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 7^th 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 15^th 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 1^st 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 7^th, 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.

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.

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

What Can I Say????

It's been a busy summer. Not very clear either, at least at night. On the few nights I have had so far, I've concentrated on Messier objects, mainly globular clusters. Since they are “just stars”, meaning no nebulosity (well one is a nebula), mostly I imaged only in the luminance channel. Saturn and Jupiter were visible, so I imaged them on a few nights. I even got a couple of craters on the moon to almost complete imaging the Astronomical League's Lunar List. I also was able to get another look at NGC6946, the galaxy with the nova. Last, but not least, I attended the total solar eclipse, but didn't do any imaging. Fortunately, a good friend, Max Armstrong, did get a few good pictures, which he has agreed to allow me to post. Because of being such a busy summer, I think I will just post and identify the images, with little comment. There is a total of 23 of them. Group by date sound good? (It may take a couple of days to get everything uploaded.)

July 11. High cloudiness which shows up in the images. Images are of Jupiter and Io (moon), and two globular clusters M80 and M107. M80 is located in the constellation of Ophiuchus, M107 is in Scorpius.

Jupiter and Io just above the center line, to the right of Jupiter

M80, a globular cluster in Ophiuchus

M107 in Scorpius. The light scattering off the clouds is evident in the lower half of the image.

July 22. These are globular clusters and open clusters. It will probably be obvious which is which, just by looking at the density of stars in the image. All are located in the same general area, around Scorpius and Ophiuchus. 

 

M62 globular cluster in Ophiuchus

M6 open cluster in Scorpius

M7 open cluster in Scorpius

M10 globular cluster in Ophiuchus

M12 globular cluster in Ophiuchus

M14 globular cluster in Ophiuchus

M19 globular cluster in Ophiuchus

 Is it any wonder I call this "globular cluster season?"

Cloudy With A Chance Of....

Being able to see the sky. The past month has seen many changes at Starlight, including possible surgery in the near future. Hopefully not, however. Never the less, it's been incredibly cloudy, especially at night. Fortunately, there is a solar scope available. One thing I have wanted to do, but not been able to, is check on the supernova. Maybe soon.

So, what do I have.

Jupiter

Jupiter, of course. This image from May 31^st using a 3x Barlow lens. Compared to standard F10, more detail is visible, so I'm generally pleased with the image. Seeing is still poor, but considering that, I think it's about as good an image as I could get.

The sun, of course. Image was taken on May 26^th and shows a single prominance.

Also the sun, but taken June 13^th. Notice the proliferation of prominances. Looks like solar activity has picked up a little, considering we are near solar minimum.

My First Supernova and a Comet

Just to be clear, I DID NOT find the supernova; it is, however, the first one I have imaged. Since I plan to spend a lot of time on it, let's start with the comet.

Comet C/2015 V2 Johnson

This is Comet C/2015 V2 Johnson. You might notice that it looks like a big fuzzy glowing ball. Well, that's right; that's the way comets look, for the most part. For some reason, possibly imaging too early in the night, it was difficult to image the tail. It may also have to do with the movement of the comet. Or maybe the tail is just very diffuse and hard to make out. This is a stack of just 2 images, each 3 minutes long. But, if you look very closely, it appears the nucleus (head) of the comet is slightly elongated, whereas the stars are not. That implies movement of the comet during the 6 minutes total time of the exposure. If you try hard, you can see the beginnings of the tail, going down and to the left (about a 45 degree angle) from the nucleus. However, when processing the image, the glow from the tail quickly faded into the background glow from the sky; so, it doesn't show up well here. I may try again, but using a more difficult technique; that being to try to track the comet and not the stars. That will be a real challenge for my mount.

On the night of May 13^th, Utah amateur Patrick Wiggins discovered a possible bright supernova in the spiral galaxy NGC6946 in Cygnus. If confirmed, it will become the 10th supernova found in this explosion-rich galaxy in the past century. The nickname for this galaxy is the Fireworks Galaxy, so it appears to be living up to that name.

To have some fun with this, I'm going to use some of my images to show the supernova and give some idea of the degree of difficulty in finding one, other than the aspect of just being lucky to have the scope on the right galaxy on the right night.

Let's start with an image of NGC6946 I took on the night of October 10, 2015

NGC6946 in Cygnus

I referred to it as a spider on this blog at the time. At least that's what I thought it looked like. (Kinda still do, for that matter.) There are a couple of things to note, here; 1) there are a lot of stars in this image, and 2) even though there is some mottling of the galaxy (mostly from the dust lanes), it is mostly just a glow with no individual stars visible from the galaxy. What does that say about the stars visible? They are called foreground stars, meaning they are between us and the galaxy NGC6946, and are actually in our own galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy. They are in no way associated with NGC6946.

So, where was the supernova found? See below, which is a “marked up” version of the above image, with the arrow showing where supernova is.

Same image as above, but in black and white, showing where supernova will be found

Well, now for the money picture, the one we've all been waiting for. Mind you, this is a black and white only image.

NGC6946 with supernova taken May 14, 2017

Having trouble seeing it? This next image has a arrow pointing directly to it.

Oh, THERE it is!

Run back up to the first image of the galaxy and you'll see the "star" isn't there!

 

Finally, I thought it might be fun to see how it's brightness compares to that of the galaxy. Below is the above image, but with the foreground stars (mostly) digitally removed. The supernova is at least as bright as the nucleus of NGC6946, wouldn't you say? It's possibly as bright as the entire galaxy. But that's just the way it is with supernovas.

Same image as above but without those pesky foreground stars

It's a lot easier to spot on this image, ya think? And while you've got the brain working, remember that this thing went off at least 10 million years ago. We're just now finding out about it!

Galaxies, A Lake, and A Fist

This entry starts with a galaxy in the Canes Venatici, the Hunting Dogs.

M106

This is M106, and friends. It was discovered in 1781 by Pierre Mechain and is about 22 to 25 million light years from earth. One interesting aspect of this galaxy is that it has a water vapor megamaser, which is the equivalent of a laser operating at microwave frequencies instead of at light frequencies and on a galactic scale. According to Wikipedia, this maser enabled the first case of a direct measurement of the distance to a galaxy. Also easily seen in this image are two other galaxies, NGC4231 and NGC4232, the two dim fuzzies near the left edge of the image and NGC 4248 the fuzzy line in between M106 and the other two galaxies. NOT easily seen in this image is another galaxy UGC7356 above M106 and a quasar, 1214+474, to the upper left. They show up as tiny dots, basically, when the image is very heavily processed. So why is that a big deal? (to me, anyway) Well, this is only a one minute image, taken with a small telescope in a moderately light polluted sky. If this were an image from a professional observatory, it would be nothing much at all.

M106 and friends identified, from Astrometry.net

A few nights before I imaged M106, I took a few images of the moon. The air was not terribly steady, but I did image Lacus Mortus, the Lake of Death. It appears to be a lava filled crater where the sides look to form and incomplete hexagon. Near the center of the Lake is the Crater Burg, which is about 24 miles in diameter. Maybe that will give a sense of scale to the image.

Lacus Mortus, just left and above ceenter

The last image is of 3 craters, (top to bottom) Theophilus, Cyrillus, and Catharina. These would be south of Lacus Mortus by a good distance. What struck me was the fist shape of the central mountain in Theophilus (not pun intended..... well, maybe :). To me, I see 3 fingers and a thumb. What about you?

Do you see a fist?(Large crater near top and just right of center)