Return to astronomy

Half of the Perseus Double Cluster (NGC 869). September 19, 2019. Photo by James Guilford.

I suppose one cannot return to something one hasn't left. Some storm chasing kept me busy for much of the summer. Late twilight and heat kept me indoors most nights. Still, with weather settling down, cooler evenings, and sunset coming earlier I've been looking to further explore the night sky.

We live in a small city with big light pollution. The light dome over our area has grown steadily over the past decade and from our backyard most northern stars lower than Polaris are completely obliterated by artificial light. To the south, the view is probably similar to "suburban" light pollution levels which is to say, bad but not impossible.

Lately I've been using my new telescope in imaging experiments. This week, unlike earlier recent efforts, I was able to get the telescope mount aligned well which allowed its computer to find dim objects in our bright sky. I was able to visually observe Jupiter (with Great Red Spot front and center), Saturn, the M15 star cluster, the Perseus Double Cluster, the Ring Nebula in Lyra, and the Andromeda Galaxy.

Vixen VC200L on Meade LXD75 Computerized Mount - Waiting for Dark.

Attaching my Canon EOS 7D Mark 2 to the new Cassegrain reflector, I shot images of several deep sky objects. Vibration and tracking were issues, as was achieving camera focus. Working around those challenges as best I could, I made multiple images of the Ring Nebula (M57) and one of the clusters in the Perseus Double (NGC 869).

Looking at the camera's built-in LCD panel that night, I was astonished... I could see color in the Ring Nebula! Visual observers, using smallish telescopes, usually see no color in the Ring; film and electronic sensors readily collect enough photons to register color. Still, a very happy surprise to me! So I shot a series of prime focus images of the nebula. The Perseus Double was also visually attractive so I shot that as well. About 10 seconds for each of those. Efforts at shooting M15 failed: the telescope didn't track well enough to produce round stars in the exposure time set -- possibly too long an exposure. Efforts at the Andromeda Galaxy were okay with hints of the extensive star clouds showing in my images but much more photon collection will be needed to build an image.

The Ring Nebula (M57) in Lyra. Photo by James Guilford.

Astrophotography of deep space objects can be extremely technical. The learning curve on an excellent product like PixInsight is more like a cliff than a curve. I searched and found a software that is excellent for me at my relative beginner level -- Starry Sky Stacker (SSS). The SSS has the important basics for good astrophotography, and has an easy-to-learn image processing process with little frustration. So, to get started producing and learning, I used SSS to align, stack, and integrate the images for both NGC869 and M57 with results pleasing to me.

Over the coming weeks and longer, I'll be assembling more equipment and skills and with luck, by spring, will be producing decent space pictures beyond the Sun and Moon.

Images Recorded: September 19, 2019

Vixen’s First Light

It wasn’t much on ceremony but last night’s First Light for my new Vixen VC200L was a success. I think I’m going to get a lot of use and enjoyment out of this scope.

Vixen set up on the patio in 29°F night air, about to endure its First Light checkout.

After a bit of fussing with the Meade LXD-75 mount, I was able to align the mount and punched in the commands to aim at the Great Orion Nebula. Now, that choice for First Light may seem pedestrian but Orion was beautifully positioned, the seeing was only so-so, and heck, it’s a beautiful sight!

The scope swung obediently to the correct area and after a slight manual nudge to center it, M42 came into view. The view through the eyepiece was filled with ghostly fog, filaments and voids began to appear as my eye picked out the details. Nestled in the floss were the four brilliant stars of the Trapezium. As I mentioned earlier, seeing was but fair and light pollution made it all the worse so contrast between sky and nebula wasn’t high; still, given conditions, it was an impressive start.

I tried to find other deep sky objects but with no success. Lousy seeing seemed to be getting worse. So, though high overhead, I punched in my request to GoTo The Pleiades.

After a good bit of whining and whirring (the mount has never been quiet, some say it sounds like a kitchen blender) a few brilliant stars appeared in the eyepiece. Not what I was expecting while using a 25 mm eyepiece, I realized magnification was higher than I was used to — this scope has an 1,800 mm focal length. I’m going to have to get a longer focal length eyepiece or two if I want to see larger objects like The Seven Sisters or, for that matter, the Orion Nebula.

I did notice a touch of nebulosity around some of the brilliant stars of The Pleiades and I don’t recall ever seeing that before and I’ve looked at that star cluster frequently over many years. Thank you, Vixen!

The final effort of the night was to attach a camera to the telescope and try a quick first image through the new optics; that didn’t work. I’m not worried and will figure that out later.

For now, the VC200L provides a solid platform, beautiful imagery, in an easy-to-handle package. I’m looking forward to going out on a better night and enjoying a fresh look at the cosmos.

It seems to fit

Vixen VC200L on Meade's LXD-75 Go-To EQ Mount

So, it all fits together!

The new Vixen scope seems to get along just fine with my old Meade LXD-75 EQ mount. Getting the right counterweight balance is proving a bit tricky as the VC200L is so much lighter than the refractor and I've only two nine-pound counterweights --nothing lighter-- to fit on the mount. We'll make do. The motor drives seem to have no problem with the scope (again, it's lighter than the refractor) and the whole assembly seems to be more stable with the (yet again) lighter load. If the weather forecast comes to fruition, we'll go for First Light tonight! Right now it's partly cloudy but the blue sky that does show is hazy.

Something New has been Added!

My Beloved "Monster" Meade AR-6

Don't get me wrong, I love refractor telescopes! Since the time my grandfather gave me a 3-inch "spyglass" (actually, the best telescope I owned for a long time), to my 6-inch refractor "dream scope," I've only owned lens-type telescopes,

Thing is, my long-tube Meade 6-inch refracting scope is a monster: I love the contrast of the images it presents and it simply requires no maintenance. But setting it up and using it are difficult. For one thing, it's heavy, and hoisting it up to the top of its mount and securing it there is tricky. I haven't dropped it. Yet. Aligning the scope to known stars and even looking through the telescope at objects high in the sky are neck-aching tasks: as the lens points evermore skyward, the eyepiece lowers closer to the ground!

So, for some time, I've been considering a reflector. Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescopes (SCT) are probably the most popular configuration in serious amateur astronomy. But they are big, and they are heavy, and their "corrector plate" outer lenses are subject to significant dew issues. A Cassegrain telescope seemed to be the answer.

Oh boy! Something great arrived this morning. Annie's excited, too, can't you tell?

Right after Christmas 2018, in an act of blind optimism (optimistic our skies would eventually offer some cloudless nights) I ordered up my first reflector. It arrived today, January 2, 2019. I have high hopes!

Vixen VC200L - So Pretty

The highly-respected company Vixen Optics of Japan is the maker of my new 8-inch OTA. Cassegrain design does not include a corrector plate -- it's open at the skyward end of the optical tube which reduces weight and the dew-collection issue. The whole thing weighs in at 12 pounds!

I'll attach this scope on the big Meade's go-to mount and see how it goes.

Tomorrow night is predicted to be mostly clear of clouds; first light?

Not much to show for it but it was fun trying!

Quite frankly, 2018 was not a good year for my astronomy interests. So very many nights were cloudy. I don't know whether the clouds are the result of climate change or what but it seems to me we've had fewer and fewer clear nights as the last several years have passed. That and, perhaps a bit of laziness, has kept me from posting much here.

At any rate, we did have a clear night in December.

Star Chart for December 18, 2018, showing the position of Comet 46P

I'd been reading articles about Comet 46P/Wirtanen and how it was making one of the 10 closest comet flybys of Earth in 70 years "...the brightest comet of 2018." It certainly wasn't a spectacular, or even very prominent comet: bright, with a long glowing tail. Others' images showed a small, pretty, green glowing ball. Still, a comet's a comet and most of us don't get to see that many in a lifetime, so I thought I'd give it a try. The trouble was the weather. We, in Northeastern Ohio, have been experiencing an unusually long stretch of cloudy and overcast days and nights and the night of Wirtanen's close approach (Dec. 16/17) was no exception. The night of December 28, however, was to be clear but (there's always a but) the Moon would be bright and not far from the comet's position in the sky. You've gotta go with what you've got so I set up my ancient but solid Orion telescope mount managing very good polar alignment.

Camera will Piggyback on Telescope on Ancient Orion Mount with Simple Motor Drive

 
Piggybacking a big DSLR camera atop a telescope, I waited til 10 PM so that Wirtanen would be high overhead where the atmosphere is thinnest. The night was cold --about 24ºF-- but quiet. As feared, that Old Devil Moon had lit up the sky making dim celestial objects invisible. And waiting til my target was near the zenith may have made sense technically, aiming the camera straight up was literally a pain in the neck. Thank goodness the camera has an articulated LCD panel so I could examine results without having to twist my neck or move the camera.

Warp Speed? Er, Camera Zoom Lens Slipped During Exposure!

Starting out, I adjusted the camera settings so as to not overexpose due to lunar and terrestrial light pollution. It turns out those first two exposures were very useful. Then I blindly aimed the setup and shot about 10 exposures at wide angle. I re-aimed and shot 10 again. (For best results, astrophotographers often shoot more than 10 times that many exposures of the deep sky.) Then I tried zooming in, hoping greater magnification might isolate my quarry. I peeked at the camera's LCD panel for a preview. Oh. It looked like we had jumped to light-speed! The zoom lens, pointing straight up, had slowly slipped from around 85mm to 24mm during the multi-second exposure. It's a really good lens, a Canon L-Series, but I normally don't point it up like that. Gotta get myself an 85mm prime (non-zoom) lens. The lens did hold at 105mm so I shot a few exposures at that focal length. (Note: This post, written in December 2018 was added here after I purchased and received a new telescope. Interestingly, the OTA cost about the same and maybe a bit less than a high-quality 85mm lens!)

Orion’s Belt (Three Stars Near Top) and Sword with Glow of the Famous Nebula (Near Center)

 
Feeling I'd done what I could to record a comet invisible to my eyes, I aimed the camera at constellation Orion's belt and sword region now just above the trees, made a few exposures, and with cold fingers packed it in.

Riding the Telescope, the Camera’s View of the Sky. Think that’s a Comet in the Upper-Left?

As it turns out, I think I did image the comet but with all of the challenges and some inexperience at shooting "faint fuzzies," the results were less than impressive: a hint of a glowing ball is all I got of dear, departing Comet 46P. The camera recorded far more stars than I could see in the far-less-than-perfect sky.

Annotated. The Lens Flare looks Better than the Comet

I did get a fairly nice shot of Orion, which helped make the effort worthwhile.

Otherwise, not much to show for it but it was fun trying!

In the months since the "Great American Eclipse" total solar eclipse of 2017, life has been busy. Aside from conducting a few public observing nights, I've done little with personal astronomy. There was a beautiful conjunction of Moon, Venus, and Mercury that I observed and photographed one cloudy evening (March 18, 2018). Mostly, I've been observing and photographing weather. If you can't beat the clouds, enjoy them!

March 18, 2018 conjunction of (left to right) Moon, Venus, and Mercury over Letha House Park (west), in the Spencer, Ohio area. Clouds threatened to hide the event but cleared enough to lend mystery to the scene.

At any rate, last night (July 8) presented a decent opportunity to set up my big refractor in the backyard and take a look at the cosmos. The sky was clear, temperature and humidity pleasant, and I had no distractions.

The shed that must serve as my "observatory" and the big Meade (6-inch) refracting telescope. I set the scope up in the early evening and left it outdoors in preparation for nightfall. 

Unfortunately, with no permanent setup for the mount, north alignment for my telescope is usually off by a bit and last night was typical. The telescope's computerized "go-to" system was able to aim the telescope close but not directly on my targets; I needed to manually fish for each object I wanted to observe. I also wanted to do some photography experiments and a slightly out-of-alignment equatorial drive is not a good thing for imaging! I found that I could get reasonably round star images if I set the DSLR for an exposure of 20 to 30 seconds and covered the objective lens for the first five seconds after the shutter triggered in order to dampen out vibrations. I've got to see if I can use "live shooting" in place of the regular mirror/shutter combo to prevent camera vibrations!

Still, I did observe several objects and here are a few impressions:

Jupiter: By the time the scope was ready to use, the "King of Planets" was descending into neighboring trees. I had but a few minutes of almost decent viewing. I had hoped to see the shadow of moon Io on the planetary disk but could not resolve it. The best I could make out was Jupiter's most prominent cloud bands with Io floating not far from the planet's limb.

Messier 4: The globular star cluster in constellation Scorpius was, sadly, faint and somewhat indistinct in our light-polluted sky.

Saturn: Not as sharp-edged as I'd hoped, I could barely make out the Cassini Division but could discern the planetary disk in relief over the planet's ring system. I could also see some cloud bands, though not distinctly.

Mars: Mars is nearing opposition and is brilliant and red. I was easily able to observe the planet as a disk but, due to a global dust storm, couldn't make out any surface features -- well, maybe a shadowy area at the center of the disk but certainly not anything beyond that.

Messier 25: Photographic only. The open star cluster made a decent test to refine exposure and vibration-dampening techniques.

Messier 22: A bright globular that showed up, even in the viewfinder of the DSLR, it also provided a good photographic test target. The photo results were far from "stellar" (pun intended) but showed some promise.

Time passed quickly, the activity was thoroughly engrossing, and I packed it in at about 1:00 AM EDT. It was a good night.

Messier 22, a globular star cluster. A beginner's deep-sky effort, I'm happy to have reasonably round stars and to be able to see some of the many thousands of stars present in the cluster. 

Eclipse: Tired, dirty, and happy

The Sun at Maximum Eclipse - 2:32 PM EDT - Note Sunspot at Lower Left

Yesterday (August 21) millions gathered along a thin path crossing the continental United States to watch a total eclipse of the Sun. Those with favorable viewing conditions along the path of totality enjoyed an amazing sight and experience. Totality fell close enough to a west-to-east center line across the continent that at least a partial eclipse was visible to anyone with access to clear sky.

Since, with some self-doubt, I had decided not to travel to the path of totality, I organized the Hiram Eclipse Watch event. With the support of the Hiram College Physics Department, it took place on the campus of the college.

I set up two telescopes: a six-inch Meade refractor with a Baader Planetarium Safety Herschel Wedge, and a 90mm Meade refractor with a Thousand Oaks glass/metal filter. I also went equipped with my Canon EOS 50D camera, 400mm telephoto, and 2X teleconverter (>1,200mm focal length equivalent), and white light film filter. Physics staff ran a Lunt Ha scope and an experiment recording temperature and solar energy changes during the eclipse.

Progressing Toward Maximum - Silhouette of the Moon Moves Across the Solar Disk

Summarizing, despite last-minute worries over cloud cover, we had clear to partly-cloudy skies for the duration of our 80-percent partial eclipse. An estimated 375 visitors came out to share the experience, and by all reports had an excellent time. Some families even brought blankets and enjoyed a picnic on the lawn in the shade of old trees!

Detail from Above - Look Along Moon's Edge and Notice Bumps: Lunar Mountains and Ridges in Silhouette

It was very hot and fairly humid and I labored in the sunshine erecting and operating the telescopes, rationing out eclipse viewing glasses, explaining the eclipse event and solar features, and making a few photographs of my own. By the end I was dripping with sweat and very tired but had to rush home to process and upload a photograph of maximum eclipse to a newspaper.

By the end of day, I was was tired, dirty, and happy.

The (Ravenna) Record-Courier - August 22, 2017 - Page 1