Flaming Horsehead

On Sunday night (11/3/13) I dragged a couple friends with me to Mingo Creek Park Observatory for what I figured would be some minor astrophotography and binocular viewing.  We arrived to find the director of the observatory and another AAAP member doing research on Variable Stars using the large reflector telescope.  Not expecting to do any "big scope" observing we were thrilled when they warmly welcomed us into the facility and showed us several deep sky and planetary objects.  We viewed the Dumbbell Nebula (M27), the Orion Nebula (M42), Jupiter, and Uranus (which I had never observed).

When they closed up we went outside and under the moonless and cloudless sky we used the new and improved barn door sky tracking mount to shoot a wide field of Orion.  I wanted to show some of the nebulosity in the constellation, specifically Barnard's Loop or the entire Orion Molecular Cloud Complex but had very poor luck.  I'll try again when the constellation is higher, away from the horizon and light pollution.  I was tickled to see the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) coming out in the wide shots and decided to target that next.  It's the fuzzy thing located just next to the bottom belt star in the photo.  Even the Rosette Nebula showed itself slightly on the lower left, that'll be a target soon as well.

180sec, f6.3, ISO800

Orion with prominent nebula locations

Just shooting with my un-modified Nikon D90, I was not expecting to be able to image the Flame Nebula very well and was even more amazed when the Horsehead Nebula (Barnard 33) began to emerge in my processed shots. This image could definitely (and will) be improved upon with more stacked images but I'm very excited to show this off.

21 images stacked in DeepSkyStacker
f6.3, 60sec, ISO1600

And just a fun shot with my (wife's) car and some light painting.

Sunrise Eclipse

A partial "hybrid" solar eclipse was in progress at sunrise today.  I woke up spontaneously early enough to drive around and find a good eastern horizon.  I was concerned about the low cloud bank but once the Sun finally broke over it the eclipse was still in effect.  Not as spectacular as the pictures you will see later from eclipse chasers that traveled all the way to Africa for the full show but this is the best eclipse Southeastern PA saw.  You can plainly see active sunspot regions 1882,1884, 1885, and 1889 on the right side of the solar disk in the photo.

1/160sec, f16, ISO100 with variable circular neutral density filter.

I even caught this Canada Goose flying through this shot, if only it was sharper!

Meh-clipse...

On Friday night (10/18/13) at approx 7:50pm EST, the outer blurry edge of Earth's shadow briefly (and very slightly) darkened the lower limb (visible edge) of the Moon.  I tried to explain to folks that this is probably not an event worthy of excitement unless you are an uber-astro nerd but there seemed to be a lot of disappointed outcry out there afterward.

To explain, this was a Partial Penumbral Eclipse.  A Total Penumbral Eclipse would only dim the entire surface of the Moon because only the fuzzy outer edge of the Earth's shadow (the penumbra) is blocking the Sun.   You don't get that eerie dark red appearance that a total lunar eclipse gives.

So this Partial Penumbral Eclipse was so slight that only folks that stare at the Moon on a regular basis could even notice and only cameras and telescopes would really be able to see a noticeable difference from the normal full Moon.

Here's a photo I took during the peak eclipse coverage.  This is a stacked image of 105 frames, processed in RegiStax6.  Notice the light shadow on the lower right limb? Yup, that would be the full extent of the action.

Definitely mark your calendars for the next FULL lunar eclipse on April 15, 2014.

105 frames, 1/80 sec, f8, ISO100

Barn Door Bliss

It's been quite a while folks.
I've moved to a great (although bright) city just south of Pittsburgh and have settled into full time dad/homemaker, which is kind of awesome honestly.  I've made tons of great new friends one of whom is a super tech savvy dude who has taken hours of his own time to help my engineering challenged self tune up my near fatally flawed home built Barn Door sky tracking mount. (More info here: Gary Seronik Tracking Mount).  His own blog is here: OnShoulders, so take some time to brows the videos about 3D printers, remote controlled airplanes and helicopters, among many other DIY techie goodness.

First some pictures of the homemade beauty then I'll explain a bit.

We (well, really HE) had to modify the circuitry a tad.  There's now two potentiometers and an attached multimeter.  The two potentiometers (which are beautifully encased with knobs and box 3D printed in my friend's basement) give very fine control over the voltage going to the motor, which is displayed on the multimeter.  As long as we keep the 3V motor running at...you guessed it, 3V it will rotate the large gear at (nearly enough) 1 RPM, which in turn moves the platform in sync with the sky.  We may have a few kinks but I think it is working as well as my construction will allow.  We are thinking of other options for our own design taking from the newer line of tracking mounts (See iOptron SkyTracker).

So, basically, you line up the hinge with Polaris (I use a green laser...watch out for planes), then point the camera at an object, set your intervalometer to take continuous shots, engage the gears, and sit back and enjoy the sky for a few hours letting the mount do the work.

Here's a couple shots from 10/8/13.  Remember, these were taken under very light polluted skies, more definition will improve when we take her to a darker sky site such as nearby Mingo Creek Park.  The star bursts in the Pleiades image are due to my low quality 300mm lens, you work with what you have. I'll try a wider f-stop next time to see if it improves.

Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
230 frames stacked in DeepSkyStacker
300mm, f8, 34sec ISO800

Pleiades (M45)
105 frames stacked in DeepSkyStacker
300mm, f8, 34sec ISO800

Hopefully it won't be so long before you hear from me again.  Looking forward to seeing Orion again (at a resonable hour).

Dance Planets Dance!

The Dance of the Planets is underway and the skies have been more or less cooperating, for a change.  Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury are snuggling right up to each other and following the Sun down in the western sky.  On May 31st they will line up vertically, equally apart, before continuing their slow separation. Fingers crossed for clear skies.

Here's last nights show. Venus is lowest, top left is Jupiter, right is Mercury.

50mm, f8, 1sec, ISO100

This telephoto image shows the Galilean Moons, from left to right: Callisto, Ganymede, Europa, and Io.

300mm, f7.1, 1.6sec, ISO200

Tonight was less clear but I perservered.  Jupiter had swooped  in closer to make a tighter, nearly equilateral triangle.

50mm, f5.3, 5sec, ISO100

Cloudy with a chance of fireballs

The Clear Sky Charts said the skies would be clear for at least a couple hours on Friday night....They lied.
So what are three astrophotographers to do but play with light and a little bit of fire.  These shots may be reproduced when the skies are clear, it would be awesome to have the Milky Way in the sky.

The first is just the three of us spinning flashlights for a 2 min exposure.  The last shots are of me spinning a whisk packed with steel wool on fire.  Don't worry, the field was very dewy and I was wearing a hat.

Enjoy.

Age of Aquarids

Last weekend had beautiful clear skies and was pretty close to the peak of the Eta-Aquarid meteor shower so I spend the night at the Observatory at Bisbee Hill.  My astro-buddy Jim had a spanking new Canon 60D he was chomping at the bit to try out on the scope.  After resolving a bit of alignment as well as PC issues we decided to shoot a couple galaxies I've been wanting to hit.  These three images were processed with out darks subtracted because Randy wasn't there to remind us (it's all your fault, Randy).  I may reprocess them with darks later to see if it can improve anything.

We started with the Whirlpool Galaxy (M51), that's always a favorite lying in the constellation Canes Venatici (Boötes' hunting dogs).  This shot is 29 frames stacked and processed with Deep Sky Stacker then touched up a tad in Photoshop.  The focus could be admittedly better but not bad for the virgin astrophoto on the new DSLR.

We then moved on to the Black Eye Galaxy (M64).  Quite an interesting little (or unfathomably huge depending on your perspective) gem lying in the constellation Coma Berenices. This image is 29 stacked frames.

.















Coma Berenices is apparently a satellite superhighway because we captured 4 of them traveling through our tiny window on the sky.  Kinda nifty.

The Sunflower Galaxy(M63) is another found in Canes Venatici.  It was pretty bleh in the individual images, I almost didn't bother processing them but after stacking it really popped (I guess that's the point though, isn't it?).

While we were shooting with the scope I had my camera shooting a time lapse of the Eta-Aquarid meteors. The radiant is in the constellation Aquarius and specifically the star Eta-Aquarii, "Eta" being the 7th brightest star of the constellation.  Aquarius was set to rise in the east around 2:30 so I decided a "Milky Way rise" time lapse was in order.  I set up my camera with a wide lens and intervalometer set at 45 sec and started shooting around 11:30pm until my battery died at 4:05am.  I hoped I could make it until the Moon rose over the treeline but apparently I need to invest in a battery grip to double my power.  I captured at least three meteors towards the end of the night.  The local farm kids were having quite a party in the woods at the bottom of the video.  At one point they decided it would be fun to drive a truck up to the observatory, but when we gave them the international sign for cut the lights (or maybe they thought we were threatening to cut their throats?) they quickly returned to their bonfire.  This is my best time lapse to date, definitely something to improve on, I've got much more to learn.