Moon

Been thinking about the moon a fair bit in the last few days. Firstly to mark the death of Neil Armstrong on Saturday. It’s a shame I didn’t get the news until I’d got home from Exmoor where there is no mobile signal and definitely no 3G else I’d have spent some time taking a look around the Sea of Tranquility through the thin cloud.
I bought a copy of another old book today, Patrick Moore’s Moon Flight Atlas. A brilliant book that I remember borrowing from the library time and time again as a child. It filled me with awe and wonder then how we could go to the moon. Still does. It’s amazing to think 40 years have passed and it all occurred before I could remember.
A few years ago I visited the Smithsonian Air and Space museum in Washington DC. Two things struck me there. Firstly they had the command module from Apollo 11 encased in Perspex. It was incredible how small it was and the damage on the heat shield showed it to be made of what looked like chicken wire. There was also a mock up of a lunar lander and that really did look like it was made in a shed by some enthusiasts. This is the technology that put man on the moon! They say there’s more computing power in the phone that I write this post on than uses in those missions.
But still the moon landings are a memory for my parents generation.
I was out in the garden earlier this evening putting the damp tent from the weekend up to dry out. It started raining so I came in. Just been out again to do the bins and the moon was looking magnificent between the trees. Took a quick photo or two on my phone, as above.
This week there’s a blue moon. Not that rare an occurrence really. Second full moon in a month is all that means.

Observations – Sunday 26 August 2012

Location: Cloud Farm, Exmoor. Somerset-Devon border.
Weather:clear to mixed cloud. Sheltered site but cloud cover changing all the time due to strong winds
Highlights: Milky Way, Pleiades, M45, Jupiter, Venus,

As mentioned in a earlier post I was heading off to Exmoor for a camping weekend with friends, at the excellent Cloud Farm campsite. I had hoped for clear skies but accepted that may not happen. I took the scope in case but the weather forecast wasn’t exactly hopeful. The first night, Saturday night, was too cloudy to make it worth getting the scope out despite the dark skies. In the few gaps there were, I was able to see as may stars with the naked eye as I get with the scope back home. Had a bit of a poke around with the binoculars though.
Having gone to bed I awoke around 4:00am Sunday morning needing the toilet. Leaving the tent, I looked up and despite not having my contact lenses in or glasses on, I was blown away by the sky. It was clear and the sheer number of stars was a bit confusing to be honest. It took me a few moments to get my bearings. Even with my blurred vision I could make out the Milky Way streaking across the sky from west to east, using Cygnus as a confirmation. The bright blueish glow around the Pleides cluster (M45) was also evident to the East with Jupiter shining brightly not far away. That’s my Messier count to 5/110.

I then rather foolishly went back to bed but found I couldn’t sleep knowing such a magnificent sky was out there.

So I got up again and set up the scope. By the time I had it aligned and balanced, it was no longer as dark and the clouds were coming in again. I spent my time observing and tracking Jupiter first, and a little later Venus rose above the hillside.
Even through the 9×50 RACI I could make out a couple of the Galilean moons and with the 6mm eyepiece on Jupiter I could clearly see all 4. More excitingly I could make out banding. I’d not seen this before through my Skywatcher 130M. I had seen the banding before, at a Stargazing live event run by Birmingham Astronomical Society at the Mailbox, through a 900mm refractor.
I made a sketch of the banding, remembering that the view was inverted through the eyepiece. I couldn’t see the Great Red Spot.

The sky was lightening as dawn approached, and Venus popped up over the hillside to the East. I tracked and observed that for a while, observing it shining brightly at half phase.
It was daylight by then and my fellow campers were starting to rise as I was packing up at around 6:20. I went back to bed for an hour or two.

Unfortunately Sunday evening was pretty cloudy with quite a bit of mist so no observing that night, just a bit of a late night ukulele singalong around the campfire instead. It turned to rain about 1:00am so there was no late night/early morning viewing to be had. It was worth taking the scope with me though, for the views of Jupiter and Venus the previous morning. It’s just a shame I didn’t know how clear the sky was whilst I slept else I’d have been up and out sooner to make the most of the dark skies.

Update: 10 September 2012. I was watching The Sky At Night this evening. In the night sky section, they were discussing Jupiter and how the Northern Equatorial Belt is rather thick and complex at the moment. The showed the image below, which I have cheekily screenshot from iPlayer, (inc the copyright for credit). I’m quite chuffed at the similarity between this and my sketch. I had noted and captured that thicker band.

Retrospective Stargazing – 5 Years Later

I’m planning a trip to Exmoor soon and was looking at some old photos from my Flickr last time I went there. I didn’t have a telescope then but I did take a couple of longer exposure shots of the sky with my SLR on a tripod.

Whilst looking at the photo I naturally became curious about which stars and constellations were in the shot. To help me with this I took a look at the exif info for the photo to get the date and time it was taken. Incidentally, knowing what I know now and how I remember of the skies from that visit, I’m surprised there aren’t more stars visible in this shot. However from the exif I see that I took this 30s exposure at ISO100. Next time I’ll bump that up considerably.
A quick bit of Google map work gave me the longitude and latitide of the location and I recall from the orientiation of the site that the shot was taken pretty much facing south.
Plugging all this into SkySafari gave me an exact starmap for that time and place. That’s pretty cool.
I see then that that’s Scorpio just above the rising hillside on the right. Three stars in a slight rising curve pointing towards the three in a vertical line. The central orange one of the three on the curve is Antares.

What excited me though was discovering that the really bright star in the centre of the sky isn’t a star at all. That’s Jupiter that is. I hadn’t realised that at the time and nor in the period since.

First sighting of Jupiter this side of summer?

I’ve been out to a gig tonight. Was enjoying a late night kebab in front of the TV when I heard the awful sound of a car crash at the junction near our house.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard that. It’s a distinctive sound. I headed outside to check, calling the emergency services as I did.
Luckily nobody was badly hurt or worse , killed.
A car had jumped the lights and by the distance, skid marks, trail of debris and the now missing set of lights he must have been going at some speed.
As I stood around waiting for emergency services and watching I looked up to the eastern sky to spot what I was pretty sure was Jupiter shining brightly near Aldebaran through the gaps in the clouds. A check on SkySafari when I got in confirmed that.

Summer Triangle Widefield Imaging – First Attempt

At mentioned in my last post, I ended up with 263 frames of the Summer Triangle. I thought I’d have a go at processing one of these to see if I could get more detail out.

So here’s my starting image.

I hadn’t realised quite how bad my light pollution was until I saw this.
It’s a 30 second exposure, sunlight white balance at ISO400 taken on a Canon EOS400D with a Sigma zoom set at it’s widest 18mm focal length.
faintest stars you can see here are about magnitude 4.
I then tweaked it a bit in photoshop, adjusting levels to bring out fainter stars up to about magnitude 7. I removed the colour cast as best I could, although I think I went a bit too at as it’s quite blue now.

Now I know this is far from perfect. It’s a first attempt and I can see quite a few problems.
Stars aren’t quite in focus. I’d focused manually and it’s difficult to know in the dark through the camera eyepiece.
Next time I’ll lock the mirror up to prevent that causing a bit of shake.
Exposure is only 30 seconds but I don’t think I can do longer without the stars blurring with motion. I could, if I put the camera on the telescope’s mount. There is a piggy back mounting screw.
I think I need to really up the ISO, perhaps up to 1600 to captured the fainter stars. I’d held back because I thought I’d end up overexposed with all the light pollution. I think though, that I can fix that with levels in processing.
I need to investigate stacking multiple images too, as that seems to be how many people do it.

Finally I annotated the final image in Skitch on the iPad to identify the various constellations and stars. That was an fun and educational thing to do. I hadn’t noticed the small constellation Delphinus creeping in just below Cygnus for instance, and on zooming in and around the shot, I also noticed Collinder 399, Brocchi’s Cluster aka the Coathanger sneaking in.

Observations – Tuesday 14 August 2012

Location: back garden, shaded from streetlight by laburnum tree.
Weather: 90% at start, cleared but clouded again.
Highlights: M57 Ring Nebula, M56 Globular Cluster, Summer Triangle time lapse.

22:40 Ring Nebula – Messier 57, a Planetary Nebula in Lyra. I started off here just to get my eye in. It took a while to set up tonight. I set the camera up too just in case there might still be some Perseids about. There weren’t but I got a load of images that I’ll do something with later.
By the time I was set up it had gone from 20% to 80% cloud. Lots of gaps between though. 10 min later (now) it was clear again. Ring Nebula is looking great through 6mm eyepiece with light pollution filter tonight. Seeing is a bit turbulent but given the high magnification not bad. Ring is really pinching through tonight. The turbulent seeing makes it almost look like it’s spinning.
And onwards to something new.

23:09 Messier 57 – Globular Cluster in Lyra. Another new Messier for me, taking my Messier count up to 4/110. Really working this Summer Triangle. I’ll describe the starhop as always.

I started from Sulafat, gamma Lyra, and from there hopped to 17 Lyra and on to 19 Lyra, which is where the target above is centred. There is a 6mag star close to M56, HR7302. I used that as my final jumping off point. I couldn’t see the M56 globular cluster though, but as is the way with new Messiers I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for.

To confirm i was in the right part of the sky, I hopped a bit further until I came to Albireo and then headed back. I could just about make out M56 although it was faint. At moments it did glow though. I was using the 17mm Plossl eyepiece. I shifted to to the 6mm and dropped the LP filter. I then lost M56 whilst messing about. Found the LP filter though.
Started the hop from Sulafat again. I didn’t take any notes and it’s actually a few days later that I’m writing this up. Must remember to take better notes. It seems that first time I find an object, it’s about the finding and the next time it’s about the observing.
I was wearing a peaked beanie this evening. Shifting it’s peak around my head helped eliminate some glare from streetlights. It also makes a headtorch more comfortable. Last week I picked up a tall folding stool in Poundstretcher. Perching on this when at the eyepiece is more comfortable than leaning into it. I think it also helps keep my body still so improves observing.

Whilst observing I also had a Canon EOS400D SLR set up on a tripod facing high and south in the off chance of catching a late Perseid meteor or two. I had it set to ISO400, daylight white balance, shutter priority with a 30s exposure. Camera was on continuous mode with a locking remote shutter release. I just left it shooting during my observing session and reviewed the 263 shots on the camera afterwards. I didn’t catch any meteors, just a couple of planes. However I did realise as I was paging through them on the camera that it might make an interesting time lapse showing scudding clouds and the rotation of the earth. I used MakeAVI to put together a short 17 second film. I know it’s in portrait mode, but my original intention had never been to make a film of it.
(I’ve since had a go at processing some of the shots but I’ll do another post about that.

Observations – Saturday 11 August 2012 – Meteorwatch Barr Beacon

Location: Barr Beacon
Weather: dry, cold (for August), cloudy.
Highlights: ISS, Perseids meteor,

21:45 Arrived at Barr Beacon with a car full of kit – scope, camera, tripod, table, chair , cases etc etc. quite cloudy though – almost completely covered so decided to leave all but a camping chair and a case with a few bits in the car.
There were about 35 people up there for the Walsall Council/Walsall Astronomical Society Meteorwatch event. I set up my chair and wrapped up in hoody, body warmer and beanie. It was cold for the time of year. Clouds cleared a bit so saw a few stars and a few constellations – Lyra, Cygnus, Hercules, Cassiopeia, Ursa Major. Not much meteor activity though. Quite a few satellites – must have seen 6 or 7.

22:24. Had a wander round the clear patches of sky with the bins. Split the Mizor and Alcor double on the handle of the big dipper.

22:42. A really good ISS pass – about the best I’ve ever seen. West to East – appearing below and to the South of Arcturus in the West, slightly brighter than Arcturus. I spotted it and pointed it out to others. I’d been tracking it in SkySafari so knew where and when it was going to be. As it climbed its apparent velocity increased as did its magnitude become perhaps -2 or -3 overhead just South of Vega. It then faded towards the East. Observed through binoculars, bright orange and large, couldn’t make out any physical detail. I should be able to predict where it will be and observe a pass through the scope for a future pass.

A few people saw meteors but I didn’t at this point. I got chatting with some chaps, one of whom I’d come across on Stargazers Lounge. We chatted about various aspects of astronomy. He does a lot of imaging from his own home observatory and he told me he has got some time coming up on the Faulkes telescope based in Hawaii which was interesting. Whilst chatting and looking upwards I saw a very very brief flash of a probable meteor. North to East for about 10deg.

23:30 by now there were just three of us left. All the families and kids had gone, some who’d been running round and some of whom we’d been talking to and pointing out things of interest like the ISS, satellites and various stars and constellations.
We decided to call it a night. As we were walking back to the cars together, all three of us saw the same orange streak, less than a second in running toward the West from about 60deg to perhaps 40deg. Was a buzz to see a decent one and share the sighting with others. A corroborated sighting. Made on or two hairs stand up on the back of my neck, but perhaps that was the cold.
It was reasonably clear by now but too late to set up there, so I left with the intention of setting up in the garden when I got home but it was too cloudy to be worthwhile.

Observations – Thursday 9 August 2012

Location: Home, on the lawn, rather than up by house. It’s closer to the street light but shaded by a laburnum tree.
Weather: A sunny clear day leading to a mostly clear sky. Some thin high cloud. Seeing is poor.
Highlights: M57 Ring Nebula, M27 Dumbell Nebula, M71 globular cluster, Collinder 399- Brocchi’s Cluster – the Coathanger.

21:45 Set up on the lawn this evening. Despite being closer to a street light it’s shaded soemwhat by a tree The positon also gave me visibility of the sky to the north above the house so I could do a trial run for meteor watching with a camera. It’s the Perseid meteor shower around now with the peak expected this weekend. There was an article in the August edition of Sky at Night magazine on photographing meteors which I want to try. I’ll outline the gist of the procedure here.

• I put an 18 to something zoom on it’s widest setting on the SLR and set it up on a tripod pointing up at about 60deg facing north-ish. The Perseids should be radiant on the constellation of Perseus which was approximately in that direction.
• I put the camera, a Canon EOS400D into shutter priority (Tv) mode.
• I focussed manually to infinity and took a test shot of a few seconds to check.
• The article in Sky at Night magazine says to up your ISO to 1600 or so but I found that this caused the sky to be too bright on long exposures so I stuck with ISO 200. I can always change this later if I find myself with darker skies.
• I set the exposure time to 30 seconds and the shooting mode to continuous.
• I then fired the camera with a locking remote shutter and left it running for as long as batteries and memory cards (I have spares of both) will allow. Every 30 seconds it would then take another shot.
• The idea is to leave this running like that throughout the observing session and whilst there will be a lot of frames of just sky there should be some with meteor streaks across them. Reviewing the shots on the camera afterwards, there weren’t any last night but I am a bit early. The point was to test the procedure anyway.

So while the camera was clicking away, I got on with some observing.

22:05 Started with M57, the Ring Nebula, in Lyra tonight. It was just a smudge in the 17mm Plossl eyepiece with a light pollution filter. The ring was visible in the new 6mm ultra-wide eyepiece when I was using averted vision.

22:15 Started to starhop from Albireo to M27, the Dumbbell Nebula in Vulpecula. Seeing is poor tonight. I was there within minutes this time and got there by memory too. I observed it through 17mm with light pollution filter. My awareness is increasing. I wasn’t confident yesterday evening but it was definitely there tonight. It is indistinct though, guess that’s why it’s a nebula. It’s a strange sensation – more being aware of something than actually seeing it. I found Let it drift across the eyepiece a few times I got a better view. It’s also larger than I expected.

22:44 My next target was M71, a Globular Cluster in Sagitta. I tried to get there yesterday from Altair in Aquilla, but tried a different path tonight, just a short hop down from M27. Again, I’ll attempt to share the starhop route I took, together with some screenshots from SkySafari3+. I recognise this isn’t the most obvious starting place but if you consider it the next step on a route then it’s a reasonable way to go. If you need to know how to get to M27 then take a look at yesterday’s post.

Starting with 14 Vul, which is close to M27, in the centre of the finderscope, I moved the scope down on the dec axis until 14 Vul was just about to disappear from the top of the view finder. Gamma Sagitta and Eta Sagitta were in view. (I need to work out how to do greek alphabet on here) Gamma Sagitta was my target to centre in the finderscope.

Next step was to find 9 Sagitta which is close to M71 and get that centred up

Time then to switch to the main telescope OTA which I had a 25mm eyepiece in. The following section is from the notes I took at the scope.

Have i found it? Can only see a few stars – probably clusered together. Certainly not a ball of them in a haze as is described. Losts of very faint stars in the background. Guess i’m in the band of the Milky Way here. Consulted some other stuff. Not looking like it from the black on white Messier sheets TBH. Think I’m lost actually.

So I went back up to M27 to try again. As a distraction the Dumbbell was quite distinct in 25mm (no LP filter) this time. In fact the Dumbbell was looking wonderful. Just goes to show magnification isn’t everything.

So I tried again. Got back down to 9 Sagitta. Those were just stars I was seeing. It needed to be more fuzzy…. So I started looking differently. I was definitely in the right place but M71 was just being elusive. Knowing what to look for and how to look for it is part of the challenge, I’m discovering.
Again from my notes.

23:20. Found it! So I was looking for a faint fuzzy all along. Just NE of 9 Sagitta. Line of 3 stars and then off to the side a round smudge, just like the drawing on pg 139 of Turn Left At Orion. The book says it’s quite dim. It’s very dim for me. I need to get out to a dark site to see these things better. It may or may not be a globular cluster apparently. So I need to look up and understand what a globular cluster is. So far my previous 2 Messiers were Planetary Nebula and I think I know what they are/were. Anyway 3/110 of the Messier objects.

23:32 Finished off with a visit to Collinder 399 – The Coathanger, or Brocchi’s Cluster. A nice asterism to end the evening on and one I hadn’t visited before. It was a short hop across Sagitta and Vulpecula. I found it easily. it just fits in the 25mm eyepiece’s FOV. 6 stars across base 4 for hook. All blueish stars apart from one orange according to SkySafari. Not seeing the orange star though. Sky Safari tells me it’s 4 Vul, a double star at the top of the hook (bottom really -it’s an inverted coathanger) Can’t split it either even in the 6mm though, the seeing is too poor.

A very sucessful couple of hours I think. Got the hang of starhopping and am learning to see what is almost perceptible. Revisiting the M27 Dumbbell Nebula and seeing more this time around tells me that there’s plenty to appreciate in going back again to build on previous viewings.

Observations – Wednesday 8 August 2012

Location: Home
Weather: mixed cloud. Thin at start, cleared whilst observing, pretty much 90% by 23:30. Dry.

22:00 – 23:30 My plan had been to work my way through the Sky at Night magazine August 2012 deep sky tour. I’d set up an Observation list in SkySafari3+ on the iPad. A somewhat ambitious plan perhaps. I did start with M71 but the leap up from Altair in Aquila up to the constellation of Sagitta left me a bit lost so i moved on to the second target on the list M27, the Dumbbell Nebula.
I got there through some star hopping. I took a load of screen shots to get there, eventually arriving at 14 Vul. I’d got there through the 9×50 RACI finderscope. Twisting the crosshairs to line up with the RA and dec motion really helps and it also divides the area into quadrants. having lined it up with the OTA on Vega before i stated was crucial.
The other thing that really helped was that I’d calculated the FOV of my finder and eyepieces and so set them as target circles in SkySafari+. The following sequence shows how I got there through the faint constellation of Vulpecula.

Firstly I located the double star, Albireo in Cygnus. Shifting that to the top left of my finder brought 10 Vul into view.

Shifting 10 Vul to the centre of the finder showed a line of two stars heading WSW towards 13 Vul

Once at 13 Vul I was able to identify 12 Vul, 16 Vul, 17 Vul and 15 Vul.

So, having got to 14 Vul then the messing about started. I switched to a 25mm eyepiece on the Skywatcher 130M and instantly had to switch my mind into recognising the view was now upside down.
It took ages, perhaps 1/2 hour to actually spot the Dumbbell nebula. I could see there was another star….in a line with 14 Vul and the Dumbbell Nebula should be reasonable size in comparison to the stars and about double the distance away. Light pollution really wasn’t helping. I put the LP filter on the 17mm Plossl and where I knew it must be it began to drift in and out of view. It took a lot of averted vision before I would allow myself to believe I’d seen it. To confirm I stepped away from the scope a few times to check in books such as Turn Left At Orion and then go back and check if i could see what I’d seen before and confirm it wasn’t just a trick of the light. The other thing that helped was holding up a magazine in front of the OTA to stop a bit of the light from a nearby street light from bouncing down and washing out my view.
So that’s my second Messier object – 2 out of 110 observed. I’ll be back again to M27 later in the week hopefully to get a better view and understanding of it.  I’d be hard pushed to describe what I observed of the Dumbbell Nebula at the moment.  It was a fuzzy and indistinct smudge to me.  I know what it should look like but I don’t want to describe that.  Next time I hope to make better observations.   For this evening though, I take some satisfaction in successful starhopping.  After several evenings of getting lost and poking around aimlessly, I now feel that I can navigate the night sky. 

I’m actually sitting in the garden now, typing the initial observation notes up in SkySafari and will add the screenshots to them when I post them on the blog (as I now have done). The cat just came under the fence and made me jump so it’s time to pack up and go in.

By way of tribute to Sir Bernard Lovell 1913-2012

By way of a tribute to Sir Bernard Lovell who died this week.
The wonderful Lovell Telescope at Jodrell Bank was used as a giant projection screen for the Flaming Lips Transmissions gig. Here’s the intro to Race for the Prize that I filmed there last year.