SN2011dh

Never mind the grainy picture-loads of lights, including the chihuahua beacon aimed as ever at my scope. This picture is meant to show the relative brightness of our old friend supernova 2011dh. In this post, it was clearly brighter that nearby mag. 13.85 USNO J1330149+471027 (to the left of the supernova; it is a faint star of unknown distance within our own galaxy), and it held that brightness for a few weeks. That plateau of brightness is what defines this as a Type IIp supernova-p for plateau-nothing too fancy there. Now, it is declining, and is probably no more than mag. 14.5 or so. Within 6-12 months, it should be well below the reach of a scope the size of mine.

More improvements in processing...

This is the same image from the two recent posts. Every time I get to where I think I'm nailing a certain step, I learn some more...one teeny tine little check box suddenly cured some real trouble I've been having with color. This image was simply stretched for dynamic range, then the saturation increased. That's it.

Now, I am EXTREMELY anxious to get M31 into a dark sky and collect some serious photonage.

I have also realized that when sets shot on different nights are combined, DSS is averaging the reference frames for each, rather than applying each night's reference to that night's subs. That is why there is such an uneven background in the latest shot. Once I find those settings, this shot could end up improving even more.

Triffid redux

I think I am making some real progress here. This is one of my old favorites, the home of the Triffids...known to less geeky people as Messier Object number 20. If this fails to impress, look back a few posts...it was one of the last things my trusty 300D ever photographed, and is now one of the first for the 40D. This one looks a little more like the pictures the Big Boys take. There simply is no comparison. It's not all down to the new camera; I am still learning the ways of Digital Sky Stacker as well.

I am sure I have mentioned it before; one of the lovely things about this nebula is the presence of all three types of gaseous nebula-the red areas are dust and gas that have been heated by new stars within, enough so that the gas is now emitting light of its own. The bluish areas are reflection nebulae-they are not themselves producing any light, just reflecting that from local stars. The dark lanes are dense clouds of dust, and oddly enough often house the brightest and hottest stars of all-just hidden from us in visual wavelengths.

Astrophotography Expedition to Utah

A couple of weeks ago, I was working in Mesquite, Arizona, so we hauled my scope out for some dark skies and high elevation in southern Utah. Of course, it was a full moon, and the scope was never taken from the case. This is a 30 second exposure, with the camera resting on the hood of my truck. At midnight.

This photo shows two things-one, moonlight is just sunlight-leave the shutter open a bit, and you can't tell it from daylight, except that if you look hard, you will see that the sky has stars in it. Two, it shows just how hard it can be to get good images of deep sky objects when there are other sources of light around.

M31, another hour

New camera or not, there is a hard limit on what can be captured in a bright sky. This time of year, M31 is still to the northeast in the sky, and that region is full of city lights here. This shot adds about an hour to the previous one-note that noise is greatly reduced, but nothing fainter is showing up. To really capture this, I'll need to wait another month or two for it to be in a darker region of my local sky. This is still only the central region; the disk extends well past the cluster at the bottom of the picture.

As it is, just to differentiate just part of the galactic disk from the background sky, I had to stretch this image to the point that any meaningful color was destroyed. Here is what it looked like after stacking, but before stretching the dynamic range-the sky itself is just as bright as the galaxy. Once again, my thanks go out to Target and Home Depot, for choosing lights that shine up as well as down, and lighting up half of the valley at 3 in the morning. Remember them when your utility company tells you to use less electricity. (And let's not forget chihuahua lovers, who still believe that I can train coyotes to eat their stupid pets, and therefore aim floodlights at my house to ward them off, like some sort of electric garlic. As I have said, if I could train coyotes, they wouldn't have any chihuahuas left at all.)

This was, by the way, my first shooting session where the camera was controlled remotely from my computer, while I sat indoors getting a head start on the processing. Since I often sit outside minding the scope  in order to avoid hearing the stuff my family likes to watch on TV, I'm not sure I will use that feature a lot...

M31

Only 20 minutes, and very hasty...but what a difference from the shot a few posts earlier. That;s M32 bottom center, a globular cluster orbiting M31.

This image is uncropped, and was not magnified...M31 is a big sucker, many times larger in the sky than the Moon is. It will take at least three shots mosaiced together to show the entire galaxy.

Canon 40D and Messier 8, together at last

Okay, I was not exactly prepared for how much better this camera would be...

This is only 12 minutes of exposure, and less than 5 minutes of Photoshop post-processing. I don't even know how to operate the camera in the dark yet, and it is already putting all my past pictures to shame. I don't have a shutter release cable for it yet, so all these subs had to be shot by hand-and since none of the reference frames I have on file apply to this camera, I had to shoot all 60 of those manually as well. Hence, only 12 minutes left for gathering photons.

Gear Replacement

Well, the 300D won't be missed for long...I got a 40D on eBay today. Assuming I'm not going to be totally ripped off, that solves the camera conundrum quite nicely. And also, thanks go out to my sister and her famdamily for a "laser" collimator, soon to be delivered via Amazon. Both of these items are big steps up the quality ladder- am proud of what I've been accomplishing with the stuff I have, but in some areas I think I am ready for a step up.

Pics to follow soon!

Right on time-another setback

Well, in the last six months, I've had a mount that was irreparable damaged, which somehow was restored to life. Then my scope was squished, and miraculously was revived. This weekend, after removing the battery from my camera, the power sorted in the flash capacitors somehow shorted to the motherboard, causing-quite literally-a small explosion. It is now an ex-camera. It is not resting. it is not pining for the fjords. It has met its maker; it has, in a word, snuffed it. Photography is, for the moment, off the menu.

However, it is still July, and I have a nice telescope-and eyes! The views available to the direct south this month are spectacular, even with nothing but your eyes and some darkness. A small pair of binoculars will easily bring 20 to 30 of the Messier objects into plain view, some of them dramatically so. So while I figure out what to do about a camera, there is still much to do, and as I have mentioned before, photography has often distracted me from enjoying the spectacle that looking through a scope can provide.

If you only have some binoculars, here is what I recommend that you try. Late this evening, look south and find Antares-it will be the brightest star to the south, and is clearly reddish. In binocs, it is striking-almost uncomfortably bright to look at. About half of one field of view to its upper right is another star, and forming a shallow "V" between them is a globular cluster, M4. Let your eyes adapt to the dark a bit, then see if you can see a fuzzy cotton ball to the right of Antares. At first, you may see it best if you look slightly to one side of it-the very center of our vision is not very sensitive to light, actually. Looking just to the side while paying attention to the target is called "averted vision" and is a learned skill for visual telescopists.

To the left of Antares, see if you can find a group of stars (not a full constellation, but an "asterism") that looks like a teapot. Find a trapezoid shape, a bit leftish of the bright band of the Milky Way if you are lucky enough to see that, and in Saggitarius if you happen to know where that is. There is another star above the trapezoid that forms the top of the teapot, with the spout to the right. Once you see it, it will forever be obvious.

To the lower right, where this picture says M7, there is a bright star with a smaller one to the right and lower-the sting in Scorpius' tail. Above it and to the left is M7 itself, a wonderful binocular view of an open cluster that was even described by Ptolemy 2000 years ago. M6, to its upper right, is the Butterfly Cluster, dominated by one red supergiant star and a few blue supergiants. These things don't show their splendor in photos, so they get passed by a lot (by me as well-I've written about open clusters before in this blog.) But with binoculars or even a very small scope, they are dazzling.

Above the teapot's spout, almost like steam, are a couple of the most magnificent nebulae in the sky. M8 is easily visible with the eye alone in a dark area (I can even see it from MY yard, after 20 minutes of dark-adaptation.) Just above it is a "w" of stars, around which the Triffid Nebula M20 is located. There is another cluster around the upper left of the W too.

Once you find M8 in binocs, try moving directly to the left about two fields of view and see if you can find another cotton ball-this is the globular cluster M22. If you scan around the area between and above M8 and M22, there is almost no limit to what binoculars will show, and be sure to notice the background to it all-the utterly uncountable number of stars fading as far back as your eye can see.

This is definitely the best month of the year to watch the sky, especially if you don't have a load of fancy gear. And the area to the south is so full of beautiful sights that you need not be able to read 9or even own) star charts to find the good stuff. My binocs were only about $25, and they offer splendid views; this hobby definitely does NOT require a large budget. Get outside tonight and look up!

M20 the Triffid Nebula

The name "triffid" refers to the three lobes of this nebula, not to the home planet of the Triffids. Pity, in my opinion.

This is another early shot, only 20 minutes and with a near-full moon close by. In 2-3 weeks I should be able to get some much nicer subs. The star field in this area is just as fascinating as the nebulae there; M20 (and M8, which is even more spectacular) are located in the dark band that runs through the middle of the Milky Way. Scan around due south with some binoculars around midnight and you'll likely end up finding this without much trouble.

This nebula is a major star birth region, and like the Orion Nebula, has all three types of nebulosity present-the red is light emitted by gases heated by stars within, the blue is simply reflected light from stars inside dust and gas clouds, and the black is clouds of dust. Once I get some more light collected, the blue will be much more evident.

If you can't beat 'em...

Now that the Summer Milky Way is coming into the slice of my sky that isn't as blown out by light pollution as the rest of the sky, here comes the Moon again. May as well take a shot of it. Here we have 50 exposures, averaged with Registax.

M31, the Great Andromeda Galaxy

M31 is probably the largest deep-sky object in our skies, over three times as large as the full moon. It is also our closest neighbor, and is fairly similar to our own Milky Way galaxy. It's still early in the year for this one; I just happened to be up an hour before dawn and managed to grab about 10 minutes worth of photons, and it's not a spectacular image. The disc of the galaxy is easily seen in most photographs to encompass the large globular cluster at the bottom of this picture (M32.) This is an uncropped photo; I would need to make a mosaic of at least three shots to include the entire galaxy. The bright core here is easy to find with binoculars in even a polluted sky, and can be seen by eye alone by many people in dark skies. However, the rest of the disk is relatively faint. In this shot, the main dust lane closest to the core is pretty obvious; less so is the larger band of dark dust further out, simply because I didn't get enough starlight for it to stand out. The color balance is a horrorshow as well. Ultimately, using large numbers of short exposures is not in any way a substitute for long exposures, and when there are only a few shots to stack, the flaws in the technique are pretty obvious. I'm uploading this shot merely as a baseline; I have never tried shooting it before, so this is what I have to build on once it's within range a little earlier in the night, during August and September.