I went out again last night (Saturday), but there was a heavy mist in the sky – everywhere I aimed the scope – nebulosity! But not the kind I was looking for. I did catch a glimpse of comet 73P before packing up though. All in all it was a good weekend for observing.
It was another beautiful night up in Tobermory last night. Sounds like it turned out well at Binbrook too.
I spent most of the night imaging a couple of galaxies again – this time the Whirlpool Galaxy and the Pinwheel Galaxy. These were a little tricky, as they wouldn’t start to show in the camera until after a minute or so of exposure – so it took some time to focus and center them. I will post them to my gallery as I get them processed.
This is a 5 minute exposure @ ISO 1600 out across the lake from the vantage point of the telescope. The bright light on the island is a beacon 5km away – the closer smeared bright lights are stars reflecting off the water. The sky was amazingly bright with stars.
These are reduced images – I will post the full images to my gallery on Sunday.
It was a cold night – but clear and well worth going out for some observing. I don’t think I could have asked for a better weekend to have taken off to my Dad’s in Tobermory. For those that don’t know where that is – it ‘s on the tip of the Bruce Pennisula – surrounded on 3 sides by Great Lakes and only a narrow path of light polluted civilization leading to it.
I took the opportunity to try a few new items – my new guide scope and illuminated guiding eyepiece (purchased from Mike), and my new dew shield (no dew or frost problems with the main scope last night). I concentrated on Bode’s Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy – and took 5 minute manually guided images (this was my first attempt at guided images). I have stacked and processed the Bode’s Galaxy (M81) sequence and will have others later. The weather is calling for similar conditions all weekend, so I will try different objects over the next few days.
A note on viewing ANY astrophoto’s on an LCD monitor – make sure your viewing angle is at least straight on or above or nebulosity will be drastically diminished (or possibly not visible at all). I actually had one person swear I sent them the wrong photo as they couldn’t see the object I was describing anywhere on the image – they were correct – their monitor was tilted on an angle that caused poor visibility – when viewed from an angle below the LCD monitor’s mid-point an entire galaxy had disappeared! (so fix the angle on your LCD monitors – you don’t want to be responsible for wiping out an entire galaxy!)
These are reduced images – I will post the full images to my gallery on Sunday.
From Doug Welch:
Folks,
There was a big flare at 15:22UT today! Be on guard for aurora in the
next couple of days!
BTW; this weekend is looking promising for Binbrook…
New images posted by Clyde Miller of The Moon, M82, M17, M5, Saturn, and Comet 73P can be seen here.
The moon will be full and close by, but tonight shortly after midnight Io?s shadow will start to transit. It is anticipated that the Great Red Spot (GRS) will also be starting to cross the face of Jupiter and the shadow should be on the eastern edge of the GRS in the opposite hemisphere.
By the time the GRS transits(reaches mid point) about 2:00 am, the shadow will be north of the western edge of the GRS with the moon Io itself about halfway through the GRS and in the same plane as the shadow. This will afford opportunities to compare the transit speeds of the moon and the planet features as well as offer some wonderful imaging and sketching opportunities.
Now, if we can just get the weather to co-operate.
Well, the clouds rolled in just after we arrived – then after about 1/2hr the wind did a 180 and the clouds rolled back out the way they came – and suddenly it was so bright I thought I should have brought a book to read by the moonlight.
I stayed with viewing planets, the moon, and star clusters – sky was too washed out for anything else. We got a chance to watch a moon rising from behind Jupiter (at first I thought it was just distortion – but it was too consistent and growing, so I called Mike over to look) and the rings of Saturn were reasonably clear too. Looking through Mike’s bino viewer at the craters and mountain ranges on the moon was also a treat – there were some interesting sites along the shadow line.
I only took a few images – mainly of Saturn and Jupiter. I have processed the Jupiter sequence and will get to the others later. Unfortunately I don’t have the mount for attaching my camera to a barlow yet so my images of planets tend to be lacking detail.
Taking Tim Harpur’s advice on focussing resulted in the best digital photos I’ve taken yet! It took some practice, but I managed to get decent images of the moon and Comet 73P last night from our backyard. I used my Canon G3 camera (an oldie but a goodie!) attached to a Scopetronix maxview adapter/eyepiece. For the comet, I used the camera’s longest shutter speed: 15 secs at f/2.0 and an ISO rating of 100 (my 400 rating causes too much noise in the images). Although the image is tiny, it isn’t bad for a first effort. (At least, that’s what I keep telling myself!) Because I took the image through the telescope’s star diagonal, the image is mirror-reversed.
I also took an image of the gibbous moon. I used the photo editing software to un-mirror-reverse the image and crop it, but that’s the only processing I’ve done.
These are not nearly as good as the images Tim Harpur has been taking with his Digital Rebel XT, but, hey, I gotta start somewhere!
Ann
There is a report of a possible nova in Cygnus. Previously 12th magnitude, this star has outburst to 8th magnitude in recent days. The good news is that you should be able to see it in binoculars; the bad news is there is no shortage of 8th magnitude stars in Cygnus. Still for the adventurous the relevant links are below.
AAVSO Special Notice: http://www.aavso.org/publications/specialnotice/10.shtml
Provisional map: http://www.aavso.org/cgi-bin/searchcharts3.pl?name=n%20cyg%2006
