The Xanadu Observatory Blog has been moved to a new site:
http://xanaduobservatory.blogspot.com/
Thanks to AstronomyBlogs for hosting my ramblings in the past.
Hope you will visit the new blog site soon!
Clear Skies,
Keith
Xanadu Observatory
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For the past two nights, I've been enjoying the Huachuca Astronomy Club's C-Row Star-B-Q. This event was held at the Repogazer (RGO) Observatory.
The theme of C-Row is Celestron; the main observing field was filled with various Celestron telescopes and accessories. Celestron will be 50 years old next year, and there was plenty of vintage gear on the field. My contribution to the C-Row was my little white tube C-5+.
Celestron's corporate headquarters sent out various executives and sales personnel, and they set up a nice booth with demos, including the new CGE+ and some prototypes of new telescopes with flat optics.
Friday night was basically clouded out, so I left early and headed home for a good night of sleep. Last night, however, was very clear and a beautiful Milky Way set the stage for a great night of observing. In addition to some visual work through varoius friends' scopes, I played a little bit with the AstroTrac and digital camera.
There was a big raffle giveaway last night - in fact, every one of the 150 attendees won a prize! My big winning was a year's subscription to Astronomy Magazine. This was definitely a great event, and I'm looking forward to doing it again next year.
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I'm here in California for the Society for Astronomical Sciences Symposium on Telescope Science. Today was a day full of seminars on amateur astronomy from a science perspective. Most of the talks related to photometry and spectroscopy. This year they combined the SAS meeting with the AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers) meeting, so it's quite large, with several hundred attendees.
This picture shows my friend Olivier Thizy giving his spectroscopy talk. Olivier runs Shelyak Instruments and we had a great time playing with the LHIRES III Spectrograph up here a couple of years ago. This time he brought along his new high-end Echelle spectrograph, which I am drooling over!
There are several Tucson folks here, including my friend Steve and Darryl, Mark, and others. Also a bunch of the "usual" star party folks and vendors, like James, Don, Kevin, etc. Overall I'm having a great time.
On Friday we'll head a few miles down the road to the RTMC Astronomy Expo. Hopefully I'll see a bunch of good friends there as well.
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The sun's going down and a new night of fun is starting here at TSP. I didn't get nearly enough sleep today but that's o.k., I'm ready for more!
Here's an image of IC 4603, the nebulous region around the interesting star Rho Ophiuchius (how do you pronounce that, anyway?) I took this in the early morning hours the past couple of nights. The numerous dark tendrils weaving their way around this area are really fascinating.
Click here to see a larger version of this image.
Meanwhile it's time for me to attend to the scopes...
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It's 6 a.m. and I'm just wrapping up an excellent observing night at the Texas Star Party.
I took the picture above with my Canon DSLR about 3 hours ago, it is a single 10-minute shot with the camera aimed towards the center of our Milky Way galaxy, tracking on an AstroTrac and tripod.
We had a lot of success, including some good CCD imaging and completion of some of the TSP Observing Lists.
Time for some rest now!
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Here I am for another exciting week at the Texas Star Party, one of my favorite astronomy escapes. After arriving yesterday and setting up all the gear, I was pretty exhausted, but still managed to stay up most of the night.
This picture shows the two telescopes that I brought along - my Epsilon 180 for imaging, and my Obsession 15" for visual. The sky last night was very dark and seeing was excellent, so I had a great time with both scopes.
This afternoon I spent some time in the amateur radio shack, and made about 100 QSO's for the W5TSP special event station.
Tonight's going to be clear again and I'm looking forward to some more fun. There are a bunch of Arizona folks here from both TAAA and HAC, including Larry (who I drove out with), Dean, Bob, and Glenn. Plus I know a bunch of others from previous star parties, etc., so it's a great social time as well.
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Had a great day yesterday learning about asteroids and NEO's. We had some of the CSS astronomers give talks, and also spent a good part of the day working with Astrometrica software. Astrometrica can be used to identify possible asteroids and NEO's in image frames.
We also learned how to check data with the Minor Planet Center, and how to submit observation reports. Hopefully I will obtain some data sometime soon, and with my first submission I'll be eligible to request an MPC Observatory Code for Xanadu Observatory.
The weather last night wasn't good so we never did open the dome. I drove down the mountain around midnight, which meant missing the final few hours of the workshop this morning. Other obligations today made it necessary, but I think I got some very valuable information out of the workshop. Plus, it's always very enjoyable to spend time in an astronomy environment with professional observatories all around!
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Last night was the first night of the Mount Lemmon Sky Center's Asteroids and Near Earth Objects (NEO's) Workshop.
I decided to take a short break from an extremely busy tax season to try to learn a few new things. I have not done a lot of asteroid work in the past so thought it might be fun.
We started the workshop with an hour-long tour of the University of Arizona's Mirror Lab, which builds many of the world's largest telescope mirrors. They were currently in the process of grinding mirrors for the GMT (Giant Magellan Telescope), and the LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope).
After driving up the mountain, we spent some time observing and imaging the Sun through a new Lunt Solar Systems 100mm Hydrogen-alpha scope. There were several small prominences and a very faint sunspot.
Later we took some data on various fields using this telescope, a 24" Ritchey-Crieten made by RC Optical Systems. We'll be processing this data today and learning how to identify asteroids in the field, as well as determine if there are any new ones. That's not likely, since the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) already covers much of the sky and presently makes about 70% of the discoveries of NEO's. While we were obtaining data, we took a walk to the dome next door, which houses the 60" telescope used by CSS. One of their astronomers was busy taking data, and he showed us their system which is really fascinating. They routinely observe as many as 8,000 asteroids per night, and it is not unusual for them to discover new NEO's, main-belt asteroids, and even comets.
The weather started to deteriorate before midnight, with high winds and humidity, so we didn't observe all night (probably a good thing since I needed some sleep badly).
Today we will learn how to identify objects in the fields, and determine whether there are any new ones to report. The speakers today will be Adam Block and a few astronomers from the CSS. We're in a very nice "Learning Center".
The picture above was taken last night as we prepared to start our imaging run. As you can see even early in the evening it was quite cold - there is even snow up here!
I also was interviewed earlier this week by a writer for the Arizona Daily Wildcat, which is the U of A's daily newspaper. They published the article, which can be viewed here, but I was disappointed because they misquoted me and emphasized the threat of an asteroid hit, which really wasn't the main focus of my comments during the interview. My main reason for being here is quite simply to satisfy my thirst for knowledge - it's interesting stuff. I'm really not planning to discover "The Big One".
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Last night was the (approximately) annual TAAA AstroImaging night. Members of the astroimaging special interest group get a chance to share their techniques and photos with the rest of the club. It's always a lot of fun and we see some amazing images.
Steve gave the astronomy essentials portion of the meeting with a talk on basic astroimaging. After the break, we split up presentation duties among some of the members of the SIG.
I was one of about 8 presenters, and just showed some of my more recently processed images. Here's a pciture of me doing my gig.
The room was packed, I didn't count but I'd estimate about 250 people came. After the talks, a bunch of folks went out for some food and we talked astronomy for another hour or two. It was a late night but a lot of fun!
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Lately the astronomy world's been buzzing over Comet C/2007 N3, also known as Comet Lulin. It's grown rather bright, with naked-eye visibility. It also sports a rather greenish coma and has a long tail.
Comets are usually short-lived phenomena for observers - although some of them return on a periodic basis, most of them will only be visible once in an amateur astronomer's lifetime. They also can surprise us with erratic behaviour, so it's always fun to watch them.
I took this image two nights ago. It consists of 96 subframes (24 in each red, green, blue, and luminance), only 30 seconds each. Although the total exposure time was 48 minutes, with the added time for focusing, exposure downloads, guide star acquisition, etc., the total elapsed time between the first and last image was almost 2 1/2 hours. Since the comet is moving across the sky quite rapidly, I decided to make a little movie showing the motion as well. Click Here to see this image in higher resolution, and to view the comet movie.
I'm not sure I'll get another chance to image this one, as clouds have taken over the Tucson skies and my workload remains heavy. But I'm very happy to have had a chance to snap a brief picture of this celestial friend as he sped by!
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Here we go again, a whole month has passed with no blogs. I guess I'm just too busy with stuff. Lots of work to do as usual at this time of year, plus I've been spending a lot of time with the radio hobby. And of course there are family obligations, Board meetings, this, that, and pretty soon I find it's tough to get on and blog, even though I enjoy it.
I have been doing quite a bit of imaging, but unfortunately the processing has not kept up with the data acquisition so I now have about 30 objects to process!
Here's one that I took back in December and January, it is the Jellyfish Nebula (IC443) in HaRGB format. For a larger version click here.
While processing this image, I "discovered" an asteroid passing right through the nebula. Turns out it was actually discovered in 1887 and carries the designation 270 Anahita. But it was still fun for me to find it trekking through my chosen object. Click here for a short animation of my "discovery".
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Clear crisp winter nights can be some of the best times for astronomical observing. There is something about the chill in the air that makes the sky more appealing. In reality the cold winter nights are not always the best for seeing conditions, but naked eye views of the sky seem to bring an almost mystical perspective when the night air has that quiet chill. At my house, there are a couple of owls that like to make their "who-who"'s which makes it even more magical.
One of the objects that faithfully shines brightly in the winter sky is the Pleiades open star cluster, catalogued by Messier as M45. The Pleiades is a nice little grouping that many non-astronomers will notice (as long as their eyesight is reasonably good), and sometimes they will even mistake it for the Little Dipper since it does have a dipper-like appearance.
This image was taken back in December on several clear cold nights. Total exposure time for each color filter was 2 hours (24x5 min each) plus another 48 min of Luminance. The blue reflections in the nebulosity surrounding the cluster are easily visible in an eyepiece, but the nebulosity itself is believed to be an unrelated interstellar dust cloud that the cluster just happens to be passing through. Imagine what the sky would look like if you lived on a planet in this area!
Click Here for a larger, higher resolution version of this image.
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It's the end of another year. Looking back I'll simply say that it's a blessing to have experienced it, there really are not many years given to us and despite occasional rough times, I'm grateful to have enjoyed another year of life.
2008 has certainly been full of negative news on the global scale. Economic turmoil has dominated our lives, and everyone has been affected. Yet no matter what happens, the celestial wheels continue to spin and the sky continues to present glorious views to those who are willing to spend the time to observe them. The problems of Earth seem so trivial when one ponders the immensity of the visible Universe.
This image is one that I took back in November over many nights of clear skies. It goes by the name "Soul Nebula", and is catalogued as IC1848, Sh2-199, and W-5. It's an emission nebula and star-forming region, but the shape is what really makes it unique. It's quite large (this is a 2-frame mosaic), and lies very close to another dramatic object known as the Heart Nebula. Click here to see a larger version of this image and more details.
Oh yes, and I would be remiss if I didn't use these final hours of 2008 to post a New Year's Resolution. Mine is to enjoy more time with an eyepiece (but don't worry, my camera will remain quite busy!)
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Look through a normal eyepiece and you usually see things in black and white. Some stars are colorful, but nebula and galaxies are pretty much always going to appear to be in "Greyscale" to most people's eyes.
Except, of course, when one places a color filter in the eyepiece. For example, put a red filter in, and suddenly the view turns from black and white to black and red. Filters do more than just change the color, though, they also block out other wavelengths, which can help to increase contrast or identify certain details. The same holds true for CCD imaging filters. Color filters are common but narrowband filters can really attenuate the light, allowing only a tiny slice of the electromagnetic spectrum to shine through.
Using CCD filters allows one to "map" the resulting image to any color. So for instance, Hydrogen-alpha emissions which are normally in the Red region of our vision can be represented by green instead. This can be desirable since other narrowband emissions, such as those arising from NII or SII, may also be in the Red. This "false-color" mapping is used in nearly every scientific discipline to help scientists translate data into a visual expression that simplifies analysis.
The commonly used "Hubble Pallet" maps SII as Red, H-alpha as Green, and OIII as Blue. Another common mapping is the "CFHT Pallet" (named for the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope), which maps H-alpha as Red, OIII as Green, and SII as Blue.
For the image above I first created both Hubble and CFHT pallet images, then combined them into a single image. This resulted in some interesting colors that you don't often see in astronomical images of nebula. Yes, this is a false color image; if you could fly to the Veil East, you might see the structure but the colors would not be like this. Of course, that's just the way our brains are wired; perhaps if you lived on Gliese 582, your brain would in fact map these colors like this! Either way, I find all of the parts of the Veil Nebula to be quite fascinating for their incredibly intricate detailed structure. Click Here to See a Larger Version of this Image.
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Just got back from another great monthly meeting of the TAAA (Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association).
The Astronomy Essentials portion of the meeting was presented by George Barber. His talk was "What Kind of Star" and gave some excellent information about various stellar types and the physical processes that make them different. Of course that included the OBAFGKM (Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me) stellar sequence. George is an energetic speaker and I always enjoy hearing his talks.
The main lecture was presented by Victor Krabbendam, who is a key player in the LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope), a huge project that will probably change astronomy in a big way. The LSST will basically image the entire sky every few nights, over and over and over again, providing the ability to explore the night sky and search for changing objects. The amount of data that this telescope will generate is simply incredible - they expect approximately 150 TeraBytes per night! Eventually it will reach into the PetaBytes range; that's a term that we certainly are not used to hearing (although at the rate technology changes it will probably be commonplace in the near future).
I've got my scope taking data right now, but it will probably only provide me with about half a gigabyte. My poor little ccd camera is probably feeling rather inadequate now!
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It's Thanksgiving weekend here in the U.S. With all the crazy world happenings and economic crisis around the world, many folks are finding themselves in the pits of despair. It really is easy to allow all the bad news to dominate one's thinking.
Yet life goes on as always, and when I stop to think about things, I realize that the reality is that in general things are actually very good, and we really should be thankful for it all. Never in history have humans had access to the infrastructure and technology that we enjoy today. Sometimes I think our human nature is to act like spoiled brats rather than appreciative beings.
One thing I'm thankful for is the beautiful night sky with all of its hidden treasures. Another thing is the equipment that I've been able to assemble that allows me to image some of these treasures. Here is an example - this object is Emission Nebula NGC 6820, also known as Sharpless 2-86. In the center is a nice cluster catalogued as NGC 6823. There are also plenty of dark nebula to enjoy, as well as a myriad of stars that are beyond count. All told, a perfect example of something to be thankful for - the opportunity to explore this mysterious and wonderful region of our universe.
Click here to see a larger, higher-resolution version of this image.
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Last night we dedicated a new roll-away observatory building at the TAAA's TIMPA site. Despite some clouds, a fair number of people showed up for the party. As Vice-President of TAAA, I gave introductions to the various speakers, who included David & Wendee Levy, George Barber, and Michael Turner. David & Wendee made the arrangements for a 14" Meade LX200R telescope donation to the club a few years ago, George was the driving force behind construction of the pad and building, and Michael coordinated numerous volunteers who participated in getting the telescope and pier in working order.
A video recording of the dedication was made and should be posted to the web soon, if I remember I'll come back and update this blog to include a link to it.
I didn't stay long because I had to get back to a Webelos campout with my youngest son. It did clear for a short time later and we enjoyed some stargazing around the campfire.
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I'm back home from a weekend at the Advanced Imaging Conference 2008. It was my 3rd time attending this gathering of astroimagers, and once again I had a great time. We heard from numerous speakers on various topics, including some big names like Timothy Ferris (author and producer of Seeing in the Dark). One speaker was from Pixar and he talked about producing 3-dimensional images - I expect we will be seeing a lot of those within the next few years (obviously they will be based on assumptions or simply rendered to emphasize details rather than scientific reality). The picture above shows me wearing the 3-d glasses that he handed out to view some sample images, and they were really cool!
The vendors were all there displaying there wares, making us all drool. There were some really cool items like the new ASA mount that has no gears, and a bunch of high-end RC scopes. There was also a lot of time for sharing ideas and networking with other imagers.
Unfortunately I did not win anything in the big raffle again this year!
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Today was the first day of the 2008 Advanced Imaging Conference. I'm here in San Jose for the 3rd year, and enjoying every minute of it. The sessions today were primarily product workshops. I attended 4 of them, including:
-John Smith and Steve Walther discussing CCD Autopilot and CCD Navigator;
-Matt Thomas discussing CCD Commander;
-Doug George on MaximDL;
-Stan Moore on CCD Stack;
-The Bisque Brothers on the upcoming TheSky X Professional.
Of course I also saw a bunch of friends. There are a bunch of us from Tucson here, including Dean S., Alistair, Steve, Dean K., Scott, and Adam.
Dean and I are logging in back home and running our scopes at night. It's a lot of fun to be sitting in a CA hotel room and running the telescope at home! The moon's full but I'm getting some decent H-alpha data anyway.
Here's an image that I took over several nights back in October. It's emission nebula NGC 1491, which lies in Perseus. Narrowband filters were used, and mapped with the Hubble pallet (SII=Red, Ha=Green, OIII=Blue). I took 4 hours worth of 10-minute subframes with each filter, for total exposure time of 12 hours. Click here to see more information and a larger version of this image.
One of the speakers today referred to our hobby as a "blend of science and art". This is a good example. The narrowband filters are not "true color" (there's not really any such thing as "true color", but it's basically what we see visually), since they represent only a 60 angstrom slice of the spectrum. H-alpha and SII both generally lie in the red region, and OIII is closer to the green. So when astroimagers put together an image using narrowband filters, we often have to create a false color mapping to differentiate the fine details between the filters. I often use the "Hubble Pallet", as I did here, which is based on a color scheme often used for image processing on data taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The data has also been "stretched" to emphasize various contrast differences. So basically, I have taken scientifically accurate data and presented it with some artistic perspective.
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Here's an image of the Western portion of the Veil Nebula. I took this image over several nights last week - there is a total exposure time of 24 hours that went in to this one (8 hours each in H-alpha, OIII, and SII, using 10 minute subframes). I'm trying to determine whether extended exposure times will improve the signal-to-noise ratio enough to overcome some of the limitations I experience when imaging from my back yard.
I've shot this one a few times before with the 105mm refractor; this time I used the Takahashi Epsilon 180ED astrograph. It does seem that I picked up some extra faint wisps of nebulosity in the field. In fact this field has so much H-alpha emission that there's a slightly reddish tinge throughout the field. The OIII really has some stunning features as well.
Click here to see more detail and a larger version of this image.
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It's Halloween here in the U.S.A. Lots of people dress up in scary costumes and this evening the kids will be going around trick-or-treating.
Sometimes nights out with the telescope can be spooky too. I've had plenty of times when I've been observing and heard noises that I couldn't identify, causing my heart to race. Fortunately I've never had anything very serious, but there have been encounters with skunks, snakes, javelina, and other wild beasts, as well as plenty of imaginative scares.
Here's an image that I took over several nights of an object that always seems to stand out at this time of year, because it's common name is the "Witch Head Nebula". It's an easy target although it requires RGB which is more difficult to obtain from my back yard due to the light pollution. The final result includes 4.5 hours each of green and blue data, plus another 4 hours of red. I actually took about 20 hours total of data but had to discard quite a lot. Not because of scary goblins and such, but because neighbors turned on their glaring porch lights or the police helicopter flew overhead. At least, that's what I think...I wonder if witch's brooms have tail lights?
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The upcoming Halloween holiday here in the states is an imaginative time for many of us. Whether it's caused by marketing, childhood memories, seasonal movies, the changing weather, or something else, our minds are filled with images of fleeting shapes and ghostly creatures.
The skies are filled with some amazing objects that appear to be relatively static to our observation, yet they have an appearance that can only be explained by dynamic processes. It's like looking at a picture of a runner in action; the subject is captured by the camera in a moment in time, and the resulting picture isn't moving, but anyone viewing the picture will know very well that the person is moving. When we look at many objects in space, it's unlikely that we will detect any material change in their appearance even after years, and yet just one look and it's quite obvious that the objects are in a state of flux.
This image shows a portion of Pickering's Triangular Wisp, and to my mind it fits well with the season since it has numerous faint tendril-like shapes that cause me to imagine all kinds of forces at work. It's part of the large Veil Nebula complex, which is a remnant from a supernova that exploded perhaps 5-10,000 years ago. I took this image in my backyard over about a week's time starting on October 14th. I used narrowband filters and mapped it using the Hubble pallet (SII=red, H-alpha=green, and OIII=blue). This is a cropped portion of my final image, zoomed in on the most intersting part; the wider-field full version, as well as one mapped using the CFHT pallet, can be seen by clicking this link.
We sure have had a nice long run of clear nights lately. I missed the All Arizona Star Party this past weekend due to a client emergency, but still managed to image here at home. The data is really piling up.
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We all know how crazy things seem these days. There seems to be a lot of unrest in the world and many people are just plain scared. Nothing's perfect...maybe that's nothing new. Yet in a strange way it's possible for things to appear quite perfect on a large scale even though the small scale reveals serious flaws.
A photo of planet Earth taken from space makes it look like we live on a nice spherical (and calm) world, yet down here we are well aware of the mountains and valleys and storms that make it not so perfect.
Images of the California Nebula, NGC1499, like the one above, make one think of a huge bubbly cloud of gas. Not a perfect shape, but it's a beautiful image anyway. Or is it? This is only a portion of a 4-panel mosaic project that I worked on last November, using my Zenithstar 105mm refractor and CGE mount. I spent many nights collecting narrowband data on this object, in H-alpha as well as OIII and SII. Unfortunately the fields were not flat enough to allow a perfect stitching together of the frames. Zoom out enough and it appears to be a decent image; but zoom in and you'll find various problems including duplicate and elongated stars.
Maybe right now the whole world should consider taking a step back and viewing things from a wider perspective.
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Here's an image of M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, that I took at the 2008 Okie-Tex Star Party a couple of weeks ago.
M33 is fairly large in apparent size, so even though it is a little over 6th magnitude, it's rather faint in appearance. The dark skies at Okie-Tex this year allowed me to see M33 with the naked eye as a faint fuzzy patch in the sky. At one point, I saw an airplane fly right over the patch.
M33 is probably the farthest object that I have ever visually observed without the aid of a telescope. It's distance is believed to be somewhere around 2.8 million light years away.
The shape of M33 is truly awesome, showing a clear face-on spiral pattern. I've viewed M33 through an eyepiece many times, including through Bob & Glenn's Dobsonians at Okie-Tex, and it exhibits some definite spiral structure. Images really bring out the spiral pattern, as well as numerous H-alpha regions and newly formed stars. The spiral pattern is a fascinating shape that shows up over and over again in nature. Things from terrible hurricances to beautiful seashells display intricately wound spirals. Spirals can be described mathematically and the forces that shape them can be explained with physics, which only adds to the beauty involved when one observes them.
To see a larger version of this image, click here. I took a lot of data on M33, but had to discard much of it due to some clouds that rolled through.
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Okie-Tex is finished, at least for another year, and I've been back home since Sunday afternoon. It was a very successful star party, with five clear nights out of the six that I was there. I got plenty of good image data, had a great time with friends both old and new, and had some good practice with the equipment.
This image is one of my targets from Okie-Tex. Of course I have observed M31 many times, and imaged it a few times, but I wanted to give it a try in the Epsilon. Also my processing skills are a little different now (although I'm not entirely certain they are any better!) I captured 2 hours in each of the color filters plus another hour in luminance over a two-night period. Click here to see a larger version of this image. I've noticed that when I show a picture of M31 to people, they often comment "I wonder if there are aliens looking back at us from there". I guess the galaxy fits the 'traditional' idea of what a galaxy should look like, so it's natural to assume that there are civilizations over there watching us, just like we observe them. I don't suppose that they would call ours the "Milky Way", instead it's probably some mythical name just as we call theirs Andromeda. Regardless of what you call it, home is always a beautiful place, and after a week of camping I was certainly happy to return home to my comfort zone and my family.
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It's day four of Okie-Tex and I'm still having a blast. A bit tired perhaps, but that's because there's not much time for sleep after all the fun stuff going on.
It's been clear every night so far, but that may change soon. The nights have been very calm and chilly, perfect imaging weather. The skies have not been perfect in terms of transparency and seeing conditions, but the clearness seems to make up for it. My mount is mostly behaving well - a few glitches with pier flips but we may have solved that, since it ran successfully last night. I have a bunch of data to process now, much of it color data since the darker skies provide better results in color than back home in the big city. My Sky Quality Meter has been giving readings of approximately 21.65 each night.
The Milky Way is positioned well, visible horizon-to-horizon. The moon has been absent as it goes through its new phase, just what we want. After I got my run going last night, I spent a lot of time doing visual observing with Glenn Sanner and Bob Kepple, authors of the Night Sky Observers Guide. I see them regularly at the Huachuca Club meetings and they are a couple of great guys. We had some fantastic views of various celestial delights including some of the more obscure, faint objects as well as some more popular ones. We spent a lot of time exploring the details in various portions of the Veil Nebula for instance.
The hills nearby provide some nice hiking opportunities and I've found a spot on top of a nearby hill that actually allows me to get a cell phone signal. There is so much open land around here, just what I needed for a little attitude adjustment.
I've had a lot of help as well as plenty of good times with various friends, many of whom I have met at star parties or conferences. To name a few, Rockett, Kent, Jim, Fred, James, Doug, etc...and of course Dean and I have been partying it up. A good star party includes lots of good observing but the people are what really makes it worth attending.
Here's an image that I took the first night. The bright star near the top is Gamma Cassiopeiae, and the nebulosity is known as Sharpless 2-185. It's unlikely that an eyepiece would reveal the nebula, but the camera shows both emission (red) and reflection (blue) components in this Hydrogen dominated cloud.
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It's my second day at the Okie-Tex Star Party. Dean and I arrived yesterday afternoon and we got everything all set up before dinner time. I had a few minor challenges with the Astro-Physics AP1200 mount that I unexpectedly acquired a few days ago from my friend Richard, but there are 5 other AP1200 owners in the area that I set up and they were all most helpful. I made it through the learning curve very quickly and was imaging for much of the night last night. This mount certainly tracks well.
I was tired from the driving and work of setting up, but the excitement of being in a star party with several hundred other amateur astronomers is enough to keep the energy level high. Star parties really are so much fun, the people are great and lots of stories are swapped. I'm very happy to be here and away from the routine stresses of normal life.
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As I type this, I'm on my way to the Okie-Tex Star Party. Dean's taking a turn at driving and I'm clicking away on the keyboard. There is a new mount in the back (well, actually an old mount, but it's new to me), and I'm excited about the chance to put it to use at Okie-Tex. The weather prediction is a bit uncertain, we shall see how the upcoming week turns out.
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Astronomy is the most peaceful hobby I can think of. When I'm out under the stars I find myself in a completely different frame of mind than when I'm frantically racing through the normal pressures of every day life. It's so calming to quietly sit back and reflect on my little place in this universe, so wonderous to try to understand what my significance is compared to the amazing objects out there in space.
It's been a rough summer. My mount was in for repairs most of the season, but bad weather would have prevented much use of it anyway. Work has not let up and other discouraging situations have brought me down. So it's been a very nice relief to have found some time to get back to astronomy the past week, as the skies begin to settle down and temperatures cool. I've been imaging a lot, and in less than a week I will be happily camping out with my astro gear at the Okie-Tex Star Party. I simply cannot wait!
Meanwhile I'm discovering that I have tons of unprocessed image data...I really have not done well with completing my image projects, nor have I kept up with these blogs. Here is an image that I took about 9 months ago, an object that is already finding it's way back into the early morning skies. It's reflection nebula M78, a beautiful little cloud in the rich Orion region. This may be among the last of my images taken with the William Optics 105mm refractor, as I'm now working with the Takahashi Epsilon 180. Click Here to see a larger version of this image.
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It's been very cloudy for quite a while, but the past two nights have been nice and clear. I missed last night, but decided to get my act together this evening. I'm definitely in photon-deprivation mode these days, so I opened up the dome and spent several hours in there. I have been doing most of my observing for the past year or so with the wide-field scopes, but my CGE mount is still in the shop so I fired up the RCX again. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had retained its alignment since the last time I used it, so it was just turn it on and go.
The RCX needs a lot more hand-holding when I image through it, and it is a work night, so I didn't stay out all night. My main target was M16, and here is a quick process of the first 10 subexposures. They were 300 second frames at -20C (I'm using the chiller that my wife used during her knee surgery recovery last year), and I also used the SBIG adaptive optics unit which really helps the guiding.
This is one of my favorite targets, I always love to see "The Pillars of Creation" show up on my screen when the frames download. I'm hoping for some more clear nights, if we get them I will try for additional data, including using the color and other narrowband filters.
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