Archive for the 'Astrostuff' Category

Observing Report 8th-9th April 2011 Part 1 (Afternoon Moon)

Posted by on April 14th 2011 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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As I've said before, observing the early phases of the Moon from my obsy is a bit of a lottery - due to the restricted western view the only way to get the scope pointing at the thin waxing crescent is when the Moon's high in the western sky. This time around it was late in the afternoon... sunny... hot... not the best conditions for this sort of thing.

I'd invited some friends around to have a go with the scope so I'd got set up with an hour to spare. While waiting for them to arrive I grabbed some video data for another lunar mosaic. Processing was difficult but eventually a passable result was achieved:

 The Moon.
11-pane mosaic created with PSCS3.
Each pane 100/2000 frames stacked with K3CCDTools3.
DMK mono CCD camera on the 6" R-C, unguided.

 

When the guests arrived we did some visual observing and also did some lunar exploring using the DMK for looking and the laptop for display. A few interesting bits were recorded, here are the results:

(mouseover the pics for the annotated versions):

Rheita (42 miles dia.), Stiborius A (19 miles dia.), Metius (53 miles dia.),
Watt (40 miles dia.), Steinheil (41 miles dia.), Fabricius (47 miles dia.),
Vallis Rheita (303 x 18 miles)

 Romer (24 miles dia.), Chacornac (31 miles dia.), Newcomb (24 miles dia.),
Macrobius (39 miles dia.), Dorsa Aldovandi (73 miles long)

Isidorus (25 miles dia.), Capella (30 miles dia.), Gutenberg (45 miles dia.),
Gutenberg D (12 miles dia.), Goclenius (33 miles dia.), Magelhaens (25 miles dia.),
Magelhaens A (19 miles dia.), Bellot (10 miles dia.), Colombo (46 miles dia.),
Colombo A (25 miles dia.)

Endymion (76 miles dia.), Keldysh (20 miles dia.), Hercules (42 miles dia.),
Atlas (53 miles dia.), Atlas A (13 miles dia.), Burg (24 miles dia.),
De La Rue (82 miles dia.)

Piccolomini (53 miles dia.), Neander (30 miles dia.), Stiborius (27 miles dia.),
Rupes Altai (short section) (291 miles long)

Eventually the Moon dropped out of our field of view so we went in for a brew and waited a few hours for darkness to reveal some other targets.

Observing Report 3rd-4th April 2011 (Saturn in opposition)

Posted by on April 6th 2011 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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Once a year the Earth passes almost exactly between the Sun and Saturn, at this time Saturn is said to be in opposition (Saturn and the Sun are directly opposite each other relative to an Earth-bound observer). With the Earth being "piggy in the middle", it stands to reason that at that time Saturn will be illuminated almost exactly face-on from behind the Earth, and this causes an interesting phenomenon, The Seeliger Effect. This is an apparent relative brightening of Saturn's rings due to the fact that we don't see so many shadows between the rings and between the ring particles.

This year's opposition occurred at 01:00 BST (00:00 UTC) on the 4th of April. I managed to get several imaging runs of it during the period one hour either side of the actual opposition, typically at the exact time there were clouds in the way so time-wise the closest I could manage was at about 00:10 BST:

 

Saturn in opposition
8" Newtonian, SPC900NC webcam, eyepiece-projection.
300/5400 frames stacked with RegiStax6, post-processing with PSCS3

Observing Report 13th-14th March 2011 (Moon and Messiers)

Posted by on March 21st 2011 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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More or less the same as before - more practice with the 1000D. I really could do with getting a Barlow or a Powermate so as to get a better imaging scale for these smaller targets. Oh, and I did a bit of lunar imaging, you might want to click on the pic to see it at the original size 🙂

M102 (aka The Spindle Galaxy, NGC 5866), a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Draco.
Subs: 20 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

As previous, cropped, and enhanced.

M64 (aka The Black Eye Galaxy, NGC 4826), a spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices.
Subs: 20 light @ 300s, dark and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

As previous, cropped, and enhanced.

 The Moon.
24-pane mosaic created with iMerge.
Each pane 50/1000 frames stacked with K3CCDTools3.
DMK mono CCD camera on the 6" R-C, unguided.

Observing Report 7th-8th March 2011 (Even More Messiers)

Posted by on March 21st 2011 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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Usual story... sub-zero, still and clear... out with the baby R-C scope looking at more Messier Objects. Different camera, though - I'd sold a few redundant items and used the proceeds to get a refurbished Canon 1000D body at a knock-down price. Time to give it a trial run.

Imaging-wise the process wasn't much different, with the exception of the need to take bias-frames to counter the read-out signal of the camera's CMOS sensor - this is something that I never had to do with the Nikon D50, as the CCD sensor in it has a very low read-out signal. Still, it's a small price to pay for not having to contend with long-exposure amp-glow - the Nikon had a bit of it, the Canon has none at all. Oh, and I was using different capture software - APT - which turned out to be excellent.

Anyway, I'll let the results do the talking:

M51a (aka NGC 5194), an interacting spiral galaxy in the constellation Canes Venatici.
M51b (aka NGC 5195) is the smaller companion galaxy.
Subs: 20 light @ 300s, darks and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

 As previous, cropped, enhanced and over-cooked.

M12 (aka NGC 6218), a globular cluster in the constellation Ophiuchus.
Subs: 9 light @ 300s, dark and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

 The Leo Triplet - M65 (NGC 3623, upper-right), M66 (NGC 3627, lower-right) and NGC 3628 (lower-left) - a group of galaxies in the constellation Leo (as if you hadn't worked that out already).
Subs: 15 light @ 300s, dark and bias frames, ISO400.
1000D on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

 

Methinks I'll get to like this Canon a bit sooner than I thought.

Observing Report 7th-8th February 2011 (More Messiers)

Posted by on February 28th 2011 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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Just this one and then I'm up to date...

It was a really cold night but at least it was clear - there haven't been many decent nights here lately so it was a case of "use it or lose it". The main purpose was to get in an intensive imaging session with the baby R-C scope, taking light, dark and flat frames for objects at various image scales.

Target-wise, I had a bash at a couple Messier Objects - M100 and M101. Neither of these filled the D50's sensor, and they're both quite dim objects, so more and longer exposures and a lot of post-processing ops were going to be needed to get decent-sized crops from the data. As ever, it didn't work out as intended - all of the flats were rubbish due to a problem with the lightbox, and a fair few lights had to be scrapped due to issues with guiding.

Anyway, after much jiggery-pokery, here are the results:

M100 (aka NGC 4321), a face-on spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices.
NGC 4327, 4328, 4323, 4322 & IC 783 are also just about visible as faint fuzzy bits.
Subs: 10 light @ 300s, darks, ISO200.
D50 on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

 M101 (aka The Pinwheel Galaxy, NGC 5457), a face-on spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major.
Subs: 20 light @ 300s, darks, ISO200.
D50 on the 6" R-C, guided with PHD.

Next time I'll get it right and hopefully the results will be much better.

Observing Report 8th-9th January 2011 (Venus & Saturn)

Posted by on January 15th 2011 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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Nearly caught up!

It wasn't the clearest of nights, but it was the first half-decent chance for over a month so I took it.

The first half of the session was spent setting up the scope and mount and then getting good polar-alignment. It's always a good idea to do proper checks after either maintenance or extremes of weather - it's surprising how much the ground heaves when it's gone through long freeze/thaw cycles, and it does affect the position of the mount's pier. Setting-up also included re-registering the reference stars so that the thing can work out where it's pointing (and can then work out where to find other stuff)... a time-consuming job if done to a fair degree of accuracy.

The second half was given over to visual observation and planetary imaging. While waiting for Saturn to rise to an acceptable declination, I got the camera set up and had a few practice-sessions focusing on double-stars and then I sat back watching for meteors. When Saturn was in sight I found that I'd picked a night when the huge "Dragon Storm" was visible, so I grabbed some footage of it for processing later. After that I went over to visual for an hour or so while waiting for the next target, Venus, to gain some height in the pre-dawn sky. Eventually the bright crescent of Venus climbed far enough to be nabbed by the CCD. After that I should have packed away but I couldn't resist the temptation to wait and see if I'd be able to image Mercury too. I could see it through the binoculars, peeking through the branches of a tree, but as I waited for it to clear the obstruction the sky became too bright to catch the planet on camera. Better luck next time, maybe?

Anyway, here are the results:

 

Saturn with storm

 Venus
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