Impressive train of sunspots

Train of Sunspots, November 4, 2015

An impressive train of sunspots has been making its way across the face of our nearest star this week. In the photo above: Designated AR2447 (small group to the left), AR2443 (bigger and darker, near center), and AR2445 (far right), the "Active Regions" have the potential of unleashing flares. In fact, AR2445 was the source of a flare that caused this week's "northern lights" sighted across northern latitude locations around the world. Unfortunately for hopeful aurora watchers in Northern Ohio, the nighttime displays were not strong enough to give more than a tantalizing flicker on the horizon to observers on the shores of Lake Erie.

Now rotating over the Sun's limb, AR2445 won't be aimed at Earth for a while -- if ever again -- but AR2443 has potential for high-energy flares.

Photo credit: James Guilford. Canon EOS 7D II: ISO 400, f/11, 1/1250 sec., 400mm lens with Astrozap film solar filter, heavily cropped, November 4, 2015, 2:22 PM.

September 27 "Supermoon" Total Lunar Eclipse a Challenging Event to View

Beautiful in its Own Way - Full Moon Peeking through Heavy Clouds - 8:21 PM EDT

The much-anticipated total lunar eclipse of September 27, 2015 was a challenge for me, a big disappointment for many others. The night started out with a thick layer of clouds floating overhead, a few breaks (known as “sucker holes) visible here and there. I was pretty sure I would see nothing. In fact, conditions in Hiram, where I had planned a public eclipse viewing event, were expected to be so poor I had to cancel the event (it apparently rained there during the midpoint of the eclipse).




"Supermoon" Emerging from Pre-Eclipse Clouds for a Moment - 8:56 PM EDT

Enough openings appeared, however, that I got my tripod and cameras ready just in case. I’m glad I did! When it did appear, the Moon was slightly larger and somewhat brighter than it might otherwise have been: the eclipse took place during a perigee Full Moon, a so-called "supermoon." A perigee total lunar eclipse is a fairly rare event and isn't to be seen again until the year 2033.





Totality at 10:43 PM EDT: Within minutes of moment of greatest eclipse (10:47)!

By standing on my balcony, watching, camera pointing to where the Moon was behind the clouds, I was ready for the brief appearances it would make. The passing breaks in cloud cover often allowed only a few seconds of relative clarity for photography. I was able to see most stages of the eclipse and capture some reasonably good images, considering the conditions ... there never was a time when I had truly clear sky!

Totality Ending - Eclipsed Moon at 11:20 PM EDT - Dot(s) to the right are stars of constellation Pisces.

The hours of watching seemed to pass quickly and before I knew it, the event was ending. We are privileged to have the opportunity to see only a few total lunar eclipses in our lifetime so it’s best to make the most of each one!

Clouds give way to stars, right on cue

This is Alumni Weekend at Hiram College and, as is becoming traditional, Friday night we hosted a special stargazing event for alums. Recently the weather has been mostly-cloudy, rainy, even stormy and Friday was no exception. It appeared stargazing would be canceled due to cloudy conditions but, because a few alumni may have wanted to simply visit Stephens Memorial Observatory, I opened the place. Good thing I did. As the first group of visitors arrived -- excited, even raucous mostly older folks -- the sky to the south cleared and Saturn manifested himself! And so, as visitors came and went, we presented decent views of the Ringed World until the scheduled closing time of 11:00 PM. Wouldn't you know it, the sky clouded over and Mother Nature put an end to the show herself and on time! Approximately 44 visitors, including a group of about eight current college students, got nice views of Saturn and some of its moons.

The next night was a scheduled Public Open Night at Stephens and, true to form, a storm system had spread clouds across the Great Lakes Region. I was pretty sure skies would be too cloudy for Saturday night stargazing but, remembering the previous night's experience, I opened the observatory as planned. Within minutes after opening the dome a small patch of relatively-clear sky was replaced by thick clouds rolling in from the north. I expected to close before anyone arrived. Nope. First a couple, then a family, then another group of folks arrived as darkness fell. Clouds still ruled the sky, so I talked about the telescope and the observatory and answered some questions.

I took regular peeks through the open dome, hoping for a "sucker hole" in the overcast. After a while a bright star appeared directly overhead, peering through. Visitors excitedly pointed at a few dimmer stars as they made an appearance. Finally, in the southern sky, Saturn! Thinking cloud cover might interfere at any time, I ushered folks quickly to the eyepiece for some very nice views of the planet. We were able to see the Cassini Division, some hints of cloud bands in Saturn's atmosphere, and, again, a nice assortment of moons. It wasn't over.

Instead of clouding over, the sky cleared and we were presented with a sky full of stars and pretty good seeing conditions! I moved the telescope and quickly found the Hercules Globular Cluster (M13) overhead. The star cluster was glorious in the eyepiece. Viewed at about 129X, the globular filled the field of view with diamond dust and impressed viewers.

Next I moved the scope to view the Ring Nebula (M57) which, in the past, I have generally found easy to locate. That night, however, I fished and fished in Lyra and could not seem to find, what I call, the gray donut. Just as I was about to dismiss the last several visitors -- Voilà -- the Ring appeared in the eyepiece, bigger and brighter than I had ever seen it before! I was experimenting with a new two-inch zoom eyepiece by Baader Planetarium company and it really paid off.

It was well after 11:00 when the last of the approximately 20 visitors left but a fine and rewarding night indeed; a night that I had nearly written off as best spent watching old movies on TV.

On astrology, I always say...

At a recent observatory Public Night a visitor asked if I could recommend books on "astrology" and I told her no. There are, however, many excellent books on astronomy. As I always say, astrology is astronomy's illegitimate parent.

Astrophoto blitz - an exciting start

Venus Setting with Gemini - May 23, 2015

Saturday night, May 23, the Cuyahoga Astronomical Association (CAA) hosted their first Public Star Party for 2015. The event took place at the club’s observatory situated on the grounds of the Medina County Park System’s Letha House Park in Spencer, Ohio. As a member I was in attendance with my massive Meade 6-inch refractor, one of many members there to share telescopic views with public visitors. Attendance was light, around 50 for the event, though folks were generally enthusiastic excitedly moving between telescopes. The sky was beautifully clear and allowed high-quality views of the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, the Hercules Star Cluster (M13), and other amazing things.

Things quieted down early and, after a while, our visitors disappeared. I’d brought my DSLR camera hoping to try some through-the-telescope astrophotography. As other club members began packing their gear, I hastily attached my camera, focused on the Moon, and began a quick photo run of several interesting objects. My telescope's "go-to" function had been running very well during the star party, so I had high hopes that I could trust it for photographic aiming!

Waxing Gibbous Moon, May 23, 2015

I shot the Moon, M13, M4, Jupiter + moons, M57 – the Ring Nebula, and M81/M82 – formerly aka Bode’s Nebulae, or (now) Bode's Galaxies. The Moon shot (above) was easy and beautiful and M13 (below) was pretty good considering how little time I was able to spend on it.

M13 and Star Field

The Bode Galaxies (as they are sometimes now known), aka Messier 81 & 82, were literally a shot in the dark; I couldn’t see them in the camera viewfinder due to their faintness. I let the telescope system aim and I triggered a couple of brief exposures and was not disappointed.

M81 (left) and M82 (right) as "Faint Fuzzies"

Even with the galaxies depicted as the "faint fuzzies" they are to the oberver's eye, when excessively brightened (below), the digital image begins to show the spiral pattern of M81 extending far beyond the bright core seen above. The elongated, split appearance of M82 is also quite visible in my blitz-images. Seeing the galaxy pair in the same telescopic field of view is one of my fond memories of visually exploring the sky; seeing it mimicked in one of my photographs is pretty cool. Seeing how how much detail begins to emerge using a single brief (10-second) exposure excites further efforts!

Image Excessively Brightened Reveals some Recorded Data

To end my night at Letha House Park, I took flashlight in hand and, with camera now mounted to a tripod and camera lens installed, hiked down to the edge of the park’s lake. Reflected in the still waters was brilliant Venus, close to the horizon and about to set, the stars of Gemini floating above the Goddess of Beauty. I made several hurried exposures of the lake scene and returned to my telescope to pack up and head home.

I arrived home at 1:00 AM and moved my gear into the house, then downloaded the camera’s image files to my desktop computer. Looking at the camera’s preview window, I had some idea of how well things went but the computer's much larger display reveals all. I was delighted with what I saw. The telescope had located each of the several objects without my needing to look through the viewfinder — some were too dim to see there — and tracked those objects well enough to prevent most movement during the several seconds of each exposure. I had been able to perform only a rough alignment at the beginning of the public event!


There, on the screen, was a beautiful gathering of stars — the M13 star cluster — and the best deep sky image I’d ever made. The dim and distant Ring Nebula (M57) also registered, even displaying some color. Less impressive was my image of the M4 star cluster in Scorpius, though it registered well enough to be readily identified.

By today’s amateur astronomy standards, mine are primitive beginner’s efforts. Still, I’m pretty happy and very excited with what I got during my photographic blitz session. The successes were promising indications of what is to come as I continue to image the sky.

Photo Notes: The camera was attached to the telescope, in essence, using the telescope as a 1,200mm telephoto lens; this is called the “prime focus” approach. Moon shot was ISO 400 and 1/200 sec. Most stellar images were shot with the camera set at ISO 2000. Exposures of eight to 10 seconds worked best, given alignment limitations. The large, bright star cluster M13 in constellation Hercules is made up of about 300,000 stars and is located 22,000 light-years away. The Moon was in waxing Gibbous phase, 5.9 days old, and 396,748 km (246,528 miles) distant.

Moon, Venus, and Gemini

Crescent Moon and Venus in Constellation Gemini

I was tired tonight. The beautiful sight of the crescent Moon, and Venus floating amongst the stars of Gemini in the fading twilight was simply too much... I had to go look and photograph! Looking at the images after the brief outing I was surprised how many stars I'd captured. Even The Beehive cluster (M44) could be seen in the original images (before compression to display here). The results of those few minutes under the stars were worth the effort both photographically and in terms of personal energy.  Photo Notes: Canon EOS 6D: ISO 1600, F/4, 1 second, 47mm, 10:14 PM EDT, May 21, 2015.

Chart Identifying Objects in Photo Above - Created Using SkySafari

One day from Full Moon

Waxing Gibbous Moon - One Day from Full

Tonight's Not-Quite-Full Moon. The Moon will reach its full phase in a little over 24 hours but that doesn't mean it wasn't big, bright, and beautiful Saturday (May 2, 2015) night! Phase in this photo is Waxing Gibbous with about 99% illumination ... notice the shadowy edge along the bottom-left.

Moonshot experiments continue

The Waxing Gibbous Moon - April 24, 2015

The sky was beautiful tonight with the Moon, planets, and stars shining brightly. Continuing my experiments with telephoto astrophotography, tonight I attached my Canon 2X III Adapter to my 400mm lens, and EOS 7D Mark II body; the combination gives approximately 1,200mm of telephoto goodness! At that focal length camera vibration becomes a real issue if the system isn't attached to a very heavy tripod. My tripod isn't heavy. But the Moon was bright and with ISO 800 and a shutter speed of 1/400 I got decent, though not vividly sharp results. Next milestone will be to mount the camera and telephoto to the telescope's heavy tripod and motorized mount.

That's no meteor!

International Space Station Rising from Perseus

That’s no meteor! It’s a partial trace of the trail the International Space Station (ISS) took tonight as it traveled upward, through constellation Perseus, and faded into Earth’s shadow. The exposure, and thus the trace, was shortened to avoid overexposure due to heavy light pollution in the Cleveland (Ohio) area. This is my best ISS trail shot to-date; getting these photos is much more difficult than it seems ... the difficulty coming from the aforementioned city-caused sky glow! Photo Info: Canon EOS 6D: ISO 400, f/4, 17 sec., 58mm.

Venus and the stars in the west

Hyades - Venus - Pleiades

April 11 presented a rare clear night just in time to see Venus draw very close to the Pleiades star cluster; nights lately have been cloudy and wet! Timing also put the Hyades cluster within the same camera field-of-view as Venus nightly progresses higher in the sky, relative to the stars. As the grouping sank into the trees to my west, I made several single-exposure images of the sight. Photo Info: Canon EOS 7D Mark II: ISO 2000, f/5.6, 1.6 sec., 70mm, at 9:58 EDT.

Few show for spectacular view

The Moon: Mare Serenitatis (left, Sea of Serenity), half-lit Mare Iridium (right, Sea of Rainbows) 

I can't say as I blame them, the people who didn't show for our observatory open night Saturday. After all, the temperature was about 19 degrees (F), damned cold! But the sky was clear and the waxing Moon was high in the sky. Both Moon and Jupiter were sharing constellation Cancer with The Beehive star cluster (M44). Still, those sensible people who stayed home and warm missed a glorious view of old Luna. In my idle time waiting for visitors, I tried out a little afocal astrophotography using the observatory's 9-inch Warner and Swasey telescope (ca. 1901) and my little Samsung Galaxy Camera 2 all-in-one. Most shots were a little shy of sharp, and all had some degree of chromatic aberration, and all had a big chunk of image missing where our century-old star diagonal is missing a bit of glass. One shot, however, did work out well, especially after a little fix-up including conversion to monochrome to eliminate color fringing. Not long after our seven brave visitors left, I caught sight of the indistinct reappearance of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and that was it... time to close up and go home. My toes needed to be thawed.

Fun without a telescope

Jupiter with Moons (lower left), Beehive Cluster (upper right) in Cancer
Canon EOS 7D Mark II: ISO 2000, f/4, 2 seconds, 135mm

My experiments in astrophotography sans telescope continued tonight with some success and exciting promise! Since, given clear skies Saturday night, we'll be observing Jupiter and the Beehive Cluster (M44), I gave them a try. In our light-polluted skies Jupiter was easy to find tonight in constellation Cancer but the Beehive was invisible. With the camera and a 200mm zoom telephoto mounted only on a tripod (no tracking) I tried my first exposure of the night. Bingo! There was brilliant Jove at the bottom of the frame and, on the other edge of the image in the camera's LCD panel, was that pretty open star cluster! I re-composed the shot, leaving open space where I guessed the star cluster lay, and shot bracketed exposures. Then I swapped lenses installing the 400mm telephoto on the camera body.

Jupiter is overexposed but shows Galilean Moons: Callisto, Europa, Io, and on right, Ganymede
Canon EOS 7D Mark II: ISO 2000, f/5.6, 1.6 seconds, 400mm*

I centered Jupiter in the viewfinder and bracketed exposures later seeing that I should have allowed even more than I did for Jupiter's exceptional brightness. Before tearing down for the night -- this was a very brief session conducted from the balcony of our house -- I swung the camera around and tried some exposures of the Orion Nebula (M42).

Orion Nebula is blurred (no tracking) but shows color and the nebula's cloud structure emerging from the dark.
Canon EOS 7D Mark II: ISO 2000, f/5.6, 2 seconds, 400mm*

Examining the images on the computer screen a few minutes later, I was pretty happy. And even though it shows motion blur due to the longer exposure, the Orion Nebula was showing color! Next I need to obtain a dovetail bracket so that I can mount the camera with telephoto directly on my computerized telescope mount; this summer, the camera will piggyback on the telescope and I'll expect exciting results either way. Still, I enjoy the quick, elegant setup of camera on photo tripod and I'm discovering good images are to be had from that.

* Note: The Canon 7D is a cropped-sensor camera with a multiplication factor of 1.6, so a 400mm lens reaches the equivalent focal length of 640mm. 

Moon, Venus, and City Lights

At conjunction: Moon and Venus floating over city lights and in light pollution.

I was disappointed with my previous efforts at recording an earlier close passage of our Moon and Venus (Moon, Mars, and Venus had been “dancing” in our evening skies over the past month.). The Moon’s orbit, however, gave me a second chance on a night when the sky was pretty clear. Pretty cold, too, at an unseasonable 23F (March 22).

Crescent Moon, Earthlight, and Stars

Nonetheless, I braved the temperatures and, using two different Canon camera bodies, got shots of the combo first in twilight, later in a dark sky. Well, the sky here isn’t really all that dark, but it was pretty good. Some shots I exposed to get some detail in the lighted portion of the thin, waxing crescent Moon; others I exposed to record the Earthshine portion of Luna’s disk. A short telephoto gave me a nice nighttime landscape, whereas a long telephoto (400mm) won a good image of crescent Luna with an Earthlit shadowed disk and stars floating in the sky nearby. The late shots I took from a vantage point that overlooked the lights of a nearby city whose glow put power lines and their towers into silhouette.

All-in-all, I’m pleased with the night’s efforts; it was worth the stinging redness in my fingers and my cold, cold toes getting those images.

Beginning the year with Comet C2014 Q2 (Lovejoy)

In January the big deal in astronomy, at least for amateurs, has been seeing and imaging Comet Lovejoy -- technically: C2014 Q2 (Lovejoy). The comet was a (barely) naked-eye object under the clearest skies but its appearance was glorious in the best images made of it. In the best images a long, smoke-like tail streamed off a globular head or nucleus against a beautiful field of stars. The most distinctive feature of this visitor to the inner solar system, however, was its green appearance, seen in even the crudest of photographic images -- mine included!

Weather has been largely uncooperative for comet-watching from Northeastern Ohio with most nights in January being impossibly cloudy. On the rare clear night, temperatures were usually in the frigid teens; enough to scare off all but the bravest, most hardy observers and imagers. On one cold night I noticed the sky was clear of most clouds; bands of cloud were drifting across from north to south. It looked like I might have a limited opportunity for photography. I quickly set up my camera, 400mm lens and tripod and tried some imaging hoping that, without tracking, I could pull something from my efforts.

Comet Lovejoy is the lovely green "fuzzball" located left of the center of this photo. Canon EOS 50D: ISO 1250, f/5.6, 6 sec., 400mm (600mm equiv.), January 16, 2015 @ 11:02 PM EDT. Photo by James Guilford.

Comet Lovejoy was easy to find with binoculars located, as it was that night, directly "down" from The Pleiades star cluster in the western sky. I could even make out the comet's faint smudge in the viewfinder of my single-lens reflex camera; the comet was at or near its brightest for this apparition! After perhaps a dozen shots at different shutter speeds and refocusing a time or two, I fled indoors and stowed my gear to let it warm to room temperature. Looking at the tiny images in the camera's internal LCD panel, I was hopeful. I was disappointed later when, reviewing the images on the computer's mammoth screen, I could see star trails that would cause me fits.

The image shown above resulted after a lot of effort, seeking the best way to remove star trails from the image. In the telephoto view, the stars "moved" significantly in the six seconds of the exposure. Using Photoshop, I masked out most of the trails and, in so doing, lost much of the image brightness and many dimmer stars. I immediately wished I'd have taken the time and frostbite risk and set up, at the very least, one of my telescopes' mounts with tracking capability.

Simulated view of C2014 Q2 and star field showing it amongst stars at the edge of constellation Aries as they appeared at the time the photographic image was made. All are "minor" stars without common names. Sky Safari +

So, I learned (and re-learned) a couple of things that I hope to remember and act upon:

• Longer focal length magnifies the apparent motion - don't get greedy, a 200mm lens would have made a better photo in this case; I could have included The Pleiades!
• Set up the telescope tracking drive if there's any opportunity to do so! A good alternative (that I intend to pursue) is a simplified "star tracking" device intended for cameras; I'm considering three available devices that are faster to set up than telescope mounts.

C2014 Q2 won't return for about 8,000 years so, while I'm sad I didn't get better photos of my own of that lovely visitor; I'm happy to have seen it with my own eyes!