Akay, there were a few great nights a couple of weeks back. Since then, it's been AWFUL. This is what life is like to scope fans, and we accept it, but I do admit it makes a pretty boring blog. I have a lot of older photos that are much better looking as my post-processing skills have improved, but honestly, with some of the other steps forward I have taken I just can't get excited enough about the to bother posting them.
So, if you are following this blog and are as aware as I am of its recent lack of new items, do what I do-look at what other photographers are up to.
I REALLY recommend this-just amazing.
First, a Sky & Telescope article about a very special photo project-
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/community/skyblog/observingblog/121786019.html
And then the website of the photographer in the article-
http://skysurvey.org/
Really, this is worth looking at, even for those people that aren't goofy about stargazing.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
NEWS FLASH-Amateur Astronomer Discovers Massive Neutron Star
There are many ways telescopes are put to work. On one end, there are the amateur instruments with good old-fashioned eyepieces attached. A step up from that are the rigs like mine, where cameras are doing the work. At the other extreme are the big monsters in Hawaii and Chile, which are used by scientists from around the world, often remotely.
A small step below those are the scopes, both optical and radio, that were state-of-the art not long ago, but no longer attract the front-line research (and money that goes with it.) One example is the radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. It still is in great working order, and these days it is still collecting as much (if not more) data than ever. But it its case, that data sits around waiting for some grad student to take a look.
The Einstein@home project was started at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee was started to study information from gravity wave detectors, which were made to test one of the last unobserved phenomena predicted by Einstein. But they have added to the project, and also analyze data from Arecibo, searching in particular for massive neutron stars, especially those in binary systems (which are more "measurable" because of their effect on their partner star.)
Why is this in a blog about my backyard astronomy? Because their research is done on my home computer. Rather than use expensive and hard-to-fund mainframe time, Einstein@home runs on a cloud of home computers, using my unused CPU time. So while I may be taking astronomical pictures that have nearly no scientific value, my hobby is not all just play-I've helped discover two pulsars as well. In my twisted mind, that makes me a real astronomer too...
The second was announced just a couple of months ago, called J1952+2630. It's roughly 95% of the mass of our own sun, which is unusually heavy-it's only the fifth pulsar discovered in that class-and has a "day" of 1/48th of a second. Yep; something the weight of our sun is spinning 48 times per second. It is likely no more that 14 or 15 miles in diameter. A "preprint" report is available here.
Pulsars are formed when super-massive stars die, when they no longer have any material left that can be part of a fusion reaction. It's the heat of fusion inside a star that holds it up against its own gravity. Run out of fusion, you run out of anything to fight the gravity, and the star collapses in on itself, causing one hell of an explosion. Most of the star's matter is blown into space, but some remains, squeezed by it's own mass into a form of matter unlike anything else, called degenerate matter. Here, the bits that make up atoms are squeezed together, and the density is beyond our imagination-the common analogy is a teaspoon of the stuff weighing the same as a battleship. If the star was massive enough, this squeezed core becomes a neutron star. A bit heavier, and a black hole is formed. A bit smaller, a white dwarf is formed. But since white dwarfs are still made of regular matter, and black holes can't be directly observed, it's the neutron stars that interest scientists. Their formation should cause gravity waves to flutter through the galaxy, and they're observable, and that is why this research group is studying them; if they detect any gravity waves with the detectors, great. But if those waves can be correlated to real objects, even better.
If you're interested in using your computer in real front-line research, look into BOINC, which is the program developed at Berkeley that allows researchers to use computers distributed throughout the world in people's homes. It's a massive resource that is barely tapped right now. I've been part of several projects for some time, and that is how I discovered another pulsar, with nothing but a primitive 8" telescope and a home computer.
A small step below those are the scopes, both optical and radio, that were state-of-the art not long ago, but no longer attract the front-line research (and money that goes with it.) One example is the radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. It still is in great working order, and these days it is still collecting as much (if not more) data than ever. But it its case, that data sits around waiting for some grad student to take a look.
The Einstein@home project was started at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee was started to study information from gravity wave detectors, which were made to test one of the last unobserved phenomena predicted by Einstein. But they have added to the project, and also analyze data from Arecibo, searching in particular for massive neutron stars, especially those in binary systems (which are more "measurable" because of their effect on their partner star.)
Why is this in a blog about my backyard astronomy? Because their research is done on my home computer. Rather than use expensive and hard-to-fund mainframe time, Einstein@home runs on a cloud of home computers, using my unused CPU time. So while I may be taking astronomical pictures that have nearly no scientific value, my hobby is not all just play-I've helped discover two pulsars as well. In my twisted mind, that makes me a real astronomer too...
The second was announced just a couple of months ago, called J1952+2630. It's roughly 95% of the mass of our own sun, which is unusually heavy-it's only the fifth pulsar discovered in that class-and has a "day" of 1/48th of a second. Yep; something the weight of our sun is spinning 48 times per second. It is likely no more that 14 or 15 miles in diameter. A "preprint" report is available here.
Pulsars are formed when super-massive stars die, when they no longer have any material left that can be part of a fusion reaction. It's the heat of fusion inside a star that holds it up against its own gravity. Run out of fusion, you run out of anything to fight the gravity, and the star collapses in on itself, causing one hell of an explosion. Most of the star's matter is blown into space, but some remains, squeezed by it's own mass into a form of matter unlike anything else, called degenerate matter. Here, the bits that make up atoms are squeezed together, and the density is beyond our imagination-the common analogy is a teaspoon of the stuff weighing the same as a battleship. If the star was massive enough, this squeezed core becomes a neutron star. A bit heavier, and a black hole is formed. A bit smaller, a white dwarf is formed. But since white dwarfs are still made of regular matter, and black holes can't be directly observed, it's the neutron stars that interest scientists. Their formation should cause gravity waves to flutter through the galaxy, and they're observable, and that is why this research group is studying them; if they detect any gravity waves with the detectors, great. But if those waves can be correlated to real objects, even better.
If you're interested in using your computer in real front-line research, look into BOINC, which is the program developed at Berkeley that allows researchers to use computers distributed throughout the world in people's homes. It's a massive resource that is barely tapped right now. I've been part of several projects for some time, and that is how I discovered another pulsar, with nothing but a primitive 8" telescope and a home computer.
More light
In the first post of M64, the background was just barely darker than the spiral arms, but in darkening the background much of the overall size of the galaxy is lost. Here, the actual size is showing, and the line marking where the edge of the object is lost in noise has moved out quite a bit. With a few clear nights and a few more hours of exposure...
I just found this website from the Calvin Observatory about M64. A lot of good information. And an interesting photo...shot with a 16" Ritchey–Chrétien telescope at high altitude in New Mexico. Sure, it's a better picture than mine...but not by a whole lot, to be frank. No word on results from the Hobbes Observatory as yet.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Periodic Wobble
SO the issue this time wasn't my previous fix; one of the bolts that holds the RA drive worm gear block to the main body stripped. Or rather, the hole tapped into the body stripped, not the bolt-that would have been too easy to fix, of course. So, more drilling and tapping for oversize bolts. I have to say, the aluminum that the main body was cast from is not what anyone would mistake for real metal...scary.
Obviously, this was not a trivial little thing; notice that the Dancing Galaxy is moving quite a lot more than its own diameter. More Mambo #5 than Astrophotography 101. I'm shooting some new frames now to see how the fix worked; it's one thing to have a dial indicator say it's right; it's altogether another thing to actually get the pics. Stay tuned...
M64 The Blackeye Galaxy
Other than that weird black band of dust, M64 looks to be a fairly normal spiral galaxy, but that dust is a tip-off that something isn't quite right here. Most of the stars are orbiting the galactic core in the same direction, as expected. But most of the gas, and the stars in the outer reaches of the galactic disk are orbiting the other-it's actually two spirals that have recently collided and merged. When that happens, all the diffuse dust and gas can get scrunched up and condense into dust clouds, as has happened here. It may look dark in visible wavelengths, but an infrared picture shows that as those dust clouds condense they start giving rise to new stars, often some of the largest, hottest, and shortest-lived stars of all. Infrared light does not pass through our atmosphere very well, but this image from Hubble shows how hot the stars actually are in that dark cloud.
Monday, May 2, 2011
M51 again
It's so tempting to find new objects every night that I am with the scope, but after changes are made, I prefer shooting objects that I have done already, so I know if I have indeed improved anything. So, sorry if M51 is getting a little worn out here. If you don't like it, get your own scope. Better yet, get a scope whether you like this or not!
With the great seeing the last few nights, I thought it would be a good test of the changes i have made to the scope itself, rather than the mount. All of the screws and such used to line up all the mirrors were replaced with much larger hardware, with finer adjustments control, and the difference was staggering.
This alignment (called collimation) has some effect on the shape of stars and focus away from the center of the field, but it actually has an even bigger impact on contrast. That is why the last two nights, I've been picking objects visually that I never have gotten the faintest glimpse of from here.
And yes, it turns out it does have a large impact on the photos, too. This is only about 70 minutes worth of subs, far less than I would really want for a quality photo. In fact, it's very noisy and grainy in the fainter parts of the galaxy-that is strictly a sign that more photons need to be rounded up; you might remember how my pics of M81 took a huge leap forward in quality once I was stacking several hours of data, not tens of minutes. There's no point combining this with any earlier M51 sets, so I'll just use this as a new base to build on. Compare this to this picture, which was previously my best M51 shot.
I had a college astronomy prof who had worked on the Palomar All Sky Survey. He would show slides in class and whine and moan about the colors-his view was that the best way to find the proper color balance is to look at the colors of stars in the field, then match that. He would complain that pictures that purported to be a visual image should match reality, not just take advantage of whatever the more sensitive films showed. Hard to argue with that view, but it is not the standard way faint objects are photographed. (All that lovely bright red in so many pictures is simply wrong, for example; it should be lavender. That started with the Palomar survey; the filters they used in the RGB composites failed to allow a large part of the blue spectrum to pass into any of the images.) It's another matter when the purpose of the photograph is to show wavelengths we cannot see; those are called false-color photographs so that it's well-understood what you are seeing. Go Google some Spitzer Space Telescope pictures to see what false-color photography can uncover. If you've seen many images from that survey, you'd see that his opinion did not win out.
Anyway, getting long here-I have reached a milestone where my raw data is getting good enough that not only do my stars actually have color, I can use that as a reference in post-processing. See kids; sometimes you learn something in school that you end up caring about eventually!
I've also determined what had re-introduced the periodic bobble I mentioned earlier. Rather than rely on the fix I used last time, I'm waiting for my brain to stumble upon something a bit cleverer that will allow finer adjustment of gear angles and lash in the RA drive. I tend to get those ideas when I'm trying to think of something else, so I may spend the next few nights trying to clean the garage or something.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Don't forget your eyes...
Tonight we had a bit of a star party at my place...not all could make it, but those who did got a treat. It was windy all day-40 mph sort of windy, and when darkness fell, stars weren't twinkling so much as dancing around the sky. But as often happens, an hour later, it was one of the best nights of seeing I can remember in ages.
No cameras tonight; this was a night for eyepieces and viewing. After all the non-scope fanatics got to see the usual views of Saturn (who, as usual, did not disappoint) the seeing improved enough that objects like M65 and M66 were not only there easily in my 8" Newt, but in Mark's 80mm refractor. For a short while, even NGC3628 was visible in the Newt. We we did the quick tour of globulars as well, and M4 was especially brilliant; many bright stars with that lovely glowing ball behind them.
Sometimes I just forget to look at plain old stars-not binaries, not the odd stuff, just stars. And as a result, I had forgotten how incredibly striking Antares is. As the home star of the cat that lives with Mark, it was especially poignant for us.
I have been so utterly focused on photography the last few months that I have neglected the eyepiece. But much of the last two weeks has been spent fine-tuning my scope itself, not just the mount-all the hardware used to collimate (align) the mirrors was redone, with larger screws with finer threads for adjustment, and the reward was tonight; much of what I could pick out has never been seen from this site with this scope before.
Hope you're feeling well soon, Scott.
No cameras tonight; this was a night for eyepieces and viewing. After all the non-scope fanatics got to see the usual views of Saturn (who, as usual, did not disappoint) the seeing improved enough that objects like M65 and M66 were not only there easily in my 8" Newt, but in Mark's 80mm refractor. For a short while, even NGC3628 was visible in the Newt. We we did the quick tour of globulars as well, and M4 was especially brilliant; many bright stars with that lovely glowing ball behind them.
Sometimes I just forget to look at plain old stars-not binaries, not the odd stuff, just stars. And as a result, I had forgotten how incredibly striking Antares is. As the home star of the cat that lives with Mark, it was especially poignant for us.
I have been so utterly focused on photography the last few months that I have neglected the eyepiece. But much of the last two weeks has been spent fine-tuning my scope itself, not just the mount-all the hardware used to collimate (align) the mirrors was redone, with larger screws with finer threads for adjustment, and the reward was tonight; much of what I could pick out has never been seen from this site with this scope before.
Hope you're feeling well soon, Scott.
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