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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It's been real cloudy lately, the monsoons are arriving daily with plenty of rain, lightning, and wind. No damage around here yet but it's impossible to do any astronomical observing.
I did attend the monthly meeting of the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association on Friday night. George Barber gave a great talk on solar observing for the Astronomy Essentials, and then we heard Dr. Tim Swindle of the U of A Planetary Sciences Department tell us about his adventures hunting for meteorites in Antarctica.
I've got plenty of "administrative" astronomy tasks to take care of. The CGE is in the shop for repairs; I need to bake my CCD dessicant plug; there are a few items I want to list on AstroMart; I've got some configuration work to do; I have a ton of image data to process; and of course the big one is completion of the roll-off roof shed. But it's hard to get motivated to do these things when I know I can't do any observing. So instead I've mostly been spending my play time on ham radio stuff. But I did spend some time this afternoon teaching the Astronomy Merit Badge to my son's Boy Scout Troop.
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Jupiter, the king of the solar system, is only about 2 days away from opposition. This means that it is basically 180 degrees away from the sun as viewed from Earth. When planets are at opposition, they are usually also roughly closest to the Earth and thus have a larger apparent size.
Here's a webcam image that I took on July 1st with the 14" RCX. I'm no expert at webcam imaging, and it was a work night so I was taking the images too early in the evening - Jupiter was only about 20 degrees up in the SouthEast when I shot it. I took several 2 to 3 minute .avi videos, then used Registax freeware to split it into frames and process them. I also didn't get a perfect focus. So the details are a bit rough, and I had to overprocess it to bring out the minimal details visible here. On nights of good seeing, it would not be unusual to see more detail using a high-power eyepiece than this image shows.
I may try to image it again soon, but that depends on the weather - we are in the midst of monsoon season so there is not much hope for clear skies most days.
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Here I am in Northern Arizona again. I'm in Sedona for a family reunion on my wife's side, and today we took a jeep tour. While seeing the sights we saw this house under construction. It's supposed to be 30,000 square feet, and the dome on top looks like a large Ash dome, or something similar. Wonder what type of scope is being housed inside, must be a nice big one. The skies here must be nice and dark, and although this is perhaps not the best way to build an observatory (too close to the mountain, on top of a house), I sure wouldn't mind having it at my disposal!
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Today was my second day at the Grand Canyon. During the day, we hiked up Mt. Humphreys. This is the highest peak in Arizona, at the top it is at 12,650 feet. It was about 10.8 miles and went up a steep and rocky route, so it took most of the day. The view from the top was quite dramatic, although haze and some far-off rain limited the view somewhat.
In the evening, I enjoyed the final day of the Grand Canyon Star Party. There were many scopes set up, and crowds of visitors gathered around each and every one. It is really an amazing sight to see so many people, who often have zero knowledge of the night sky, showing an interest in astronomical observing. I heard tonight that in the past 18 years the GCSP has literally had hundreds of thousands of visitors! Most are people who are simply on vacation at the canyon and happened to see the scopes, or read about it in the park newsletter. Tonight was almost the perfect summer observing night, with temperatures around 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and very clear skies. The transparency was not perfect, but many objects like M13 were plainly visible to the naked eye. The Milky Way is simply spectacular here, it is so bright that many visitors mistake it for clouds in the sky.
I'm sure I will be back for more GCSP in the future, although it is undergoing a change. My friend Dean Ketelson (the "other Dean") is passing the reigns after 18 years of coordinating the star party. Fortunately he will still be spending half his time in Tucson.
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I've finally made a visit to the Grand Canyon Star Party. It's been something I've wanted to do for years, but other commitments have always kept me away. This is the 18th year of this large event, which is a week long star party focused primarily on public outreach. The park rangers at the Canyon are very supportive as it allows them to encourage public visitors to experience the joy of the dark night skies, and perhaps learn to value the preservation of dark skies, which fits well into the National Parks program here in the U.S.
The party started last weekend and ends tomorrow night, so I will only be here for two nights. Dean Salman and I drove up today from Tucson, and this evening Dean gave a very nice presentation to about 200 park visitors. He showed many of his outstanding CCD images during twilight, and afterward everyone went down to the parking lots where about 60-70 telescopes were set up. The whole event takes place right on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Actually, there is a North Rim version of the party that runs simultaneously, but the South Rim event is the larger one.
The skies here are quite dark, with a dramatic Milky Way providing an awesome backdrop to the star-studded sky. This is really a great place to hold a star party!
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Someone asked me whether I've taken a break from astronomy since I don't seem to be blogging lately. I definitely am still stargazing at every opportunity, but life has kept me so busy that sometimes I wonder which way is up.
The past few months have been frustrating on many nights because my CGE mount was damaged and I can't seem to get it back in shape. We've enjoyed an incredible stretch of clear skies here in Tucson, for most of this year so far, but many nights I have been unable to work the CGE. There are other scopes available, but certainly the CGE has been the workhorse.
There are some exciting things coming, and I expect to be doing some serious astronomy in the fall, after monsoons (we're officially in monsoon season now, but the rains have not started yet).
Anyway I will try to post a little more often. Meanwhile here is a recent image, taken over the course of 4 nights at the end of last month. It's the Crescent Nebula, NGC 6888, and the image includes data taken with traditional narrowband filters (Ha, OIII, and SII), as well as some near-infrared filters (above 7000 Angstroms), This was my first attempt imaging with the NIR's. To see a the individual versions (i.e. Hubble Palette, CFHT Palette, and NIR) as well as an animation of the various versions, see my website at
http://www.xanaduobservatory.com/ngc6888.htm
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Today I visited Kitt Peak National Observatory with my oldest son's Boy Scout Troop 753. I'm teaching the kids the Astronomy Merit Badge and one of the requirements is to visit an observatory.
We had a chance to get an up-close tour of the McMath Pierce Solar Telescope as well as the 2.1 meter telescope. This picture shows me and two of my sons, the oldest a Life Scout and the youngest a Bear Cub Scout, with the 4-meter Mayall Observatory in the background.
There were about 20 people in the group and everyone seemed very interested in the tour. We're lucky to have such a well-known site nearby (it's about an hour and a half drive). The weather was perfect.
I'm imaging again tonight, lots of data being collected with little time to process it...but the first light image from the new Tak is coming soon.
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I attended the monthly meeting of the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association this evening. Our speaker was Peter Smith, of the Lunar & Planetary Lab, who is the Principal Investigator for the Phoenix Mission to Mars.
Peter gave us an excellent overview of the mission, which is currently on its way to Mars after launching last August. It is expected to land in the North Polar region on May 25th of this year. The lander has a robotic arm with a shovel and will explore the surface ice next to the landing site.
While I was at the meeting, my imaging system was starting itself up for an observing run. My targets tonight will be M42, M51, and M101 (although I may intercept it and change M101 to something else later). We've had a nice week or so of clear skies and I've been imaging with the new Epsilon every night, so there is plenty of data to process. But since it's my busy season I have not had any time to process it much yet. I do know that the very fast focal length of this telescope results in more severe color gradients than I have experienced before, so I will need to develop some skills to handle that.
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No, I have not disappeared into a black hole...it's hard to believe how rapidly time can go by. Seems like only yesterday that I last posted a blog, and here it is March already.
I must admit, however, that I have not been as active with astronomy these past few months as I wish I had been. I've had a few imaging sessions, but the data sits unprocessed on the hard drive. Our local club has been pursuing acquisition of a new dark site, and since I'm on the Board, I've been somewhat involved with that. I've been getting ready to teach the Astronomy Merit Badge to my son's Boy Scout troop. And I've spent a lot of time working on the roll-off roof observatory that will eventually allow me to do even more astronomy from my back yard. But I've missed quite a few clear observing nights, and obviously I have been bad about posting to my blog.
There have been a few equipment plans in the works. One was an intended acquisition of a Paramount equatorial mount, but that was cancelled for a variety of reasons, primary among them that Software Bisque could not seem to deliver it. So now my name is on the waiting list for an AstroPhysics mount, which will take quite a while to get.
Meanwhile I made a deal with my friend Dean and ended up with his Takahashi Epsilon 180. He's imaged just about everything possible and needed to move to a longer focal length, so we worked out a trade and now I'm the proud owner of this scope. It's a lot for the CGE mount to handle, and I'll be interested to see whether I can get decent images out of it without a larger mount. I needed to add a second 25# counterweight because it is much heavier than the refractor. Tonight I got it all set up and balanced, and as I type this I'm running "V-Curves" in FocusMax to get a good profile for automated focussing. So far it's looking pretty good.
I know I won't be able to produce the quality of images that Dean has - many of them have been published in the magazines, including several pages worth in Sky & Telescope's "Beautiful Universe" book and the inside back page of numerous issues of Astronomy Magazine, including the latest issue. But hopefully I'll have some fun with it, that's what it's all about!
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This evening (12/23/07), there was a stunning pairing of a nearly full Moon and the fiery red planet Mars. We're just a couple of days past the Winter Solstice, and Mars will be at opposition tomorrow for a Christmas Eve present. I observed the conjunction of the Moon and Mars from what would normally be a horrible place to observe from - the shopping mall parking lot - as we were leaving a movie with some visiting family members. In fact it wasn't me who noticed it first, but my Siste-in-Law, who said, "Look, the Moon has a satellite"!
Seeing this motivated me to try to complete processing on some Mars images that I took last week using a Phillips Toucam webcam with a 2x Orion barlow, on my 14" Meade RCX. Capturing the data was the easy part; I simply took short (~2 min) .avi video frames using K3CCDTools software. However, since I don't do this type of image processing regularly, I found it very challenging to do the processing. I used Registax and Photoshop. This image is the result of my attempt, and while it's far from perfect I'm pleased to be able to discern various features on the surface of Mars. Click here to see a slightly larger version of this image.
I used the Sky & Telescope freeware program called "Mars Previewer II" to help identify the exotic-sounding names of the various markings, such as Sinus Meridiani, Sinus Sabaeus, Niliacus Lacus, and Mare Erythraeum. Far away places to be sure, but once again my telescope has allowed me to briefly be transported away for some exciting exploration of the universe (figuratively speaking of course)!
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Turns out amateur astronomers are good at having potlucks too. Tonight was the annual TAAA holiday party, held at the home of our President, Bill Lofquist. The sky was cloudy but no problem, we all had a great time socializing anyway. Pam came along for a change, and she actually won a raffle prize - which she gave to me. We won a nice Moon globe, with plenty of named features on it. The club also raffled off a C8 with Byers gears, an old but very classic telescope. I know one astronomer who says these are the best drives ever made - and he should know, he has discovered more asteroids than anybody else. I had picked up the C8 from a nearby neighbor, who was one day away from throwing the scope in the trash! Instead we had it cleaned up by Dean Koenig of Starizona, and the winner this evening was none other than my good friend Victor, who until tonight did not even own a telescope. So it all turned out very well for that old scope, as I know Victor will give it a fresh new outlook on life.
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Last night it finally cleared up after more than a week of bad weather. I knew it was going to be a wet one, but I set up anyway, hoping to get some imaging in before the dew hit.
Here is what I started with, Open Cluster M35 and it's old friend NGC 2158. The stars in M35 are mostly blue but NGC2158 is full of old red stars. They're a nice pair for observing (in fact they made the list in January 2008 Astronomy Magazine's article, "Observe Celestial Odd Couples". Click Here to see a larger version of this image and more details.
But unfortunately I pushed my luck a bit too far and by the time I went outside, a little after midnight, to check on the gear, it was a soggy mess. So I got the hair dryer and spent a while trying to dry things out, but it was rather hopeless. I wonder if any of my neighbors heard and wondered about the crazy guy next door drying his hair outside at 1:00 in the morning! In the end I just covered it up, set the camera to take darks for the rest of the night, and called it quits.
I'm imaging again tonight and everything seems to be fine, so I guess no damage was done by the water. I did hook up my Dew Heater, though, which is something that is almost never needed here in the arid desert.
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The cold weather is finally here, today I closed down the swamp cooler and fired up the heater for the first time this season. Along with the cold, we've been getting a few drops of rain and the clouds might be a real problem for the next week or so.
On Friday night, I drove down to Sierra Vista with Larry to attend the monthly Huachuca Astronomy Club meeting. As always it was worth the drive. The guest speaker was Steve Coe, who spoke about nebulae. Steve has written a couple of books, including "Nebula and How to Observe Them". He also writes articles and columns for Astronomy Magazine and Cloudy Nights Forum.
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I'm about a week late but my blog has now passed the two year mark! I sure enjoy using the internet this way, I do think it's enhanced my astronomy experience to write about my activities now and then. And I definitely enjoy reading the other blogs, each with its own personality. Thank you Astronomy Blogs!
So here is a picture of the two tadpoles, swimming in the sea of IC410. (They are tiny and near the center in this little image - to really see them well, click here for a larger version of the image). It's been a long swim for them and I think the current will eventually win in a few million years. But for the time being we are lucky enough to be able to observe the dramatic effects of radiative pressure from the stars in cluster NGC1893, which are struggling through their early Hydrogen-burning years inside the dusty cocoon of the IC410 nebula. The tadpoles are areas of cooler, denser gas that are resisting the flow, thereby producing the interesting stretched-out tails which are roughly 10 light-years long. The darker "holes" in the nebula are areas that have been carved out already by the strong stellar winds. I wouldn't want to live there, but it's a nice place to visit with the telescope.
The two concrete foundations are the pier foundations that we poured on Sunday. My friends Dean and Larry came over and worked hard helping me with the project. These are going to hold the two piers that will be in Xanadu West, which I hope to have in operation very soon.
As for the too much fun, well, as always I will maintain the focus of this blog on astronomy which means I can't complain about all the other trials and tribulations of daily life - but without a doubt, astronomy continues to be one area that can be guaranteed fun!
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