is an intermittent awning extension. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If that is the only issue, then I think we will have a pretty good motorhome. Most times, the post-delivery punch list is quite long. Sometimes, after reading other blogs about other campers, I think the factory puts most of the parts there and the poor dealer has the job of making it all work.

The first night actually camping was done at Red Top Mountain, a Georgia State Park, near Marietta.

At Red Top Mountain State Park, Georgia

Wanna guess why we named her Ruby?

Following that, we met with some close friends to caravan to Paducah, KY and a trip the the National Quilt Museum. JW and MR are quilters, so they were having a good time. JR and I are not quilters, but did find some good barbecue at the show. I will say that there were some amazing quilts to be seen though.

Aren't these amazing?

Near Paducah, there is a town call Metropolis, in Indiana. Any of you older than about 30 might have an association with that name. Well, the town has capitalized on that association.

Who knew I looked so good in blue tights?

After Paducah, we parted ways with JR and MJ, with JR/MJ heading to the NOMADS Annual Meeting in Illinois and J and K heading not far away to the Land Between the Lakes park. It is a National Recreation Area. We stayed there several days to relax, but found some things to see while there.

Yep, that's a lake. And we're on the land.There's another lake behind us, too!

For outdoor activities, we when to the 1850s Homestead, which is a functioning farm. Docents showed what life was like at that time, including woodworking, blacksmithing, quilting, and growing crops and farm animals for food. Apparently they used to slaughter the hogs, there to get their pork, but, times being what they are, the hogs are now slaughtered elsewhere and the carcasses returned for butchering and smoking/salting for preservation, etc.

They also had information on the use of plants in the area, like simple strawberries, and how they used all of the plant.

They preserved green beans by stringing them....

All my life I have heard of “string beans”, which I always thought was a type of green bean. I wonder now if it referred to a variety of green bean that was particularly good at being strung for preservation. When I get internet again, that's something to check on.

Following LBL, we traveled to the Mammoth Cave area of KY. Not our first National Park by any stretch of the imagination, but the first one where we had a National Park Passport, which we promptly stamped for Mammoth Cave.

On the steps in front of "Frozen Niagara"

As you would expect, they had information on the formation of the cave and the area. I would have assumed that the reference to “mammoth” would be to a large “room” in the cave. Not so. The mammoth refers to the huge length of the tunnels, currently about 420 miles or so. All of this in an area (surface area, that is) of about 7 miles by 9 miles or 63 miles square. So far, no one has found the end of the tunnel system, and people have been actively surveying since at least the 1950s or so.

Well, that's enough for now. It's been interesting to see how much we have come to rely on the internet. When we don't have it, it's easy to become bored, especially since we didn't bring enough to do otherwise (not a lot of room). That's OK for now; this is a different type of traveling for us, and we need to learn how to do it. That will take some time and a few false starts, but we'll get there.

Another Quick Entry

Interesting past several weeks. Astronomy computer died, but was mostly backed up. All the images saved, but it's been a real pain not having a dedicated astronomy computer. I bought a HP multi-core replacement, but, to my amazement, it wouldn't run the astronomy programs that ran the cameras, especially the ASI120MC planetary camera. Fortunately, I could return it, which I did. Now, the wife's older HP, which easily runs all the programs the new HP wouldn't, is doing double duty. Unfortunately, that also leaves less time, and more complications, for astronomy. Oh, well. That's life.
However, I was able to get some images of Jupiter and Saturn a few nights ago. Seeing wasn't all that good, but the planets are at least recognizable.

Jupiter, with 2 moons and moon shadow on surface.

Saturn, of course.

Quick Entry

It took a couple of days to process and stitch the image together, but I found a series of images taken along the terminator of the moon back in January. I guess you might say I'm a little late working on it. (Duh) Better late than never, hopefully. Hope you enjoy.

A Few More Entries Through Cloudy Skies

Clouds, rain, and summer haziness have all been factors in my ability to image this summer. They have left few opportunities. But, I have had some success. Since the last entry to this blog in which I presented current images, I've imaged about 45 Herschel targets, the moon, the sun, and Jupiter. I'll present examples of each this entry.

Clavius with craterlets "D" and "C" inside

Above is the crater Clavius with the smaller craterlets Clavius D to the left and C to the right situated in the middle of the main Clavius crater. To me, the craterlets D and C look somewhat like a pair of glasses, perhaps a pair of pince nez. Clavius is located near the southern pole of the moon and is about 136 miles in diameter. “D” is about 16 miles in diameter, while “C” is about 12 miles in diameter. The interesting point here is how well the craterlets are lit. Although the sun angle is very low, the tops of the craterlets appear to be as high as the rim on Clavius itself, or close to it. The low sun angle gives the image a somewhat 3D effect to me, which is one reason I like trying to image interesting things in this manner.

The sun, but I bet you already knew that.

This image of the sun was taken on June 29, 2019 and is a composite of two images. The first image is a much overexposed image to get the faint prominence seen on the left limb on the sun. The second is a much “better” exposed image that shows the sunspot (which I think is a left over sunspot from the just past solar cycle #24... I'm not 100% sure of that.). The color difference between the “rims” is because of my haste is trying to align a circular mask on the prominence image that I could use to allow the surface to show through. I didn't get the mask exactly aligned. I've used this technique before, but was having trouble seeing exactly where the circle of the mask was to get things aligned. At any rate, at least I am able to show generally that both the sunspot and prominence were both on the sun and in what relationship. This is a false colored H-alpha image.

Jupiter and moons (circled)

Next up is Jupiter plus 3 moons, which I have conveniently circled so you can find them. If you were actually looking through an eyepiece at this, the moons would be quite obvious. However, when imaging and trying to not overexpose Jupiter, the moons are much dimmer. Jupiter is low on the horizon (and will be this season), so imaging will be extremely difficult. Maybe that should be GOOD imaging will be extremely difficult. This image isn't great, but is certainly one of the better ones so far. The moons are, by the way, Ganymede “over” Io, with Europa to the far right.

NGC 4527, 4536, and just barely visible, NGC 4533.

Last is an image taken back on June 1, 2019 that shows the targets of NGC 4527 (galaxy near the bottom edge of image) and NGC 4536 (near the top edge of the image). Sharp eyed readers will notice a smudge just above the 2 stars in the middle of the image that's and extra; it's NGC 4533. At least one source on the internet says NGC 4533 is about 103 million light years distant; NGC 4527 about 46 million light years away, and NGC 4536 about 50 million light years from us.

For our LD friends

Here is a single image of the constellations of Orion and Canis Major, referenced in a reply on the LD forum. This is one of the many in the video below. However, I have found that the compression needed to get the video into the blog has darkened it enough for make it essentially un-viewable. I'll leave it up for now, but it may not stay.

Orion and Canis Major

Smoky Skies

On the evening of June 2, 2019 I imaged another 12 objects; galaxies actually. There was a complicating factor in this observing run; smoke. According to the local weather caster, this is smoke carried by the jet stream from Canada to Georgia. This references the fire . Haze, smoke, water vapor, and high cloudiness all contribute to making observing of fuzzy objects … well, challenging to say the least. You loose contrast, which means it is more difficult than it would normally be to separate the faint, cloud-like objects from the cloud-like atmosphere. I decided to let the images I took “count” as part of my images in the Herschel 400 list (which, as of last night, is at 325) for several reasons: 1) sometimes you just have to play the card you are dealt; you can't change the weather. 2) with my eyes, what I imaged is FAR better than anything I could have seen. 3) with the past year health wise, I may not be around or have the ability to image for much longer and I have to image this part of the sky when I it's available.

Many of the galaxies on the list are just so so; they look a lot like a fuzzy star that's elongated. Others show more structure; knots of stars, the arms of the galaxy, etc. Thus they are more interesting, visually. The first image I took last night was that kind. The image contains lots of galaxies, behind the smoke. But, two are visible; NGC4526 (towards the top) and NGC4535. This is a pair I would like to come back to and image in color, minus the smoke.

NGC4526 and NGC4535

This May Be a Record

As I know, I've been working on imaging the Herschel 400 list. I'm now up to 313 of the 400. On the night of May 28,2019, I imaged three galaxies, all on the list, in one image. Cheating, maybe, but they all fit, so there you have it.

The primary target was NGC 4261, but 4273 and 4281 came along for the ride. After processing the image, I counted 15 galaxies in this one image. That is what may be the record. Especially considering that the skies have been, and still are, quite hazy.

NGC 4261, et. al. Posted original size so you can try to find all 15. Vertical line on left is a satellite.

M33 Redo

It would appear that image processing is pretty much everything, second only to everything else. In other words, the data (original image) has to be good to start with, especially in terms of focus, tracking, etc.

As an experiment, or just to try something else to see if I could do better, I took the original data from 2015 on the galaxy M33 and processed using a different method.

The original method was to calibrate the image (flats, darks) for each color channel (L, R, G, B); combine the 4 channels, and then stretch the resulting LRGB image to arrive at the final image, which is shown below.

M33 Original image posted in 2015

All in all, not too bad.

However, doing some reading this weekend, I found a different method of processing the same data. This time, I basically processed only the L channel just as I would have the image above; ie, stretching it, sharpening it, etc. This new L channel was then combined with the RGB channels as before. Only a small amount of stretching and sharpening was done on this image. Indeed, I had to add a little blur to make it look a little better, ie, not so stark. Results below.

M33 Redo sharper and better color saturation, I think

Exactly the same starting images, just processed a little differently. Personally, I like the 2^nd one better.

As as aside, the "count" that blogger supplies for each entry, meaning the number of times someone has seen that page, has officially dropped to 0. Normally, it's 4 or 5. Probably bots looking around. I think I'll look at it after I post this just to get the count up to 1.

So.... It's Been A While

About 3 months, more or less. Things have been busy around here. And the skies have been cloudy, mostly. However, I have managed a few nights imaging. Three, I think. But on those nights, I have managed about 25 target images, Jupiter and Saturn, the moon, and a “nightscape” sequence, which I'll put at the end. It's a movie (.avi) file, and the 1^st on of those I've tried of this type. What do you think of it?

Planets first. 

Jupiter with moons just visible, 1 on left, 2 on right.

Saturn

Unfortunately, there was enough high cloudiness that clear images just weren't going to happen, but fun to take anyway.

Next, we'll go to the moon.

Virtual Moon Atlas showing area around Tycho.

My image showing the same area

The bottom image is my image of the area around the crater Tycho. For identification purposes, I've included a screen shot of the program Virtual Moon Atlas (which I recommend; it's free and VERY good) identifying craters and features in the general area. Tycho is “naked eye” at full moon with the crater ejecta basically pointing to it.

Now to a few deep sky images. Over the course of 2 nights, I managed to image about 25 target galaxies. By that, I mean that I imaged not only the galaxy I wanted to image, but several other galaxies as well. For instance, in the image below, the “target” is identified as NGC3729. But there are 6 other galaxies in the image as well. I've included a screen shot from the program Megastar 5 that shows all the galaxies. The group around Hickson 56 is, of course, small and dim in my image, but I'm using a small telescope to get these images.

Megastar 5 screen shot of area around NGC3729.

My image of NGC3729 and 6 other galaxies.

All of the galaxy “targets” are on the Herschel 400 list and a lot of them are elliptical galaxies. These typically show up a elongated “smudges”.

NGC3610

Some of the galaxies conform to the common image of a galaxy.

NGC3938. Arrow points to another galaxy.

Lastly, I have tried taking a “movie”, actually about 200 separate images, of the motion of the night sky. In this case, we are watching the constellations of Orion and Canis Major as they are setting. I thought it turned out pretty well, all things considered.

M31 Revisited

This time, we will be revisiting one of the “old friends”, the Andromeda galaxy. This time of the year, it's almost directly overhead. But, so are a LOT of clouds. This has been a terrible year for astronomy so far :).

M31

 

This is the “original” image taken in 2015. (That appears to have been a good year; at least not as cloudy.) To get oriented, North is at the top of the picture and East on the left side. If you were looking due South at the sky, this would be the correct orientation. The big galaxy is M31. The smaller “blob” in the lower left corner is another galaxy, M32. M32 is a satellite galaxy of M31 (also implying that it is gravitationally bound to it like our moon is to earth).

M31 with globular cluster marked.

Notice this this is the same image with 10 small white circles. Those circles, as it turns out, are circling globular clusters located in M31. You will need to magnify the image to be able to see them, but they are there. It is not new knowledge that globular clusters are around other galaxies. What is new for me is that I imaged them! And didn't even know it! I would expect the Hubble telescope to be able to do this, but not me. I found an article on an astronomy web site about seeing these visually, which would take a BIG scope, but one that many amateurs might own. My eyes aren't good enough to see them even with a big scope, so I decided to check my images. And there they are. I have another image of, basically, the “top” half of M31 (assuming this is the bottom half), and I found another 15 or so in that image.

Of course, we have globular clusters around our own galaxy. Here is of the “gems”,M13, seen below. 

M13 in Hercules

 

M13 is in the constellation of Hercules and is usually a summer constellation. Why usually? It's important to realize that the constellations can be visible a fairly large portion on the year, depending how late you want to be up at night. For instance, Hercules can be seen at 6 AM late November through May. However, most people don't do their observing in the early morning, but after supper and before midnight. Therefore, it is more commonly seen around 10 PM May through November. All this assumes you have very good horizons. Another way to say all this is that Hercules is above the horizon when it is dark enough to see it during those times just mentioned (basically all year, depending on where you live).