Sun Again

On the morning of July 26^th, I imaged the sun again. It seems like Georgia has clouds almost every night lately, so no imaging of the one Messier item and any more Herschel items. Or Mars, Jupiter or Saturn. And then there is the fatigue that goes along with my current health issues, so I would have difficulty staying up too late, anyway.

So, what's on store for this entry? Not much. There were two prominences visible and one filament. The filament was so thin that it was almost impossible to pick up with the camera. The optics of the telescope and camera are such that it spread the thin filament out enough to make it almost invisible on it's “close up” shot, and just visible on the full disk shot. And I suspect strongly that the prominence (ie filament) was fading away as well, so there wasn't much to see.  As far as the prominences go, they were just visible when viewed through the eyepiece, and only a little more so when imaged. But, they are here. Bearing in mind that we are going through a solar minimum, I'm surprised to get this much. However, I'll take just about anything.

The filament (really?)

The above image shows what was left after the filament had a chance to start fading away; at least that's what I think was happening. Filaments are prominences that we see face on; ie, we are looking at the top of it toward the surface of the sun. As the prominence subsides, the contrast we see in temperature that makes it visible subsides as well. Hence, it becomes harder to see. The darkening below it appears to be a very small sunspot.

First of two small prominences.

Second of two small prominences. Notice how much more diffuse this one is. I suspect this would be similar to the filament.

 

 

Full disk showing location of filament and first prominence. This is a composite of 2 images. The filament looked better in the eyepiece, which I used before starting to image. I guess you had to be there. ??? The second prominence would be just out of site to the lower right, about the 5:30 position.

Sun With Poor Seeing

This morning, about 11 o'clock, I imaged the sun again. Some days there's a lot to see; others, not so much. Today, there was a little more. There were two sunspot groups, and a few “small” prominences. The first image is the composite image of the surface and prominence layers, each a separate layer, of course. The second is the left side sunspot group. It appears the camera doesn't change the resolution; instead, it simply reads the Region of Interest from the camera. The only bonus is a faster frame rate. I think this “feature” is not well documented (no change in resolution). In any event, the focus is “softer” than I would like to see it, but I think that will have to wait for better seeing conditions.

Almost the full sun face.Prominences and sunspots visible.

Sunspots on Left side of sun.

Nearing The End

Of imaging the Messier list, that is. In my current state of poor health, I'm not able to get out as much as I would like, so I took advantage of a relatively good night on June 6 to image most of the remaining objects I need for completion of the list. (Only 2 left.) Most were galaxies in the Virgo-Leo area of the sky, and, therefore, fairly close together. None were what I would call spectacular; most were small and dim. I did try a different technique, for me, in the imaging of these objects; I took my flat frames before imaging the sky, left the camera in place (ie, didn't move it at all), then did my night sky imaging. This is a normal technique for most people, but I have not used it, relying on building a flat “library”. After seeing the difference in quality, I think I will convert to using this technique.

Coincidentally, the Messier images also included 3 Herschel objects that were in the frames:NGC4303 in the M61 image, NGC4594 in the M104 image because NGC4594 IS M104, and NGC4478 in the M87image.

I also have worked on imaging the sun, trying to determine the best method of doing that as well. I have found a method that appears to work for now. For several weeks, we have been having cloudy skies, or at the least lots of water vapor and cirrus clouds. There is also a “quite” sun, meaning not much detail to image. I have also decided that my solar scope is performing about as well as possible, but won't show as much detail as I would like because it would need an additional $950 filter to restrict it's bandpass. If I had a good, scientific reason for getting the detail, I think I would go for the filter. But just to make images of the sun..... well, $950 is a lot. I think I'll pass for now. I also found an interesting method of making the composite image of the sun, using my standard technique of imaging the surface, then the prominence area of the sun and combining them. The surface image gets processed as well as I can get it, then the prominence image gets processed. Finally, I composite them into a single image using a layer mask to hide all but the prominence “ring” (just a small ring of the outer layer of the sun that the prominence is attached to), which allows the surface image to come through. Then the entire image can be colored. All that said, that means that the color of the sun image is of MY making, NOT the actual color of the sun. The entire imaging of the sun is actually done in black and white.

PS. Google has just notified me that they are supposed to put a notice about their use of cookies on this blog. Apparently, they use them. I DO NOT NOW, NOR HAVE I EVER USED COOKIES, the computer kind that is. Send you objections to cookies to Google, not me, please. For me, I usually just clear my browser of all cookies when I close it.

We'll start with M49, an elliptical galaxy.

M58

M59 and friends. I count at least 4 more galaxies in this image.

M61. NGC4303 is the fuzzy at the 4 o'clock position,

M60 and friends. At least 3, probably4, more galaxies here.

M84, left, and M86 right and 2 other bright-ish friends. Actually, about 40 galaxies in this one, most too dim to see.

M87, the bright one in the center.

M89.

M90. I might come back to this one next year. Again, look for the fuzzies. At least 3 more here.

M104/NGC4594. This is interesting, too. Notice the dark dust lane at the "top". AKA Sombrero Galaxy.

Two small promeninces on left side, plauge about 9 o'clock on surface and the black granules are called, amazingly, granulation.

Five Newbies And An Old Friend

On the night of May 5^th I was able to make it to the observatory for a little over an hour's worth of imaging. On my list of Messier objects left to image (18 remaining), I imaged 5 of the 18. The Old Friend was M13, the globular cluster in Hercules that, with M22, are probably the most impressive clusters in the night sky. I really enjoy them. Unfortunately, Georgia is in the midst of daily smog alerts, so the sky is anything but transparent, and that shows up in the images, or at least in the difficulty is processing the images to reduce the skyglow from the scattered ground based light. At the least, these were more interesting to process for that reason.

This group also includes M40, which has been describes as Messier's one mistake. M40 is a double star in Ursa Major (the Big Dipper). According to Wikipedia, Johannes Hevelius described a nebulosity in the area of M40, which Messier looked for. Not finding any, Messier cataloged the double star instead. Speculation is that the nebulosity that Hevelius saw was NGC 4290, which is a dim galaxy that could be seen in larger telescopes, but perhaps not in Messier's. When I image star clusters or, in this case, a double star, I always take as short an exposure as I can, usually 10 seconds. This is the case for the image showing the double star, which, by the way, is just an optical double, meaning the stars are actually very far from each other and not gravitationaly connected (orbiting each other). The second image is a one minute image which shows not only NGC4290, but NGC4284 as well. The effects of the light pollution are also evident, showing up as the “fog” or gray background in the image. This is the very well known property of light pollution; it essentially removes the black sky, substituting gray and thereby significantly reducing contrast between the dim nebulae and the sky. The result is that the nebulae almost disappears; visually, it actually does disappear.

The rest of the images are as noted under the image. Just the “usual”; galaxies and star clusters. Even though “usual”, I still marvel at God's handy work. All made from the same star stuff, but all different, individual; just like people.

M40 (2 stars near center). Actually NGC4290 IS faintly visible in this 10 Second exposure.

 

M40, single 1 minute exposure with no corrections done. Shows NGC4290 (and NGC4284 to it's left).

 

M68. Globular cluster in Hydra. Compare to M13 further down.

M13. Old Friend. In Hercules, just rising in the east when taken 1 Min exp.

M83. Galaxy also in Hydra. 1 Min exp. Low in southern sky and in heavy light pollution.

M101. Galaxy in Ursa Major. 1 Min exp. This would be in the North, light pollution not as bad.

 

M102,galaxy that's also in Ursa Major.

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.