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).

Lunar Images

With Christmas so near, I haven't been doing much imaging. It's also been quite cloudy and rainy. Georgia , ot at least Atlanta, is on track for 2018 to be the 5^th wettest year “on record.. Getting images of the moon is actually a fairly quick thing to do.

November 16th image. Ignore "Ken's Canyon".

The first image is around the north end of the moon. The identification was put there for someone else, but it works well here. This image was taken the night of November 16^th.

December 17th image.

This is a mosaic of 7 images taken the night of December 17^th. As you can see, the terminator is in nearly the same place on the moon (as one would expect). The mosaic just allows you to see along the entire terminator, which is usually the most interesting area of the moon. This image is also interesting to me because I was able to show on the November image that the mount was tracking too fast. For the December image, I slowed the mount down 1% and got much better tracking. Unfortunately, the unsteady air more than made up for the previous poor tracking.

Since it is so close to Christmas, I want to wish any readers of this blog a very Merry Christmas.

Revisit of NGC253 Plus A Comet Plus Stars

Below is the same data for NGC253 as the previous post, but I have changes the processing. I think the colors are rendered better. At any rate, I like this one better, even if it was a little harder to do.

NGC253 Reprocessed.I like this one better.

Comet 46P is in the night sky now, and may become a naked eye comet before Christmas. Below is an image taken the night of November 28, 2018. You can see that it looks different than the nearby stars. However, it doesn't seem to have the tail most comets will have. Maybe I should say the prominent tail most comets have. It appears to have a very very faint tail going from upper left (ie, right at the comet) to lower right. I really have to squint to see it.

Comet 46P. Comet is "fuzzy star" in center of picture.

PROCESSING FUN

Below, an image of NGC613, a galaxy in the constellation of the Sculptor.

NGC613

It's an interesting looking galaxy in it's own right. However, when I process to bring out the very faint details, instead of the 2 prominent spiral arms, 3 more faint ones can be seen. I think that's pretty cool.

NGC613 cropped and brightened a LOT.

Finally, we have 2 images of NGC288, which is a globular cluster, also in Sculptor. For the 1^st image, the one below, I combined all 10 second exposures (ie, 25 lum at 10 secs, 11 red at 10 secs, 11green at 10 secs, and 11 blue at 10 secs).

NGC288 10 sec exposures.

Compare that one to the one below. The difference between the 2 is that the RGB channels of the one below are each 1 minute exposures (ie, lum the same, but red is 5 exposure at 1 min, green is 5 exposures at 1 min, and blue is 5 exposures at 1 min.). Obviously, more stars can be seen in the 1 minute exposure image (even though the lum channel is exactly the same), but the colors of the stars has shifted decidedly to the red. I wonder why that is.

NGC288 1 min is RGB(5), still 10 sec in Lum(25).

NGC 253

Well, I had a fairly clear night last night (November 10^th), so I decided to try NGC 253 again. This time, I imaged it in color (LRBG for the techies). I still think that being low on the horizon is causing me some trouble, but this image is, I think, at least respectable.

NGC 253

Catch-Up

According to my files, August 30^th was the last entry into this blog. Since I'm typing this off-line, I hope the on-line version agrees with this.

At any rate, the primary project is finding and photographing the Herschel 400 list. I appear to have around 160 or so photographed at this point. I'm able, usually, to get around 10 to 15 on any given night, since I'm doing short exposures. Having found them, I'm looking for those to come back to to photograph again, in color. I have found another interesting one. This time, its a galaxy, NGC 253, in the constellation of Sculptor. Unfortunately for me, that constellation is low in the southern sky, and I have to dodge trees to see it. My chances are limited. However, I hope to get a good night before the end of the year to get a good, color image. The image below, shows the galaxy, along with what I think are clouds. The “cloudiness” varied from image to image, so I think that is what it is. When I showed this image to the grandkids, I told them the cloudiness was ghosts, since it was taken just before Halloween. Of course, I told them it was really clouds, but it was fun to see their reaction.

NGC 253, the Sculptor Galaxy, thru clouds.

A Finale, Of Sorts

On the evening of August 27^th, 2018, I finished a project started in 2014, although I didn't formally make it a project until, maybe, 2016. That project was to photograph all 110 of the Messier objects. The entire series serves to goals : 1) to prove that I have “seen” all of the objects (more on that later), and 2) to document the progress I have made in photographing the night sky. The equipment underwent only one change in that time, which was a change from a Starlight Express M516 camera to a QSI 683 camera. Many of the images taken are on this blog.

Why “seen” in quotes? Two reasons. First, my eyes are getting quite old and don't see dim things in the night sky very well. All of the objects in the Messier catalog would be considered dim. Second, the sky quality at the observatory has deteriorated significantly, mostly due to light pollution, making seeing dim objects that much harder. For me, photographing was the only way to go.

So, which one was the last one? M73, an open star cluster in the constellation of Aquarius. I circled the four brightest stars. If you follow the progression of things, Charles Messier first thought this might be a comet; enough so that he made a note that this was something to be avoided in his search for comets. Later, it was decided that this was a loosely associated open cluster. Then, it was decided that it wasn't an open cluster at all, but just four stars that made an asterism. It wasn't until 2002, when M. Odenkirchen and C. Soubiran finally demonstrated that this is just an asterism.

M73, Messier catalogue complete!

Finally, for this installment of the blog, a few images of the sun. Since I image primarily in shade of gray, I' showing the images after processing, but before colorizing, except for the red one which was shot in color.

There was a prominence visible that was imaged in the normal configuration for the solar scope and one with the scope using a 3x Barlow lens to magnify it. There was also something (a filament) that was barely visibly visually, so much so that I wasn't sure it was really there. As shown in the gray image, it was difficult to see even with the camera. The red image is essentially the same as the gray image, but color enhanced to increase the contrast. I'm not sure why it was so difficult to see, except that there has been a lot of high cloudiness this summer...... a LOT. Even the image of M73 was shot through high cloudiness. When focusing, a halo was seen around the star I was focusing on (the halo presumably from the clouds). 

Prominence.

Same one, but magnified 3x.

Barely visible filament.

Same image, color enhanced to increase contrast. The filament is the "line" running upper left to lower right.

Mars and Saturn

In the few breaks in the clouds we have had this summer, I managed to image Mars and Saturn on the evening of August 14^th. The steadiness of the air, also known as the seeing, was quite poor and the images show it. However, as astronomers are wont to say, I needed my photon fix. I did enjoy the evening under the star. Yes, that is singular, since the ever present high cloudiness managed to block out most of the visible stars. Actually, a few, as in maybe 10, were visible. For comparison's sake, the ideal number of stars visible should be around 2500 to 3000.

Also, for comparison's sake, I've included one frame of the Saturn group to show just how fuzzy looking the planet looked. So, how did I manage to get the final, somewhat clear image, you ask? (Thank you for asking.) By using the “magic” afforded to me by digital imaging techniques, of course. In this case, actually on both the Mars and Saturn images, I took 5000 frames of video and then “stacked” the best 3500 of them to make one image. That tends to eliminate to worst, most distorted, images. Then by using the wavelet sharpening in RegiStax 6, then importing that image into GIMP and using the unsharp mask, I was able to arrive at the images you see now. Bear in mind, there is has been a planet wide dust storm going on for quite some time. The amount of detail I think I pretty good, considering that. The dust storm also explains why the WinJUPOS generated image looks quite clear, and shows things you would think mine would, but doesn't.

Mars, best 3500 of 5000 frames 8" SCT at F10 ZWO ASI 120MC. See below to help  ID features.

WinJUPOS generated image of Mars, with a few features identified. I don't know what the red circle is.

Raw image (same equipment as above) of Saturn. Blurry, Huh?

Saturn, best 3500 of 5000 frames, sharpened. Cleans up pretty well, don't you think?