The Moon and the Sombrero Galaxy

Tonight, April 20th, the evening was cloudless and “seeing” was quite good, meaning there was little moisture in the atmosphere. I began by using my Imaging Source 41 camera  and my 6″ Celestron OTA to capture two avi files of over 2000 images. If you followed my last blog on Saturn, Registax  software is able to stack, align, and select a great image. Below are two images of the moon at 76% waxing gibbous illumination.

The first is of mid to southern region. Mare Imbrium is top center. It is south of the great Crater Copernicus. While it is a lunar “sea”, it is itself one of the largest craters in the solar system. Don’t be confused by the crater within the Mare, with its two small craters next to it and what appears to be spectacles (which are recent craters as well) below those craters. Mare Imbrium is huge, and you can only see about 70% of it. Estimates of the Imbrium Crater’s age range from 3 to 4 ½ billion years.

In this next photo, Mare Crisium appears to the upper right. Mare Tranquillitatis is in the center, and Mare Serenitatis is in upper left. A notable crater is Crater Proclus, just below Mare Crisium. Proclus is a young lunar impact crater. The crater has a notable ray system that extends for a distance of over 600 kilometers.

I  have always been fascinated with the Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104 and NGC 4594.

It has a bright nucleus, an unusually large central bulge, and a prominent dust lane in its inclined disk. The dark dust lane and the bulge give this galaxy the appearance of a sombrero.  The Sombrero is an unbarred spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo, located 28 million light years from earth.  The large bulge, the central supermassive black hole, and the dust lane all attract the attention of professional astronomers.

While I am not a professional astronomer, I took 30 sixty second images with my Starlight Xpress M25C camera and Hyperstar lens to get this image:

 CLICK ON ALL IMAGES FOR A LARGER VIEW.

Saturn at 5:00 am

I have been waiting all winter for weather conditions to clear sufficiently to image Saturn. Viewing Saturn is probably the best experience an astronomer can offer youngsters to get them interested in astronomy. Even for adults, the experience can be memorable.

The plane of Saturn’s rings changes over time. Not too long ago, the rings were hardly visible, so viewing the planet did not have the “wow” factor. Below is an example of images in their various stages, showing how the plane of the rings change.

This year, the plane of the rings give a beautiful impression of the planet.

We have been having a lot of climatic changes this spring. One day it’s raining, another it’s snowing. Most evenings in April have been cloudy. Even when there are cloudless nights, the moisture in the air create poor “seeing” where the atmosphere is turbulent. This turbulence does not affect viewing very much. It can be a real problem for imaging, though, which is what I do.

I woke up at 4:00 am April 17th. I checked cloud cover…excellent. “Seeing”…not so good. However, looking at the forecast for the next week, it looked like a lot of rain…and even snow…was coming.

So, up I got and actually was able to drive out to the observatory. What a concept! Snowmobiling had been the only way out there all winter.

I took an avi clip of Saturn with my IS 41 camera exposing about 2000 images. Using Registax, I aligned, stacked, and culled the video down to one reasonably good image, tweaked in Photoshop.

Here it is…the product of a lot of waiting…Saturn. CLICK ON FOR A LARGER IMAGE.

Although it’s not perfect, it has been years since I took an image of Saturn, going all the way back to my days with the Meade. I am kind of proud of this latest effort.

NGC 3718, 3729, UGC 06527, and the Full moon

March 27^th the moon was full, the sky was cloudless and the temperature was not unreasonably cold. By this time last year I was taking my ATV out to do some imaging, but this is still snowmobile weather.  I did have a challenge beside cranking up the machine. The objects I was to image, though listed in the “100 Best Astrophotography Targets” by Ruben Kier, were small objects.  What enticed me to image NGC 3718, 3729, and UGC 06527 was simply that I had never done so before, and the difficulty of imaging DSOs near a full moon not far away in the sky.

Below is the central attraction (NGC 3718) with its galactic companions. Its most striking feature is its “warped” dust lane running through its core.  Another oddity of this galaxy is the “S” shape of its arms. Since I saw a little trailing in my 1 minute exposure-and-focus preliminary image, I decided to go with 50 thirty second images stacked. I was able, after several iterations of curves and levels in PS, to bring out the dust lane and the “S” shape.  The galaxy is the largest in the center of the photo.

Also in the photo is NGC  3729 (upper left) which is thought to distort 3718 through gravitational interaction. Below 3718, is a group of five galaxies called UGC 06527. Click on for a larger view.

To get some perspective how far away these galaxies are, it is estimated that NGC 3718 and 3729 are over 50 million light years away, but the five interacting galaxies forming UGC 06527 are thought to be 400 million light years distant. If you click on the image you will see the five galaxies (lower left of center), even though they are 8 times the distance of NGC 3718 from us.

The Moon was obviously outshining any object in the sky and, in closing up for the night, it was as if I were in muted daylight with my shadow visible as I shut the dome from the outside.

Needless to say my IS 41 camera did a nice job of capturing portions of the lunar surface at something like 1/200^th of a second. The image below is that of the famous Tycho crater.

The weather forecast for the next few days looks like I’ll be able to give the snow machine a rest.

St. Patrick's Day Celestial Treats

On St Patrick's Day there was a double treat in the heavens.  The moon was a waxing crescent topped off by the planet Jupiter. Unfortunately Jupiter will be ending its nighttime appearance come Spring. The calendar says the season is three days away, but the weather doesn't seem to be taking advice from it. Forecast for the near future calls for 6-10 inches of snow, but tonight is one of the clearest this winter.

I took advantage of the cloudless evening to image both the moon and Jupiter. See photos below.

Also on last evening's schedule was a triple galaxy collection in the constellation Leo. However, as so often happens in winter, clouds moved in just as I was beginning a sequence of image taking.

However, as the luck of the Irish would have it, tonight M105 (bottom center) was in excellent position, along with two traveling galaxies.

M105, an elegant elliptical (bottom center) is perhaps the purest object in the Messier catalog. By that I mean  its slightly oval disk shows the least amount of imperfection. Its central core shines brilliantly. Then a bright inner region gives way to an outer halo that fades gradually and uniformly into the cloak of darkness.

Since the night was cloudless and crisp, I sought out another DSO I had never imaged...galaxy NGC 3184. It is pretty much a face on galaxy and it resembles the famous Pinwheel Galaxy M101 in the same constellation of Ursa Major.

 The name of this gem is the Little Pinwheel Galaxy. Both M101 and NGC 3184 are about 60,000 light-years in diameter, but the Little Pinwheel is twice as distant at 36 million light-years. NGC 3184's core harbors old mature stars, and the spiral arms show several red regions  amid clusters of young blue-white stars.  

Observatory updating and M42

It’s been quite some time since I posted a blog in astrophotography. There are so many reasons why. The last post was in January. I had begun the process of imaging in a different way. My goal was to make my observatory an all-inclusive one as to astrophotography and visual use.

I wanted to be able to continue taking wide field DSO’s (deep sky objects) with my Hyperstar lens and Starlight Xpress M25C one-shot color camera. I also wanted to be able to do solar imaging with the Coronado PST in h-Alpha wavelengths. Third on my list of goals was to be able to do close-up lunar and planetary imaging with my two Imaging Source cameras. Finally, I wanted to be able to view solar, lunar, and planetary objects without taking any astrophotographs.

My observatory is 1/3 of a mile from my home, and inaccessible except by snowmobile during winter.

The difficulty of visiting my observatory was one thing. Adding new equipment and balancing everything in DEC and RA was another. Suffice it to say, after about 30 or more round trips on my snowmobile in daylight and cloudless nights coupled with lots and lots of checking in with other helpful astronomers at a website called Cloudy Nights, I finally came up with my final setup that can do all four things quite well.

 Several of the amateur astrophotographers, but not all, said this much equipment could not be added, nor balanced correctly. I have to say last evening they were proved wrong.

Balancing equipment even on a heavy duty mount such as the CGE Pro required 88 lbs. of counterweight. If you look at the picture above you will see the main telescope (a 14” Celestron) on which a 6” Celestron scope is piggybacked. To the right another 80 mm telescope for lunar and planetary imaging or viewing. To the left of the 6” scope is a Telrad finder which is extremely helpful in targeting bright stars for pointing everything in the right direction. To the left of the Telrad is the Coronado PST solar telescope used in h-Alpha imaging. On either side, farther down are illuminated viewfinders, also necessary for helping one or more scopes pinpoint objects. Finally, at the very front of the 14” scope is an aluminum Astrozap dew shield which houses the Hyperstar and attached camera. This shield has a cover to block the sun when I take solar images with the Coronado PST. All other scopes also have to be covered in that event or the sun would destroy the telescope with intense heat.

Last evening, it all came together with an image of M42. I had imaged it before, but not with the clarity of last night. Careful cleaning of all optical lenses resulted in a clean shot. Taken with the Hyperstar for 20 one minute images stacked and processed in Maxim DL and Photoshop, it is the equivalent  of ten hours of exposure by conventional LRGB camera setups.

M42, or the Orion Nebula, is one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky, and is among the most intensely studied DSOs in the sky. Here’s my version of it.

Click on it for a closer view.

Processing solar imaging

It’s one thing to photograph the sun and get images. It is quite another thing to process the information the cameras yield to enhance the data. I think most people who have point and shoot digital cameras have changed terrestrial photos with tools such as crop, lighten or darken, etc. The more proficient one becomes with digital cameras nowadays, the more interesting the photos become.

Processing solar images taken with my Imaging Source DMK 41AU02 monochrome camera through my H-alpha Coronado PST telescope is no different, really, except the steps one has to go through are more complicated. Photoshop is the processing software most astrophotographers use, and those who think they know all the tricks of this marvelous software are kidding themselves. I doubt whether those who have developed this software in its several iterations even know what this software is capable of…or so says the author of Photoshop for Dummies.

I turn to YouTube for solutions to many questions. One of the best experts in processing solar images is a guy who goes by the name “Helium3Fusion.” He has an excellent tutorial on processing solar images using the same equipment I have. It’s 22 minutes in length, and I am still trying to digest all the information in it. You can view it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Z3T6ILLvA.

However, I am a shortcut kind of guy when it comes to anything in astrophotography, so I culled some of the more important steps he takes in his tutorial and applied them to an image taken on 12-12-12. It was a particularly active day on the sun. Here’s an avi (movie clip) of 1000 images taken pre-Photoshop processing, using an align, stack, and sort software called Registax 6.

Not too exciting. There are sunspots (light patches) and plasma trails (dark trails) and several dark spots which are really dust particles on the camera lens.

Below is the same image processed with Photoshop. Notice the dust particles have been removed, the light patches are clearer, as are the plasma trails. The surface of the sun appears much more turbulent, which in reality it is. Finally, there is color.

This latter photo is far from perfect, but it comes much closer to the H-alpha image of the sun. Click on either image for a better view.

In the weeks to come, I am planning to piggyback a 6” telescope atop my C1400 in order to utilize the three CCD cameras I have. Thus, I will be able to do lunar, planetary, solar, and deep-sky astrophotography without having to change out this or that camera for whatever branch of  imaging I choose. All of this has come at a price, but what is more challenging than funding all of this is learning how to use the software tools that are available to me.

Lunar Imaging with the DMK 41AU02

On the afternoons of  Dec. 18^th and 19^th, in broad daylight around 3:00 pm or so, the skies cleared so I was able to experiment with my new camera, DMK 41AU02, a monochrome CCD unit. I attached it as a straight-through imager to my 14” Celestron scope. The moon was nearly at quarter-moon waxing and it was visible against a blue sky.

Ordinarily one would image the moon when darkness sets in, but Imaging Source provides software which allows one to adjust the camera to almost any length of exposure time, along with the all-important gain control. The IC software allows for taking avi files, which are, in reality, movie clips. I used a clip of 1 minute to 1.5 minutes. At the rate of capture for the DMK 41AU02, it downloads 15 images per second. I took three avis of different areas of the moon, so I had from 1,000 to 1,500 images which I could align, stack, and discard all but the best images of each video clip using Registax 6. It’s amazing when the camera shows “live” pictures, how much the image moves … this because the “transparency” was poor. Transparency is a term used to indicate that there is moisture in the air. As I explained in a prior post on imaging Jupiter, it’s like taking a picture under water of something above the surface. So, if several factors are all present (no clouds, excellent transparency, and excellent “seeing”), one can get a clearer image.

However, I explored the moon from limb to limb, taking snapshots and avi files. Here are some samples:

The first is an image showing a large lunar sea…left… (Mare Serenitatis) on the southern limb taken Dec. 18^th. You can see Crater Posidonius, center bottom.

 

The next two were taken the following day. I was looking for unique crater formations. In picture one below, the predominant crater is Theophilus, which rises almost 4600′. It has four peaks. It is a newer crater which, as you can see,  wiped out one of the walls of crater Cyrillus.

 

The image below shows Crater Piccolomini (top to the right), whose central peak rises over 6500′.

I did not reverse the images, and it is a bit tricky identifying the craters, since the shadows cast by the sun have to be at the moon’s phase for that hour. Some online images were helpful. Click on any image for a larger view.

Jupiter with the DFK 21AU04.AS

Last evening, I got a chance to take an image of Jupiter using both of my Imaging Source cameras...the DFK 21AU04.AS USB CCD color and the DMK 41AU02 monochrome. I had spent a couple of hours cleaning out my observatory of materials that had accumulated over the past few years. My concern was that I had made a mistake by investing in a JMI EV-3c Event Horizon SCT Focuser which attaches to the end of the C1400 scope. I had tried to achieve focus before, using the focusing knob that is native to the large scope to provide rough focus, and the EV-3c to fine-tune. However, after the observatory clean-up, I did some experimenting and found that I needed about three inches more of back-focus length. Where to find such a thing? Then I thought about my 2X Celestron Barlow. What if I took out the lens and just used the tube as the extension? Well, it worked.

So, back to last evening. It’s been frustrating to get a cloudless night this month because of all the fronts coming through…and the future weather forecasts indicate few cloudless winter nights. At 7:00 pm, Jupiter was beautiful in the east, but transparency was poor. That meant that, because of all the moisture in the air, I would be trying to image the planet “under water” so to speak.

Suffice it to say, I was able to see Jupiter’s bands and its four moons, and the EV-3c worked very well. Attaching the DFK 21 camera produced this result after adjusting the exposure time and gain. It’s grainy and certainly not perfect, but a lot better than I had hoped.

Christmas and Sol Invictus

In the early Church, there was no fixed date for the celebration of Christmas across the entire Church, or even agreement as to when Jesus was born.

The main reason early Christians chose December 25th for the date of Christmas relates to two dates that were bandied about: the date of the creation of the world, and the vernal equinox. According to some early writers, both events happened on March 25th. Early Christian writer Sextus Julius Africanus (220 AD) speculated that the world was created on March 25th, based on his chronology of Jewish and Christian history, contained in his Chronographia.

Julius Africanus suggested that Christ became incarnate on that date; this makes perfect symbolic sense, since at the Incarnation, the new creation began. Accordingly, since the Word of God became incarnate at His conception, this meant that, after nine months in the Virgin Mary’s womb, Jesus was born on December 25th. The Emperor Constantine (d. 337 AD) encouraged Christians to replace the winter solstice festivals, especially that of Sol Invictus (the unconquered sun), with the Christian festival, using the play on words of Filius invictus (the unconquered Son of God) which had been speculated about somewhat convincingly for that time by Julius Africanus.

Pope Liberius codified Christmas to be celebrated on Dec. 25^th; however, there were Christmas liturgical celebrations in Rome as early as 336, one year before Constantine’s death.

With all this history in mind, I have been doing some astrophotography of Sol Invictus, our sun. The first image is of flares taken with my H-alpha telescope and IS 41 camera on 12-12-12, running through an avi file of 900 images to sort out the best of the group. The sun is washed out in order to bring out the flares (or prominences).

The second image, also taken on 12-12-12, is one of surface sun spots (lighter patches) and plasmas (darker trails). It is cropped and artificially colored to reflect the orange-red color of the sun. Sunspots do not appear in random locations. They tend to be concentrated in two mid-latitude bands on either side of the equator. They begin appearing around 25 to 30 degrees north and south of the center. As the solar cycle progresses, new sunspots appear closer to the equator.  My image below appeared south of the sun’s equator.

It takes approximately eleven years for the sun to move through the solar cycle that is defined by an increasing and then decreasing number of sunspots. As it reaches the close of a cycle, new sunspots appear near the equator, while a new cycle produces sunspots in higher latitudes. The cycles overlap; sunspots from the previous cycle can still develop even after sunspots from the new cycle appear. So solar scientists have a very difficult time saying exactly when one cycle ends and the next begins.

As of early 2011, solar cycle 24 was under way, headed toward a peak of activity expected in 2013.

Our sun burns several hundred million tons of hydrogen per second, converting it to helium by nuclear fusion. This the source of the sun’s energy, and if the sun were consuming gas at less than this rate, then we would not get the required warmth to support life. However, there is no cause of alarm, because there is a HUGE amount of hydrogen in the sun.

The Romans and other older cultures had it almost right. The sun is, for now, Sol Invictus.

Solar Prominences and Sunspots

Tuesday, December 4^th, was a fairly active day on the sun. I had just received an Imaging Source  DMK 41AU02 monochrome CCD camera to do detailed imaging of the planets, the moon, and the sun.  The day was a sunny day early in the afternoon.  This was going to be an experiment in imaging through my Coronado PST.  I had had problems taking astrophotographs with my Imaging Source DMK 21 color camera due to its IR filter.

I have been doing a lot of research in how best to take astrophotographs of the sun.  I had taken pictures of the sun through an ordinary solar filter.  One such example is below.

However, the sun is a seething star will all kinds of activity taking place on it that you can’t see or photograph with an ordinary solar filter.  One needs to use a camera that can capture prominences and solar flares.  The most popular telescope to do this with is an H-alpha scope.

The Coronado PST is an H-alpha scope. Below is an image of the Coronado mounted on my C1400.

At first my new camera was unable to reach focus.  From my research I had learned that those who were successful in taking solar images used a Barlow or Powermate lens to increase the image by 2X or so.  I took several images of the sun with the DMK 41, using a 2X Barlow.  Focusing was done by the focus knob on the Coronado.

Here is my first image showing the edge of the sun with prominences and sun spots.

You will notice the prominences (aka limb flares) at the edge of the sun in the upper left corner.  Some sunspot activity is also visible.

I took another image showing much more solar activity with larger surface flares and sunspots.  Darkening it in Photoshop, I was able to bring these features out in greater detail.

I will be learning how better to colorize future images of the sun despite using a monochrome camera. There are many ways to do this. However, I used Windows Live Photo Gallery along with Photoshop.

All in all I was quite pleased with my first results in this new area of astrophotography.  Click on both images for more detail.

Imaging a different way

For two years now, I have been taking astrophotographs using a HyperStar lens.  I have not done much observing through my 14 inch Celestron telescope.  As a matter of fact, I have not even seen Saturn or Jupiter.  So I decided to enter a new field of astronomy with the equipment that I have.

I did some experimentation recently viewing the sun through a solar filter.  I could see sun spots using a diagonal and a 40 MM 2 inch eyepiece.  I tried to take some images using the diagonal and my starlight express 25 C one shot CCD camera.  The sun was huge because the field of view enlarged dramatically without using a HyperStar lens. I decided to use a focal reducer and take astrophotographs straight through the telescope without using the diagonal.

Basically what a f6.5 focal reducer does is reduce the optics of my scope from an f10 to a smaller focal length, thus making imaging a little faster.  Using this setup I will not be able to go deep, but I thought it would help me get some planetary, lunar, and solar images.

My first target was a star…Vega.  It is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, which, at about 7:30 PM, is in the western sky.  Vega is a relatively close star at only 25 light-years from earth.  Interestingly enough the star was the Northstar about 12,000 BC, and will be so again in another 12,000 years or so.  Vega is one of three stars forming the summer triangle.  The other two stars are Altair and Deneb.

I was curious to see if Vega had any color.  It does.  It’s a blue-tinged white star which has a life span one 10^th that of our sun.  Below is a 100th of a second image.

 

My next target was Jupiter.  Jupiter rises around 7:30 PM and will be a great target all winter long.  I left the focal reducer in place and took a 1000^th of a second image.  Manipulating the picture in Photoshop, I was able to get a fairly decent picture showing two of  Jupiter’s bands.  No red spot though.

While several of the moons of Jupiter were visible with a longer exposure, they fade into the darkness because Jupiter is so bright.  (Click on both images for a larger view.)

Wintertime in Northern Michigan is an extremely difficult season to do much viewing or imaging  because of all the cold fronts that come across Lake Michigan.  However, I will be experimenting with lunar and planetary imaging when the nights are clear, crisp, and cold.

Life is hard to find on Mars

Ever since the late 1800s, there have been theories about whether life exists on our neighbor Mars. Some people went so far as to propose the idea that the canals were irrigation canals built by a supposed intelligent civilization on Mars. Percival Lowell was a strong proponent of this view. In 1894 Lowell chose Flagstaff  as the home of his new observatory.

Arizona is a particularly good state for astronomical observations. My former mentor, Mel Martin, lives in the state, and his astrophotographs are among the best in the business. Mel lives in an area where there are few cloudy nights and is far from city lights, with 300 clear nights in a year being the norm.

For Lowell, Flagstaff was an excellent site for astronomical observations. This marked the first time an observatory had been deliberately located in a remote, elevated place for optimal seeing. From 1894, for the next fifteen years, Lowell studied Mars extensively, and made intricate drawings of the surface markings as he perceived them. Lowell more than anyone else popularized the long-held belief that these markings showed that Mars sustained intelligent life forms.

Fast forward to 1976, when two Viking landers touched down upon the surface of the red planet. The Viking landers were the first completely successful spacecrafts to land on Mars. Previous to this time the USSR had made several attempts of landing on the planet. The Soviets’ Mars 2 soft lander crashed on the surface. The Mars 3 soft lander made the first successful landing, but only transmitted 20 seconds of data before it failed. The Mars 6 lander returned some atmospheric descent data, but failed during the descent. The Mars 7 lander missed the planet entirely.

Nasa’s Viking 1 sent the first on-the-ground images of Mars. Below is a panoramic view which looks like a barren desert on earth with a rock-covered surface.

Then came the rovers, Sojourner in 1997, Spirit and Opportunity in 2004, and Curiosity this year.

Currently only two rovers are actively in operation … Opportunity and Curiosity. Opportunity has been trekking the Martian landscape for eight years, snapping stunning images of the planet.

However, most of the attention now is focused on Curiosity. With its HD camera it is sending back amazing pictures of  the Gale Crater.

The above image is of Curiosity’s landing site.

The image above depicts surrounding terrain. Other images have been sent back in 3D.  (Click on both for a larger view.)

However, the primary mission of Curiosity is to find out if there was, or is, life on the planet. Curiosity has detected no methane in its first analyses of the Martian atmosphere — news that will doubtless disappoint those who hope to find life on the Red Planet.

Living organisms produce more than 90 percent of the methane found in Earth’s atmosphere, so scientists are keen to see if Curiosity picks up any of the gas in Mars’ air. But the 1-ton rover has come up empty in the first atmospheric measurements.

“The bottom line is that we have no detection of methane so far,” Chris Webster, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told reporters today.

“But we’re going to keep looking in the months ahead since Mars, as we all know, may yet hold surprises for us,” added Webster

This initial testing of the atmosphere came up with results different than conclusions reached in 2003.

Substantial plumes of methane in the northern hemisphere of Mars were noted by Dr. Michael Mumma of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

In contrast, the composition of Earth’s atmosphere contains 78.1 percent nitrogen, 20.9 percent oxygen, 0.9 percent argon and 0.1 percent carbon dioxide and other gases. It is obvious that carbon dioxide levels are much too high for animals and humans, but nitrogen levels are very low also, something that many people do not realize. Plants require CO2, but also need nitrogen to survive.The atmosphere of Mars is not the same as the atmosphere of our own planet. Whereas Earth has a sizable amount of nitrogen and oxygen, with small amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases, Mars is composed mostly of carbon dioxide (95.3%), with nitrogen (2.7%), argon (1.6%), oxygen (.2%), and other trace gases. This obviously presents a serious problem for Martian colonization. Humans cannot survive in such an atmospheric composition even if the air pressure were at Earth sea level.

Our latest rover will have two years to study the geology and atmosphere of Mars. It certainly will live up to its name.