And a Last

On the night of May 30, 2020 I finished imaging the Herschel 400 list by getting an image of the somewhat unimpressive galaxy NGC 2787. Unfortunately, the sky had a fair amount of high cloudiness, which appears to be a permanent condition, as well as a just past first quarter moon. Nevertheless. I was able to pull out the image from the muk, at least enough to definitely say I got it. I used both my traditional method of confirming the target, which is a comparison to star charts, and using ASTAP to confirm the target by plate solving. By completing this project, I now have at least 500, possibly up to 600 galaxies, star cluster, and nebulas imaged. Not too bad for an old man with limited talent and equipment. At least, I think so.

A Particularly Good Link

While looking around the internet I found what I think is a particularly good, readable paper about solar flares, solar radiation and it's effect on radio communications, including GPS. Since I have photographed a solar flare, see below May 13^th entry in particular, I thought an explanation would be interesting. I certainly found it so. I hope you enjoy.

Link to explanation of a solar flare. Opens in new window. 

A First

I have been trying to image M61 as often as possible since I found out there was a supernova in it. The reason: I want to see if I can follow it (the supernova) long enough to see the fading on the supernova. In and of itself, this would be a first. However, the first I'm actually referring to in this case is the use of the program ASTAP. This program plate solves the image, meaning it finds where in space you had the telescope pointed and what you have imaged. In this case, I'm using it to positively identify M61, but more importantly, I'm using it's photometry function to determine the brightness of the supernova. Brightness is measured in magnitudes in astronomy. I have had only 2 “clear” nights to image M61, so I have only 2 data points. The first image is below (May 12^th entry, image taken on the 1th), where I show the supernova. The supernova on that May 11^th image measured magnitude 14.5, approximately. As of May 23, it was “down” to magnitude 14.7, approximately. In stellar magnitudes, the larger the number, the dimmer the object, in this case an exploded star. Two tenths of a magnitude doesn't really show in an image, especially one that has been downsampled for the internet, so, I won't show the most recent image. At least I don't think I will now. If I get very few images (and since we're getting rain or clouds a week at a time, that might be what happens), I might come back to show this one. Let's see what the weather does.

Solar Flare

NOTE:  To see the video version of this, see the April 29th entry below. This is a more expanded version.

On the morning of April 16, 2020, I decided to take a quick glance at the sun to see if anything was happening. Glad I did. Most of the time, I set the solar scope on a tripod to see if anything is interesting enough to open the observatory and mount the solar scope on the LX200GPS to track the sun and allow better imaging (than trying to image from the tripod). This morning, there appeared to be a large prominence at the edge of the sun, so I thought I would try to image it. It was definitely different from what I usually see, so it had already piqued my interest. What unfolded over the next hour was a solar flare, the first one that I can say with assurance that I've seen. Especially when I was presenting in the national parks, the primary difference I would use to distinguish between a prominence and a flare it that a flare would last minutes, a prominence could last for days, or longer. I imaged from about 9:45 until a little after 11:00 AM (of course) and images were taken approximately 1 minute apart. What follows is a few of those images, with time stamps in the caption to show how quickly this all happened. Comments under the picture.

9:53 Pay close attention to the lower part (closest to sun) of the eruption, but follow the whole thing.

The flare started before I started imaging. Of course, I didn't know about it until I first looked. This is the first good image I could get.

10:05 Notice how the "spout" has become a series of "balls" of plasma.

About 12 minutes later and the flare has started to form balls of plasma and "throw" them away from the surface of the sun. Using images around this time frame, I was able to determine an approximate speed for the ejection of material.

10:14 The blue ball is the size of the earth. This allows a scale comparison.

About 10 minutes later and the largest ball has moved further from the sun. Using the earth as a yard stick (of about 8000 miles), the ball has moved about 4  earth diameters along the curved path of the flare, That would be about 32,000 miles in 9 minutes, 20 seconds according to the time stamps on the images. That puts the speed of ejection around 200,000 MPH. I'm gonna have to say that's the fastest thing I've ever seen.

10:20 Ball has "exploded".

Six minutes later, the earth sized ball has "exploded" or dissipated, leaving behind at least 2 remnants.

10:33 All gone! Well, mostly.

Another 13 minutes and the flare is no more. However, what's left of the sun, looking like waves on the ocean, continue "sloshing" around for another 20 minutes.

Supernova #2

Last night was as clear a night as we have had in a while, so out to the observatory I went. My intent was to try imaging at a finer resolution (Bin x2, if you know what that means vs Bin x3). The target was M5, and I thought I would try longer integration times as well; 2 minutes vs 1 minute. I found a calculator on line that suggests exposure times (length) and by entering my “numbers” , it suggests times of 1 to 2 minutes would be the best for me. Just by experimentation, I had found that 1 minute seemed to work well, but, I thought, why not try 2. Actually, the seeing wasn't too bad, and it seems the 2 minutes worked OK. So, while I was imaging M5, I was also watching a youtube channel called Sixty Symbols, and they had just published a video about a new supernova in the galaxy M61. So... I checked the charts and, yes, it was up, and YES, it was within my ability to image it. SO....... over to M61 it was! Three 2 minutes subs later, and there it was. Actually, I imaged it in color, just to see how it would do, but the luminence channel compares best to the image I took of M61 in June of 2018. Presented here is both images; the image from 2018 on top and the one from last night below it, with the supernova shown. 

M61 from 6/2018 and 5/2020 below. (Doesn't "Super-nova" look like "Supe-Mover??)

Catching Up Part One

Over the past several days and nights, I have been taking pictures of the sun or moon. Mostly the sun, since the moon is relatively high and bright, and seeing has been terrible, especially at night, so not encouraging. After the, limited, success of catching the flare, I've tried to keep imaging the sun for long periods of time, at least an hour or so, to see if I can record any changes. It's interesting to see that even over the course of an hour, I can often see changes, although some of the changes are really very, very small. Perhaps at some point in the future I will get a better camera to record more detail, but for now, I use what I have and do the best I can. When I record the sun for, say, 90 minutes, I end up with at least 90 .avi files of at least 100 frame each, or about 9000 images to process. That takes a while to do. So, with that in mind, here is an image from May 1^st, 2020. The prominences didn't move much, so I'll show half the sun, which has 2 prominences, and then the lower one closer up. The upper one reminds me of a Christmas tree.

2 Prominences

Lower one, much enlarged