The Four Ages Of Sand

Supernova explosion gives a glimpse of how ingredients for life are created

Ah how I'll always regret not making time to look at supernova this year. 

I was getting pretty good at imaging galaxies (previous post)

And would easily have been able to photograph the supernova, but I was caught up with other projects at the time. 

Ah well, there'll be another one as big along in (an average of) 40 years...

In the meantime here's an update on the findings sent in by David. 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/14/supernova-explosion-glimpse-life-created

The Joy of the moons of Saturn

A cloud free night last night! It was replaced by a very annoying fine mist that stopped me doing any serious deep sky work, but I did have a go at Saturn. For some reason I couldn't get the Lunar Planetary Imager to work so I took some shots with the Nikon attached to the scope. 

As you can see, Saturn is so small that no detail is visible (it's blue because of the filter)

But with a longer exposure and a tight crop, some dots appear,

The dots are moons, but which ones?

Go to the Sky and Telescope site and typw in date and time:

and it's easy to confirm that they are...

 

 Nice! There are several more to be "bagged" so I'm just hoping for a clear night tonight

The Joy of Saturn

My first ever image of Saturn was , frankly, a bit dodgy

But my latest effort is a big improvement.  This is a combination of 5 images, each made up of between 70 - 100 images, making a total of around 400 images. The gap in the rings is just beginning to show and the main light zone on the surface is clear. There's a big storm on Saturn at the moment and I'm hoping to capture it soon.

Hunting the eyes in M97, NGC 3587, The Owl Nebula

With cloudy skies predicted indefinitely, I'm forced to revisit my memory cards in search of astro images I may have overlooked first time round. 

M97 is a planetary nebula, a huge shell of material ejected by a star at the end of its life. It's got 2 "holes" in it, which are supposed to give the nebula the appearance of an owl's face, hence its common name of The Owl Nebula. 

Lord Rosse was first to notice the resemblance to a face in 1848. Here's his drawing:

And here's a fantastic image of it, taken by Fryns Andre

(Image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:M97.jpg)

At Magnitude 9.9, it shouln't be a very difficult object to spot, but given its size - appearing about 1/10th the size of the full Moon - its light is spread out over quite a large area, so any light pollution will make it almost impossible to see. I couldn't see it at all through the 10" scope, and even some 30 second exposure didn't reveal it well:

(It is there, honest, if you look closely)

I tried stacking several images together and stretched the levels in Photoshop to try and bring it out. 

Did it work?

Yes. Kind of.

Ok, it's rubbish but can at least see the two eyes.

What do you mean, "where?"

Do I have to put arrows to them??

Ok, if you are not even going to meet me half way for goodness sake!

This is 5 stacked images with a total exposure time of 2 minutes 12 seconds, at 1600ASA.

The next photo will be a huge improvement on this, I promise.

In the meantime, if you have binoculars, see if you can spot it yourself. It's very easy to find because it's close to one of the main stars in The Plough (Ursa Major)

There are many other deep sky objects in The Plough within reach of binoculars. Try looking for M81 and M82, the interacting galaxies previosly imaged here.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e3/Ursa_Major_constellation_map.svg/1000px-Ursa_Major_constellation_map.svg.png

 

 

 

 

The joy of tethering with a Nikon DSLR using free software DIYphotobits

The late great Douglas Adams...

...creator of The Four Ages of Sand, (if you haven't come across his jaw-dropping speech, "Is there an artificial God?" please have a look here. You won't regret it) described himself as a technophile and a technophobe at the same time. I have the same schizophrenic relationship with technology, and with computers in particular.  This is the reason I had tried to connect my camera to the computer. I knew that amazing things were possible by tethering a DSLR but The Fear stopped me even investigating it. 

Well, now I have, and guess what? Computers are amazing!

I have the Nikon D60 and this model has no live view. Since getting into astrophotography a few months ago, and spectroscopy a few weeks ago, I've spent a lot of time bent double at the telescope, trying to focus faint objects through the viewfinder; a frustrating, and on occasions painful, experience. You take a photo then crick your neck trying to see if it's focused properly.

As you may recall, I've been forced to take extreme measures, such as using a dentist's mirror to reflect the image on the camera screen, rather than having to get down on my knees in the garden when looking at objects with a high elevation.

It's hard enough with astrophotography, but with spectroscopy it's even worse because the spectra can never be focused correctly along their whole length (more about this soon) 

Nikon provides software which will allow you to control a camera from a computer but it costs well over £100. Or you can get equally good stuff for free and a quick Google search reveals lots of freeware.

I tried various options and found this useful site:

http://thephotogeek.com/choosing-nikon-dslr-camera-tethered-shooting-software/

which highly recommended this freeware for Nikon users:

http://thephotogeek.com/choosing-nikon-dslr-camera-tethered-shooting-software/#DIYPhotobits

A quick download later and a whole new world has opened up. I can now control all the functions on the camera, ASA, shutter speed etc. from the laptop and I can do time lapses, remote shutter release, and delayed release. 

Best of all, as soon as I take the picture it appears full screen on the monitor and I can examine it closely for correct focus etc. It also allows bracketing at the touch of a button. Now all I need is a clear night to test it out properly.  

Sorted!

 

 

Question of the week: Can you see Lunar craters with the naked eye?

Ah there are just too many amazing things to explore up there and not enough time!

I want to get into studying double stars, quasars, and asteroids. Then there are the galaxies, the planetary nebulae, and clusters. And let's not forget the planets and the Moon. I've rather abandonded the Moon recently, which is a shame because of all the astronomical objects, the Moon is surely the most impressive one to view and image.

Last night  I revisited some of my images from before Christmas and found some pretty decent ones of Clavius and surrounding area. Clavius is one of the largest (diameter: 140 miles)and oldest (4 billion years old) lunar craters. I posted an image of it before, and also a video of it through the eyepiece of the 10" scope 

Close by is another very well known crater, Tycho. In fact if you've ever looked up at the full Moon you will have seen it because it's surrounded by a bright ejecta blanket with rays spreading out across the whole of the southern area of the Moons surface.  Take a look when the Moon is full next week; you can't miss it, even with the naked eye. It's the white blob at the bottom.

(Wikipedia)

Here's the best of the photos I took before Christmas. Clavius is in the top right and Tycho is the smaller crater just below the centre. It's a composite image of around 130 separate frames:

 

The Joy, actually, no, the ecstasy of Asteroid 37 Fides

Asteroids are chunks of rock and metal left over from the creation of the Solar System. There are millions of them and most are in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_asteroid_belt

Most of them are very faint and I've never seen one before, which was why I was very annoyed to read in the January issue of Astronomy that a 67 mile wide asteroid called 37 Fides is at this moment flying through the Pleiades cluster (also know as M45 and The Seven Sisters cluster).  At magnitude 10.4 it's at least 100 times too dim to be seen with the naked eye, but my 10" scope shouldn't have any difficulty picking it up but the skies are cloudy and are predicted to stay the same for the coming week.

 But wait... I took some stacked images of The Paleiades the other week, using the piggybacking technique with the 500mm telephoto lens (see previous post)

Is it possible I photographed Asteroid 37 Fides by accident?

It was on the 8th January so according to the chart it should be above and to the right of a fairly bright star. I went back to the original stack and...

comparing it to the chart:

There is indeed a bright spot in exactly the right place!

 But as an aspiring boffin, I knew I couldn't publish my results without further investigation so I went to http://www.sky-map.org/ and zoomed in on the top area of M45. (It takes very long exposures to reveal the nebulosity like this.)

Closing in on the exact section and comparing it with a close up of my photo, you can see that the 3 stars (a) are clearly visible in both images but (b) is only visible in my image, even though it is roughly the same magnitude as the (a) stars. 

It would be nice to identify the even fainter star (c) which would then "pin down" (b) with even more certainty. It's not visible in the image but if the levels are boosted in Photoshop, it just makes an appearance. Along with similar magnitude stars at (d) this confirms beyond any doubt that (b) really is the asteroid.

Marvellous! 

And here's the colour-corrected version, rotated to match the postion of the sky through the scope, along with hints of the nebulosity showing:

Interesting to ponder that every point here is a star producing its own light, except for the asteroid which is only visible due to the refected light of our own star, the Sun. 

There are no images of 37 Fides showing it as anything other than a point of light, but it's too small to have pulled itself into a spherical shape so it probably looks something like this one, 253 Mathilde

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:(253)_mathilde.jpg

 

Now I'd like to try for other asteroids and minor planets.  

 

 

 

 

 

M96: part of the Leo Trio

Here's another galaxy in Leo. At magnitude 9.2 it's a bright one, though still at least 40 times too dim to be seen with the naked eye. Binoculars will show it though, if your skies are relatively light pollution free. It's part of a famous trio of galaxies though I was darned if I could find the other two. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_359

 

 It's 41 million light years away, and is supposed to look like an eye, though not to me, and I'm very good at imagining things that are not really there: 

You can just make out the central "bar" of stars at the core:

This is one of the "showpiece" galaxies of the Northern sky, so I'll definitely be back to do a better job on it.

 

 

The magic of the Internet, Yahoo User Groups and the SA100

Have I mentioned before how great the Internet is? ;-)  The magic of the times we live in has been impressed upon me yet again recently as I prepare to become a spectroscopist.

I got excited by the idea of spectroscopy 2 weeks ago (see previous post) and I've been busy educating myself ever since; not a difficult task, since it turns out I knew almost nothing about it. 

I received my SA100, which is a very fine grating, designed to split up star light into a spectrum. It goes between a CCD and a telescope, but when I got mine I couldn't find any way of attaching it.

 

I have lots of adaptors and connectors, but still couldn't find a way:

 

 

So I joined a Yahoo User Group. There are thousands of these forums on every subject imaginable, and you are instantly connected with a whole range of knowledgeable, enthusiastic and extremely helpful and friendly people. Whatever you are into, there will be a user group. Try it: 

http://groups.yahoo.com/ 

Actually, there are several spectroscopy groups, even one specifically for the SA100, and one of the guys who have been helping me turns out to be its designer. 

They explained to me that what I was missing was a 1.25" nosepiece (I felt such a fool...)

so it was back to the internet to source one. 

It allowed me fit the SA100 to the camera, but I still could get it onto the scope:

 

 Again, they talked me through it, and finally I got it (I wasn't using my eyepiece adaptor to connect to the field flattener. It's a long story, and probably not of great interest...)

Now I'm good to go. The skies are clear, the batteries are charged, the tripod is aligned, I've downloaded the software ready for processing the images, and nothing apart from lack of skill, knowledge and ability can stop me now.

 The thought that I'm about to analyse starlight to discover what the star is made of is quite incredible I think.  In the long run you can use this set up to measure red shift of galaxies and quasars, which will prove that the Universe is expanding. And all from a garden in Hatfield; who'd have thought?  

Return to the Seven Sisters (The Pleiades)

I have posted a photo of the Seven Sisters before:

 The Pleiades is the best star cluster in the sky and it's easily visible to the naked eye , rising in the East and staying high in the southern sky all night. It's 380 light years away, so the light you are seeing has been travelling through space at 186,000 miles a second since shakespearean times (if my maths and my history is right)

It looks like a large fuzzy blob, and you should be able to see 7 of the 200 stars, hence its more common name of Seven Sisters. If you have binoculars, take a look. It's stunning, and because it's so big, it's actually more impressive through binoculars than a telescope.

 

 What do you mean "Where is it?" Between the branches of the tree on the right, of course!

I'm happy to say, my skill set has expanded over the last year. Ta dah!  

  

 

This is a combination of 7 exposures at 800 ISO, totalling 2 minutes 55 seconds, using the 500mm telephoto lens on the Nikon, piggybacked on the telescope.

The stars are bathed in nebulosity, which is just beginning to show with the star at the bottom of the cluster.