WHY A SUDDEN DOWNPOUR THURSDAY EVENING?

My hopes of going to Binbrook for more comet images were dashed with the sudden downpour at 7 pm. A little while later Steve Germann knocked at the door to show me his new 16″ Lightbridge dob. He had picked it up at Khan’s at 7 pm and wanted some First Light.

A 16″ Lightbridge is a big scope. You have to be 6′ tall to see into the eyepiece when looking at things overhead. Still, it’s marvellously compact and easy to set up:

It fits into a VW bug:

One guy can put it all together: .

Looking through the scope was fun.

It moved smoothly; it was well-collimated; the dual-speed focuser was very smooth through its 35mm of focus travel. The scope gave very good views of Jupiter through the light clouds:

Watch out! Steve will be driving to Binbrook on every available clear night from now until Starfest! Here’s your chance to see through a very nice 16″ dob.

A STUNNING NIGHT AT BINBROOK 11 JULY

The cold front that threatened rain but did not deliver, provided us with an outstanding opportunity to observe/image at Binbrook Wednesday night. Transparency was so good you could see many deep sky objects with the naked eye and the Milky Way glittered from horizon to zenith!

I didn’t notice the clouds had disappeared until 11:30 pm. Rushing out to Binbrook with Jackie Fulton, I set up for imaging and was polar aligned by midnight for two glorious hours of imaging through an 80mm apo refractor. Here’s the globular cluster M22 (a single one minute shot with the Digital Rebel):

Jackie wanted me to collect images of some of the nebulae she was looking at through binoculars. Here is a one minute exposure of the Trifid Nebula in Sagittarius:

Of course, the images here have been reduced to 450 pixels wide and further reduced to JPG format. The air was so transparent that it was possible to get an image of globular M4 near Antares, showing the faint globular NGC 6144 as well:

Jackie spotted 5 bright meteors that passed through the Summer Triangle overhead (all I saw were 8 or 9 very large jet planes – what’s that all about?). We were not able to spot the little Comet Linear, but I ended the night by taking some passable shots of galaxy M51:

Tomorrow night should be another great opportunity for some kewl observing at Binbrook. We had over 20 clear nights in each of May and June this year; July is also looking good, so I don’t want complaints you didn’t get in much summer observing, once the snow flies. Other astro-groups get together to eat hamburgers or to watch space movies… clear nights are your chance to show that Hamilton Amateur Astronomers is the area’s MOST ACTIVE ASTRONOMY CLUB!

CATCH LITTLE COMET LINEAR IN JULY !

There’s a little comet discovered by the LINEAR program, passing from Draco into Bootes this month, high in the sky and very well placed for imaging.

The comet is faint (magnitude 9 at the moment, according to Skyhound) but as it passes something bright, there’s an opportunity to get a pretty interesting image. July 11-12 the comet will be less than a degree from 3rd magnitude star Iota Draconis, overhead. 10 days later the comet will come within 1/4 degree from the bright globular cluster M3 (the globular E of Arcturus).

Imagers, here’s your chance! See the chart below:

UPDATE 12 JULY:

I discovered the little green Comet Linear in an image of the sky around Iota Draconis taken last night – a 2 minute exposure at ISO1600 taken with a Digital Rebel and 50mm Nikon lens, piggyback on the TAL clockdriven mount. No tail, but the comet is quite visible:

UPDATE 24 JULY:

Longer exposures through an 8″ Schmidt-Newtonian scope (and stacking many images) obtained on 24 July show the comet has two stubby tails, one with knots that may be pieces broken off the comet nucleus. A faint spiral galaxy appears just below the comet:

MONDAY NIGHT AT BINBROOK, 9 July ’07

With all the heat and a prediction of thunderstorms Monday, it seemed better to be working indoors. I spent some evening hours with our HAA Publicity Director making up a 41 page application in the 2007 Astronomy Magazine astro-club contest.

Peeking out at 11:30 pm I was surprised to see very clear skies and Jupiter hanging to the south, although it was still 28C degrees. Stopping work, we piled into the car and drove out to Binbrook to collect images piggyback on the TAL mount. While it was clear in Hamilton, there was hazy cloud passing Binbrook when we arrived. I decided to try an hour’s imaging before fog and dew overwhelmed the camera, and colected some interesting shots like this one of Serpens rising aboue the E horizon:

Dew never arrived. The camera took mostly 30 second exposures while Jackie observed with her Celestron binoculars. We saw heat lightning and Jackie spotted a couple of meteors before we left at 1:30 a.m. Like I always say, you have to be prepared to get out there when the opportune clear skies are available (especially in summer).

COMET LINEAR 2006VZ13 WILL PASS BY M3 THIS MONTH

This comet sporting a 6′ halo, will pass by the globular cluster M3 the evenings of 23-4 July so you can compare the two:

PERFECT WEATHER FOR 07-07-07 AT BINBROOK

“… and gentlemen in England now abed, will think themselves accursed they were not here…” runs the great speech from Henry V. We happy few who were out at Binbrook had a spectacular treat: perfect weather, very few bugs, sputtering meteors, several bright planets and a wonderful southern sky with a brilliant milky way… and no clouds.

I opened the park at sunset and was set up, ready to observe with the 80mm apo on a TAL mount or image with the digital rebel, by 9:15 pm. Jackie did her alignment thing and started to observe the shadow transit of Ganymede by 9:25. Tim Philp and his friend Therese pulled in a minute later with his 8″ dob ready to go in a trice; Steve’s VW climbed the hill and disgorged a full binocular observing station, several green lasers and a Meade motor-driven reflector. A time-exposure can make darkness seem like daylight:

Dusk brought out Venus, then Jupiter, then Saturn as the sky darkened. Most were steadily watching the shadow of Ganymede complete its transit (seemed to be about 10 minutes faster than Starry Night showed it), with the 4 Jovian moons clustered to one side of the planet. For Jackie, who missed last night’s shadow transit of Europa, Ganymede’s shadow was both exiting to watch and a rare event.

Once the sky became dark, imaging started in earnest, with focus on Scorpius and Sagittarius. Tim and Therese toured several Messier objects with the push-pull scope, falling behind Jackie and Steve’s tally using the go-to and her wonderful little apo. The sky was clear though the seeing was only fair. Therese learned to identify the Teapot, here’s a much-reduced image:

To really appreciate how the Milky Way looked, you’d have to turn your gaze higher to see it spreading up from the Teapot, through Scutum and Aquila… like this:

I was more satisfied with the Nikon 50mm F/1.8 lens I used tonight, than with last night’s Soligor lens. Star images showed no coma in the larger-sized image which I will post on my astro-gallery.

If you looked way up, the Milky Way ran right through Cygnus and showed a little colour overhead (a rarity for the Hamilton area). Tim took his friend on a tour of M57 and several globular clusters through the Milky Way, using a green laser as his finder (and it worked like a charm). I took just a small piece of the overhead sky shots, to show how beautiful Lyra looked. M57 is visible (between the yellow dashes), and Epsilon Lyrae is well separated (between the blue dashes):

Tim and Therese left at midnight but Jackie, Steve and I stayed for quite a while longer – several meteors including one at least mag minus 3 that swept slowly from the NE into Aquila, sputtering as it went. We listened for a sonic boom, but I didn’t hear anything as loud as when the raccoon fell into a garbage bin (apparently they can’t get out).

As the last quarter Moon rose over the lake, Steve and I imaged it and Jackie looked through a 5″ scope and a set of big binoculars (she loves that terminator). The temperature had fallen below 20 degrees when we finally packed up about 1:30 am.

A great night and to our friends who didn’t come out, take advantage of what comes by! November is only 110 days away and you’ll look back fondly on warm, clear summer nights!

A PERFECT FRIDAY NIGHT AT BINBROOK, 6 JULY

I could not pass up the opportunity to try some wide-field imaging Friday evening at Binbrook. The sky seemed unusually clear with some high cloud and Jackie said she wanted to observe with her perfect little apo scope, so I had company for the session. She left for Binbrook before I did but somehow arrived about 5 minutes after me (go figure).

I set up a TAL clock drive mount with a SkyWatcherPro 80ED and had my scope polar aligned when Jackie pulled up. As she set up her go-to scope (aligned on the first try), I snapped some exposures of Venus settling toward the horizon over the lake, nestled between Saturn on the right and Regulus on the left:

It was simply a beautiful evening, perfect temperature, few bugs, a cooling breeze and even a couple of racoons in the nearby tree, watching with their bright green eyes. Of course July evenings are for imaging Sagittarius and Scorpius. We had the added benefit of Jupiter with a transit of Europa – Jackie spent most of her time watching for the moon’s shadow, but it was so far behind the moon that it didn’t arrive. TOMORROW we will set up at dusk to see the GIANT shadow of Ganymede on Jupiter (shadow transit ends at 10 pm). Imaging Sagittarius was my goal, let me know what you think of this much-reduced version:

And of course, capturing just about all of Scorpius and its tail (also much reduced to fit in this blog):

With her marvellous 5mm eyepiece Jackie captured excellent close-ups of M4, M22 and M20 and some dazzling views of the cloud banding on Jupiter. As we left Binbrook, the last quarter Moon was rising through the trees. I took a few images of it from home while downloading the above images:

If tomorrow is as good as tonight, we should have one really excellent outing. Bring your binoviewers! Remember, Tim Philp is coming out tomorrow with some (not all) of his astronomical equipment. It’ll be a night to remember.

JUNE 30 SATURN AND VENUS

The western horizon held a spectacular sight in the West: Venus less than one degree below Saturn. I imaged with a 135mm lens on the Digital Rebel at F/11 (putting spikes on Venus):

By taking very short exposures it was possible to obtain images of both planets that showed detail (the crescent of Venus and the disk and rings of Saturn), if I cut out most of the distance between them, thus:

FANTASTIC THURSDAY NIGHT, 21 JUNE

What a Moon:

A LITTLE OBSERVING, A LITTLE IMAGING, JUNE 17-8

The predicted morning rain failed to develop, but the CSC prediction for the evening changed from blue to grey. Steve K and I shelved our plans to image at Binbrook. As evening fell the sky didn’t look too bad. I was shooting the crescent Moon below Venus when Steve dropped by (Monday night the Moon will be between Venus and Saturn):

The air was heavy with moisture and the seeing was only 4 or 5 arc-seconds (components of Epsilon Lyrae scintillated badly and planetary nebulas didn’t show detail). We looked at a number of objects but decided to image Io’s transit of Jupiter starting about 1:30 am when the moon’s dark shadow, closely trailing the moon, was just on the planet’s limb:

The seeing never really improved but by 1:45 am it was possible to see both Io (transiting against the NEB) and its shadow against the planet’s disk:

Monday night is looking better for observing and imaging. Steve K and I plan to go to Binbrook; email me if you are interested in joining us!