It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's....

an indication you are at least as old as I am, if you know what comes next. However, in this case, it's a couple of images of one of the things I usually try to avoid imaging: a satellite. Specifically, an Iridium satellite. Even more specifically, and Iridium flare. What that is, is when the solar panels align with the sun, the satellite, and the person to cause and intense, short term brightening.

Iridium flare

This image is a 15 second exposure and shows most of the flare. You can see it starts fairly dim at the left side of the image, and over a few seconds, becomes very bright, and then start to dim again. Unfortunately, the exposure ended before the satellite returned to its original brightness. By the way, the star basically above where the trail of the satellite ends (and the brightest star on the right side of the image), is Regulus in the constellation of Leo, the Lion. Of course, this is a time lapse image, but visually, you see the satellite moving, in this case from left to right, and suddenly growing bright enough to the be brightest moving object in the sky, and then dim again, all in about 30 seconds. It's really kinda cool.

It should be noted that this is only a small portion of the entire image. The full image is below.

The big picture

This is a fairly large portion of the sky. The flare looks much small, huh? Almost directly below the flare,  but just out of the frame is what appears to be a bright light. Actually, it is. It's the moon.

Flare occurred about as far above the moon as the moon is above the trees.

This image shows the scale of the previous image, meaning in this case, just how much of the sky the camera saw. At least, you get some idea.

Just the moon from the image above.

This shows just how well a DSLR with a stock zoom lens, set to wide field, can capture the moon. Basically, this is what a “normal” DSLR would see. So, if you have one, and would like to know how well you might be able to take a picture of the moon, this is it. The image has been resized to 2x in “post processing”, meaning the imaged adjusting software I use, which is a very old version of Paint Shop Pro. The Mare are clearly visible. The camera was mounted on a tripod and a remote shutter release used to help minimize any camera shaking.

I was a little disappointed that I didn't capture the entire flare, so the next night, April 8^th, I went out to get another flare. However, there were a fair number of clouds. Even though this was a much dimmer flare, I think it still looked pretty with the clouds and moon just out of frame.

Iridium flare just below center of the picture, behind some clouds.

And here is just the flare part where you can see the satellite going from dim to bright back to dim.

Dimmer flare, but shows the entire flare

Finally, on the night of the first flare images, April 7^th, I took a few “through the telescope” images of the moon. One of the things I have been trying to do is get at least one image of each of the objects on the Astronomical League's Lunar List. Even though I already had an image of the crater Billy, I thought this was a better one.

Crater Billy

Obviously, this is the crater. But notice the crater floor; it's a dark gray and appears smooth. What's different? From my reading, the crater is considered an impact crater meaning, of course, something hit the moon and left a crater. But then the crater was flooded with lava, leaving the smooth and dark appearance. Looking at other craters, you will almost always see a central peak. That peak is the result of the impact. That Billy has no central peak implies that the lava flowed into it after the impact.

A Sunny Disposition

Images taken on April 2, 2017 near the Starlight Observatory.

This is the beginning of a venture into something I haven't done in years, and certainly not on my own. I now own a H-alpha, or hydrogen alpha, telescope that is used to look at the sun, and only the sun. Among other things, this will let me observe the sun in a way I haven't done from the observatory. The scope allows only light in the H-alpha band to come through to the eyepiece. The H-alpha band is around 656.6nm. Light at that wavelength is very red, hence the red images. Well, mostly red. Actually, the exposure allows the color to change to white because the image is overexposed, either slightly or a lot depending on which image we are looking at. However, if you looked through the eyepiece, the sun looks very red.

As a side note, the “red layer” of the sun is known as the chromosphere. The chromosphere is “outside” , or nearer to us, than the part of the sun we “normally” see. What we usually see is the yellowish photosphere. The chromosphere is, as I understand it, basically hydrogen that has been heated by the underlying layers of the sun enough to cause the electron to move to a different energy shell. When the electron drops back down to it's lower energy state, it emits a photon of light at the 656nm wavelength. While sunspots are visible in both the chromosphere and the photosphere, prominences are visible only in the chromosphere.

Surface of the sun showing features

As you can see in this image, we have three feature: sunspots, some of which I have pointed out, plage, which is an intense brightening on the surface caused by a mechanism similar to the mechanism that causes sunspots, and, right on the very edge of the sun, 3 prominences. The prominences are quite dim in this image, hence not really very “prominent” because of the exposure needed to see the other features.

Above is the same image, but with out the markings. Perhaps you can see a little more detail.

Same image as above, showing prominences. Longer exposure makes surface look white.

 

Last, but not least, is the overexposed, for the surface detail that is, image which shows more clearly the prominences. It's difficult to tell, but it appears that the uppermost prominences may be part of an arch. In the full resolution image, there appears to be a faint wisp of red directed towards the middle prominence.

A Camera Comparison

Which cameras, you ask? Thank you for asking. In this case, it is a DSLR and a dedicated astronomical camera. You may be familiar with a DSLR, the digital version of a single lens reflex camera. I am using the camera used for the last installment of this blog, a Canon Xsi. It's really a uppercase X, uppercase S, lowercase I, but auto correct won't allow that. Moving on. The astronomical camera is a QSI 683, which is a cooled (as in temperature) camera used only for connecting to a telescope to take images of the night sky. The size of the sensor (ie, the chip) in the QSI is slightly smaller, but they are almost the same size. That difference is reflected in the size of the field each one images. For the comparison, I imaged the area of M81 and M82.

M81 and M82, Canon DSLR

This is the DSLR image showing both M81 and M82. Both are galaxies; M82 edge on, M81 more or less face on. M81 is in the upper right corner, M82 the small fuzzy spot in the lower left.

M82 identified

This is the same image, just showing M82 so it's definitely identified.

M82 with QSI

This is the QSI image showing M82. Obvious difference, huh? So what was the same in these two images? The images were taken on consecutive nights (I couldn't get both on the same night), the exposure time was 2 minutes for both, same telescope. Only difference was the camera. (Integration time was actually longer with the DSLR, which should have made for a better image.) I kinda like this image of M82.

M42 Redo, and a nearly full moon, too

Well, the holidays have passed, the kids and grandkids are back home. You would think it would be time for some astronomy. The clouds “think” differently. However, the night of January 12^th finally saw the parting of the clouds long enough to allow for a few images to be taken. It also allowed me to try a new toy that I got for Christmas: a T ring. What is a T ring? Thank you for asking. It is basically an adapter that allows a DSLR to connect directly to the telescope by replacing the lens. In effect,the telescope now becomes the camera lens. So, what did this test session produce? Let's see.

Really, you don't know what this is?

You don't need to have a degree in astronomy to guess what this is. The DLSR allows a fairly large field of view and importantly, a short exposure time. It's the short exposure time that allows this image of the moon.

A few minutes after the full moon image, I moved over to M42, the Great Orion Nebula. This area is, as noted before, a star forming region in the constellation of Orion. Noted before? When? Well, that would be September 24, 2016. However, the image taken then wasn't published. So, what did that look like? See below!

M42 taken with ZWO, the planetary camera

This image was taken with the camera I usually use for imaging the moon and planets. It's a “one shot color” camera that works like a webcam. It actually takes videos. Then the individual frames of the video are “stacked” to make a single image. With this arrangement, I can't guide the scope, meaning correcting for tracking errors, so the stars are slightly elongated.

M42 taken with Canon 450D, 10 Sec exposure

M42 taken with Canon 450D, 60 Sec exposure

Both images are were taken with the DSLR, but for different lengths of time. The first, or top, one is a 10 second exposure. The second, or bottom one is a one minute exposure. The top one shows the stars of the Trapezium better (that would be the four stars that looks like a little like a rectangle). The bottom one shows the surrounding nebula better at the expense of overexposing the Trapezium. These images are also unguided, but don't look too bad. All in all, I am pleased with the results of this experiment.

A Nice Surprise

With the smoke from the forest fires starting to move back in, I decided to take a chance at imaging anyway. I couldn't smell the smoke, making me think either 1) my sinuses are stopped up, or 2) the smoke was not a ground level. I'm a little leery of opening the observatory with the smoke, fearing the smoke could ruin the anti-reflective coatings on the corrector plate (on the front of the scope). I had planned on imaging something else instead M77, but I'm glad I settled on M77.

M77

As you can see, M77 is a galaxy, located in the constellation of Cetus. Cetus was the mythical sea monster, but today the constellation is generally called the Whale. The galaxy is about 47 million light years away and contains an active nucleus. An active galactic nucleus is believed to be the result of matter “falling” into a super massive black hole at its center. When the matter falls in, it radiates massive amounts of electromagnetic energy in many bands. Bands, in this case, refers to the visible wavelengths band, and/or radio, microwave, gamma ray, x ray or many other wavelengths of electromagnetic energy. M77 is also classified as a Seyfert galaxy, which is a classification I'm not really familiar with. A chance for more study.

October Fun

Those of you familiar with Blogspot know that the entries are sequential and that Blogspot puts the date of each entry on the page. Therefore, the preceding entries were written before this one, and the images were taken before this one. Right? Well, half right. All the entries were written before this one, but the image shown is just one of many taken in October. I made October lunar month. The goal was to try to image all the entries of the Astronomical League's Lunar List. (see: https://www.astroleague.org/al/obsclubs/lunar/lunar1.html about ½ way down the page, under Related Links, you will find the link to the actual observing list.) Over the years, I have made images of things that I thought were interesting to look at, and as it turns out, I had images of about half to 2/3rds of the Lunar List already imaged. Part of the fun and most of the “bother” was going back over the images to see exactly what I already had. One image could contain several objects, usually craters. The list didn't necessarily group objects by geographical location, since there were better or worse times to view each object. Anyway, I found that I needed about 10 or 20 more objects to complete the list, or so I thought. So, most of my imaging time in October was spent on the moon. After rechecking the list against my new set of images, it turns out I need about another 6 objects to complete the list. Since you have stayed with me this long on this post, I should show you one of the images, and the same one marked up to show what the “target” is. Obviously, the target is the crater Schickard. Hopefully, you will enjoy....

Schickard crater

A Satellite The Size of a Galaxy

And it appears it is a galaxy.

M110

This is M110. Although Charles Messier noted the existence of this galaxy in 1773, he didn't actually include it in his catalog. It was Kenneth Glyn Jones in 1967 that added it to Messier's catalog.

M110 is a satellite galaxy of the much larger M31 galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy. It appears to be a little farther away than M31, being about 2.69 Million light years. This is about a 1.5 hour exposure in total. It was also an unusual night in terms of seeing; the air was steadier than I have seen in a long, long time. It was also unusual in that the smoke from the relatively nearby (about 100 miles) forest fires had been blown out of our area. I wish I had stayed up longer! 

November 20, 2016 Extra

On the night of November 1, 2016 I imaged another Messier object, this time it was M76, also known as the Little Dumbbell Nebula in the constellation of Perseus. Some consider it to be the faintest and therefore most difficult object to see, visually, in the Messier catalog.

M76

If this is the Little Dumbbell, what is the Dumbbell Nebula? That one is known as M27, in the constellation of Vulpecula.

M76 is estimated to be about 2500 light years away. It is called a Bipolar Planetary Nebula.