Tag Archives: Sky

Imaging Orion’s Nebula: Long Sault

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March 16-19 was RASC’s Dark Sky Party window. On March 17, RASC called a NO GO for the party due to the heavy winds. It was clear, but the winds were HEAVY! I was hoping that March 18 would have a GO call, because my schedule was well placed, and I could go to that event.

 

March 18, 5 pm:

I got RASC’s call, and it was a GO. The Star Party will take place that night. When I got home, I packed my car with all my telescope equipment, and drove off to Long Sault Conservation park (Long Sault).

Driving to Long Sault or Glen Major forest feels like a road trip. One passes through many small hamlets on the road to your destination, and you see how people live beyond Toronto. Homes are more open, commercial services are scarcer, and speed limits are higher. To drive to Long Sault takes 45 minutes to 1 hour, and I arrive at Long Sault at 9 pm.

 

March 18, 9 pm:

When I get there, a lot of interested astronomers, guests, and astrophotographers were already there imaging and observing the night sky. Looking up, the sky is very different from home, and from Glen Major Forest. The sky is clearer, and constellations are more visible from here.

I meet some of the other guests and members there. Some were observing Jupiter, others were imaging various Deep Sky Objects (DSO’s), and some were observing other objects in the night sky. Soon after, I start to assemble my telescope, which didn’t take a lot of time.

I aligned my telescope to two stars. Usually, my selection of stars is limited at home due to location, and visibility of stars. Out in Long Sault, the limitations of my selection of stars are what’s in the telescope’s computer. After aligning my telescope to the stars, I pointed my telescope to Orion’s Nebula, and I set my telescope to image M42 for 75 frames. Some frames that I took looked like this:

IMG_5434

1 frame of M42; 14․7″ exposure, f/10, ISO-1600

 

While my telescope was doing its work. I was meeting other fellow amateur astronomers. I did meet a fellow amateur astrophotographer I was corresponding with on the Yahoo e-mail list. I saw his set-up, equipment, and images. They were spectacular.

Once the camera was finished imaging M42, I put the telescope cover on, and started taking dark frames, so I could subtract the noise from the image.

My feet beccame very cold, and I had to get into my car many times to warm up. I couldn’t turn on the car, because the exhaust would interfere with my telescope. At 11 pm, most of the astronomers packed up and have started their journey home. At that time, I also started packing up my equipment. I finished what I wanted to do, and I was ready to go home. It took me 10 minutes to pack and to make sure I didn’t forget anything. When I was ready, I started driving home.

I got home at 1:30 am, taking a break between my driving to rest and think about what I imaged that night. Unfortunately, I have not been able to process all the images yet, as I am having trouble with the Deep Sky Stacker, and Registax.

Thank You everyone for reading. Let me know if you have any questions or comments. Keep looking up, you never know what you will find up there.

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Star Trails with my Telescope

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On October 24, 2014, at 12:00 in midnight, I arrived at Glen Major to image the night sky again. This time I decided to bring my telescope with me for its tracking. It took me a long time to set up the telescope, for two reasons.

It took me a while to find a star to align with because my finderscope was out of alignment with my telescope. Some time passed before I found Vega, and align my finderscope to it. I then proceeded to align my telescope to the stars using the Skyalign method. It failed every time, even when I went onto different stars. I then decided to do a one-star alignment with Betelgeuse. It worked and my telescope was ready to do.

I attached my camera on the piggyback mount, and I set the intervalometer to image the night sky indefinitely setting the exposure at 15 seconds, f/5.6, and ISO 1600, and I let it image the night sky. After that, I go into my car to say warm.

I did some homework during that time as well. After that, I turned my telescope, and pointed it towards the Big Dipper. I took a few photos, and then decided to pack up. It got really cold that night, therefore I had to pack up fast. I packed up very quickly, and I went home. Here is the result of that night:

This video tells me that tracking isn’t moving as fast as it should, and that dew is going to be a problem in the coming days. Hopefully, I can correct that quickly.

Happy Observing!

Fishing for Dim Objects

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August 26, 2014 was a good night to observe the skies.Not only were the skies clear, the Moon was at its new phase. That meant the sky would be extra dark that night.

Taking advantage of that, my dad and I went to a dark area to observe it. That dark area was all right. The western sky is completely blocked with light pollution, but the eastern sky was perfect. There were various insects flying around, making noise, and biting us. In the distance, we could hear howling of an unknown animal; probably a dog. Despite all those distractions, we decided to park there, and do astronomy.

This time, since all the major planets were setting and the Moon was below the horizon, I decided to align my telescope using its skyalign feature of my telescope. Since it uses three anchor points to align the telescope with the sky, it should be more accurate than the Solar System align, which uses only one anchor point. I aligned my telescope, with expert precision, and we began looking for our first target, Comet Jacque.

Comet Jacque is located North West of the constellation Cassiopeia. I read online that, if you start from the center star, and move North-West of that, you will find Comet Jacque. I followed the instructions, like they said. Looking at the sky, I found what looked like a star north west of the star. It was more north, than west, but it might’ve been the comet. I slewed my telescope to the bright star. Then my dad and I took many long exposure images of the picture, using various exposure times. When we did that, we got a variety of images, but not only was the object not a comet, the images were displaying star trails. This meant that the tracking feature of my telescope was not fixed. This was a major problem for my dad and me, because all the hard work we put into fixing it did not pay off. We were disappointed.

We kept looking for a while more, but to no avail. We moved on and began looking for Uranus. We had trouble finding it as well. One reason is that we disagreed that both of our Skyview apps were showing different positions of the planets. Later on, my dad found out his phone thought they were in Italy. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to find Uranus.

We decided to pack it in and go back home. Before we packed up our equipment, we spent some time looking at the constellation of the night sky. My dad talked about how he would find Cassiopeia using the Big Dipper and Polaris. It was an interesting way to find Polaris. We then found the constellation, Boötes. It was interesting to be able to find and see that constellation. It’s not an ecliptic, nor a northern constellation, which is why it was cool for me to see it. Hopefully, I can find more constellations in the near future.

After that, we packed up and went back home. It wasn’t a completely successful night of astronomy, but we did learn some more about the telescope and the night sky. Tracking isn’t working at all, therefore we need to fix it; comets and dim planets are harder to find than normal, but we saw the constellation Boötes, Cassiopeia, Big Dipper, and the Little Dipper. Hopefully we can fix these problems, and come back to do better astronomy in the future.

Sudbury Observing

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From August 1 until August 20, I will be observing the night sky in Sudbury, Ontario. There, I hope to be able to do more astronomy and see more celestial object there.

On Friday, August 1, 2014, late at night, it was a clear night in Sudbury, and I decided to take my scope out that night. In Sudbury, the sky was much clearer than at my house. It was much clearer than the sky back home. For the first part of the session, my dad was with me.

While we were beginning to set up our telescope, we saw an artificial satellite high in the sky at 11 pm. It was bright enough that it looks like one of the stars. Probably at magnitude 2-3. It was moving from the Southwest towards the North. I couldn’t figure out what the satellite is, but I do know it is not the ISS. After researching the night sky on a program called, Starry Nights, I suspect it is a satellite called, Cosmos 1536, but I can’t be sure. Cosmos 1536 is a Soviet satellite that was put into orbit in February 8, 1984. It’s perigee is 557.8 km and its apogee is 576.0 km. It takes 95.9 minutes for the satellite to make one orbit. It was used as an ELINT (Electronic and Signals Intelligence) satellite to intercept signals that are not commonly used for communication.

Starry Nights

The night sky at 11 PM EDT simulated by Starry Nights ™. Ecliptic is displayed in green dashed line. Cosmos 1536’s path in the night sky is the blue line.

After it disappeared in the night sky, we decided to continue setting up the telescope. Once it was set up and aligned, we pointed it to Saturn. It was beautiful as always, with its rings shining prominently. As we looked at Saturn, my dad decided to call it a night. He went inside to sleep, as he had an early morning that night.

I then continued to look for other celestial objects to look at. Since I was in darker skies, I decided to look for Deep Sky Objects (DSO’s). However, that didn’t work out as I was not able to see any DSO’s. I tried to look for M51, Cassiopeia A, and other objects, but that didn’t work out. Looking at a light pollution chart a few days later, I realized that Sudbury’s level of light pollution blocks out most of the DSO’s in the night sky which was disappointing.

After realizing that there are no DSO’s that I could see, I decided to call it a night. That night was quite successful. I saw an artificial satellite that was not the ISS, and I saw Saturn. It was unfortunate that I wasn’t able to see any DSO’s. Hopefully I can find them another time. Happy Observing!

Back in Action

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I had telescope troubles earlier this year. As a result, I was out of commission for a large part of the year. Earlier, this week, my dad was able to resolve one of those troubles, and On Friday, May 16, 2014, I took the newly resolved telescope on a test run.

Once I brought everything out, I decided to align my telescope to Mars. My biggest worry in the repairs is that the tracking ability of my telescope would not work. After aligning it to Mars, I left it pointed at Mars for a while. When I returned to Mars, it hadn’t drifted from its position. This is a good sign that tracking is still working in the fixed scope.

After checking it a few times, it had drifted but not enough that tracking failed completely. I was happy with the results I was seeing. To see if tracking works away from the alignment object, I slewed my telescope to a random star. Leaving it for a while, the star did drift, but not far enough to conclude that tracking is not working. As far as I am concerned, tracking was working. I was really happy with the results I was seeing.

My next test took place in the opposite part of the sky. There was a dim star in the Western part of the sky, which I pointed my scope at. I looked at it for a while. I had to readjust my scope a couple of times, but it didn’t drift fast enough to conclude that tracking was failing. I was really impressed with the great job my dad did in resolving the issues in my telescope.

Lastly, aligned to Mars, I decided to point my scope at Saturn. There, it drifted a great distance, which concerned me. If it didn’t track with Saturn, then what is the problem? Has the gear burnt out? Has the software failed? Luckily, there was no problem. Saturn was able to stay inside the field of view of my telescope for a long time after readjusting it back to the center of my field of view. This confirmed the results that I had received, that my telescope troubles were over at last.

Happy with the results of my test run, I decided to pack up my telescope, and bring it inside. However, I wasn’t done. Before packing, I saw the rising of the moon through dense trees. This gave me the idea of watching the Moon rise. Therefore, after packing up and bringing all my equipment inside, I decided to head to a dark spot where the moon can be easily observed. Sadly, the moon had already risen, but it was no less beautiful. With my tripod and camera, I was able to compose a number of images of the scene with the moon in the background. It was very nice. A short while later, when it started to get too cold. I packed up and headed home. I was very happy with the results of that night, and with my telescope troubles officially over, I can continue to observe and image in the near future.

 

Return of the Observer

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Hi Everybody,

These past months have been somewhat difficult. My telescope was experiencing technical difficulties. However, I was able to resolve the issues, and I can continue observing now. Here is my recollection of my latest observations:

During the night of Saturday March 8, 2014 the skies were clear. Before that, an old Newtonian was discovered in my family’s closet. It’s a cheap one with only 30x magnification, but works nonetheless. That night, I looked at the moon with it. It definitely projects an image, but not a clear image. It looked very dusty. The image is not as good as my 8″ SCT (Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope). After observing the moon, I decided to take my SCT outside the driveway to find Jupiter.

Because of my issues with my telescope, I had to recalibrate my finderscope with my Telescope. Luckily, the Moon was above the horizon. I was able to find the moon after some struggle, and calibrate my equipment with it. It was satisfying to see the moon up close since my telescope developed problems. Pointing away from the light side of the moon I saw, without light interference, how the dark side of moon and the darkness of the sky look compared to each other. It was intriguing.

Sketch of the Moon meshing with space.

Sketch of the Moon meshing with space.

After that, I decided to find and look at Jupiter. It was easy to find Jupiter, falling to the horizon on the western Sky. Looking at it through my 25 mm eyepiece, it looked the same as always. In addition, three of its four moons are visible. It was lovely. However, I had an idea. The newtonian telescope that my family found has a 20 mm eyepiece. I know that when you divide the focal length of the telescope with the focal length of the eyepiece, you get the magnification of the telescope. A 2032 mm telescope with a 25 mm eyepiece will yield 80x magnification. Knowing that, I decided to put the 20 mm eyepiece from the newtonian onto the SCT. If the math is right, then my telescope should have 101.6x magnification and, as a result, Jupiter should appear larger. I put on the eyepiece, and then my put my eye on the eyepiece, and I saw a slightly bigger Jupiter. It was beautiful. If the math continues to hold, then I plan on getting smaller eye piece to get closer to Jupiter. It was a step forward in my astronomical journey.

My next object I wanted to observer were the galaxies located at opposite sides of Benetnasch, which is part of the Big Dipper. It took a while to set up. I had to dig out an area of snow in the backyard to place my telescope. After a while, I was able to safely move my equipment to the dug out area, where I set up my equipment. I went about aligning my telescope to the limited about of stars visible. The first time failed for some reason. However, the second time was a success. I pointed my telescope towards the big dipper scanning for that object. However, I failed to find anything. During my search, I stumbled upon a star that had a clear halo around it. It was quite amazing to see such a star like that. I was thinking it was a deep sky object. However, I didn’t know. But it did look like this:

The star halo I saw was a bit more pronounced than the image.

Looking at my clock, I realized it was three in the morning. Daylight Saving Time had already come into affect, which means it was actually four in the morning. Knowing that, and that the cold is starting to get to me, I decided to pack it in for the night bringing all my equipment inside safely.

Overall, It was a successful observation. I saw the beauty of the moon, Jupiter, and an intriguing star. When I was doing research and talking to experts, I learned that it might be a deep sky object with only the heart visible, either M51 or the Ring Nebula. It’s interesting that a galaxy could look like that to my eye. However, I can’t be sure; not until I see it again and image it. I have taken many steps forward in my astronomical observations. I hope to continue that in the coming days.

IMAGES USED

The RASC Members event at the DDO

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On Saturday, January 25, 2014, braving the bitter cold, the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) hosted a members’ night for all the members at the David Dunlap Observatory (DDO). At these events, the members get together, socialize, listen to the planned lectures based on the theme of the event, and, if conditions permit, then observe the night sky. These events are hosted every month on Saturday evenings. This month’s theme was “Our Galactic Neighbours”.

I arrived at around 6:00 pm. Once I came in and found the gathering place, I met the members who were present. From the moment I arrived, until the time when the lecture started, I socialized with many of the members present. It was great to meet with a very diverse group of astronomers, teachers, academics, and other members.

At 7:30 pm, the lectures began in the presentation room. As per the theme of this member’s night, all the lectures were about galaxies.The first lecture that was presented to us gave a general overview of what a galaxy is, what we know about them in the past and now, their shape, and composition, satellite galaxies and other cosmological phenomena, such as black holes, dark matter, and dark energy. The second lecture given to us talked about distances with respect to galaxies. For example, We looked at the distances to our immediate neighbours. The Milky Way is 100,000 lightyears (lyrs) across, and M31 (Andromeda Galaxy) is 2.58 million lyrs away. Eventually, we start to expand our horizons and look further out seeing many galaxies clustered together, such as the Virgo supercluster, and when we expand our horizons further at a distance of 400 Mlyrs (Mega-lyrs) across, we see voids in the clusters 100 Mlyrs across. It was very intriguing.

Our final lecture talked about how we can observe deep sky objects ourselves. He gave us tip and tricks to help us identify what we see, how we can best see deep sky objects from Earth with proper positioning of our telescope and our eyes, and the obstacles we will face when observing deep sky objects.

After the lectures, the evening concluded. However, one of the members, who happened to be the chair of the DDO offered to give the members a tour of the main telescope used in most observations. Most members, including me, took advantage of that opportunity.

The telescope became operational on May 31, 1935, and was the second-largest telescope operating in the world at that time. This telescope was used by many renown astronomers throughout the years to study deep space objects. In 1971, most notably, the DDO was able to confirm that the Cygnus x-1 binary system has a black hole. In 2007, the University of Toronto intended to close the telescope down. However, in 2009, RASC put forward a proposal to run the telescope for educational purposes. As a result, in July 2009, it was reopened for public use by RASC and has since remained like that.

In the observatory, we saw the giant telescope that was used to observe the stars. It has a Schmidt-Cassegrain design, with a primary mirror concentrating the light to a secondary mirror and then reflecting it to the instrumentation.

Telescope used at DDO.

Telescope used at DDO.

Telescope used at David Dunlap Observatory

Secondary Mirror of Telescope.

Every time the telescope operators want to use the telescope they need to manually remove the covers of the mirrors.

The chair showed us how its mount works. It is an equatorial mount that follows the Celestial Equatorial Coordinate System, which slews the telescope based on Right Ascension (RA) and Declination (Dec) coordinates. (Think of it like Latitude and Longitude of the stars) Believe it or not, the mount is not computerized, and relies on a manual switch, and it also includes a hand crank for turning the telescope on its RA axis. It’s quite fascinating.

In addition, he showed us the spectrometer used in the telescope as well as the telescope very large 100 mm eyepiece. It gives the telescope 330x magnification, which is pretty good. It was quite a sight.

We then saw the electrical system of the telescope. It is quite old, since it still uses DC currents. One notable feature of the electrical system is a light bulb. It is notable because it is used to prevent the electrical system from freezing in these frigid Canadian temperatures. It is also worth nothing that the light bulb is still active after 60 years of use. It’s very intriguing. In addition, we learn that the dome rotation was powered not by gears but by a pulley system balanced with 10 stones (140 lbs) of weight. I say 10 stones because the weights were made in the UK.

In the other side, we saw the equipment used to recoat the primary mirror. Every two years, the aluminum coating on the mirror is recoated to maintain its reflective properties. The process they use is the same process used when it became operational. First, the operators use a manual elevator to bring the two ton mirror to the ground level. Before that, the bottom of the elevator needed an additional two tons attached to balanced the elevator. Once the mirror is at ground level, they use sodium hydroxide to clean the aluminum off, using diapers to wipe it down. It was quite astonishing.

Once the mirror is completely clean, they put the mirror in a vacuum chamber. Attached in the upper rim of the chamber are evenly-spaced diodes. Each diode requires three slivers of aluminum on it to coat the mirror. Once the aluminum is in, and the mirror is in place, they vacuum seal the chamber. In a specific sequence, they activate each diode which evaporates the aluminum and evenly applies the aluminum across the entire mirror. Once it has dried for a day, they take the mirror and place it back into the telescope. The secondary mirror goes through a similar process inside a smaller vacuum chamber.

Fun Fact: The primary mirror was so big that they had to bring it inside using an unfinished opening in the wall. It would not fit through the doors.

After that, our tour ended and we all went back home.

Overall, the event was a great success. I learned a lot of new interesting and informative facts about the universe around me. Closer to home, I learned the history of the DDO, how the DDO’s main telescope works, and what it takes to maintain it over the years.

If you like what was read here, please check out my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/jolyastronomy

and spread the word.

WORKS CONSULTED

http://rascto.ca/content/members-nights-ddo

http://www.theddo.ca/History/tabid/58/Default.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygnus_X-1#Discovery_and_observation

http://www.alcoat.net/al_2.htm

Light Pollution

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Four days ago, after a series of cloudy and rainy nights, the sky finally cleared for a rare view of the night sky. Taking advantage of that, I decided to take my telescope out for the night and use my piggyback mount.

A piggyback mount is an attachment for telescopes that allows a camera to be attached on top of it. Using the tracking feature of the telescope, one could take long exposure images of the sky for a long time and avoid sky trails, which occurs when a camera takes a long-exposure image of the stars without compensating for the Earth’s rotation. Below is an example of star trails:

IMG_0161During that night, my goal for the night was to take a long exposure shot of the sky using my piggyback mount. However, I failed to realize that the light pollution in my backyard and the moonlight in the sky would obstruct the view of the stars in the sky, and that seeing conditions for the stars would not be optimal.

When I was taking the pictures of the sky, I was expecting to see crisp black images with stars shining brightly. Instead I got an image with dim stars and a bright background blocking the stars. This is due to the light in the sky blocking the stars. The light is coming from the Moon and from the light pollution.

IMG_0202

An image of Jupiter on a brightly illuminated sky

Light pollution is when artificial light shines at the sky and obstructs the view of the stars. It can come from the car lights, lights from buildings, and especially from streetlights to name a few. Light pollution is most prevalent in urban areas, such as Downtown Toronto, New York, Yerevan, and many other major cities. However, light pollution declines as you move away from the urban centres.

For example, if one was in an urban centre like Downtown Toronto, or Yerevan, and you looked up into the sky, you would likely only see the Moon, the planets, and the odd star. Far out of the city, like in Algonquin park, there is very little artificial light, which will give you an excellent view of the sky, and maybe even the Milky Way.

Light Pollution is a major problem in many cities. However, there are organizations who are committed to reducing the amount of light pollution in our cities. One such cause is: Light-Pollution Abatement Committee operated by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. This committee was formed to work with the municipal, provincial, and federal governments as well as with concerned citizens to reduce light pollution and create darker skies for all to enjoy. They encourage people, organizations and governments, to advise each group of the situation at hand and talk to each other and find solutions.

If you want to help as well, iOS users can download two apps that can help one find clearer skies, and help identify light polluted areas. The first one is “Dark Sky Finder”, which is a map of North America, Europe and Australasia that charts out the level of light pollution in certain areas, like Toronto, New York, Sydney, and other cities. The other app is the “Dark Sky Meter”. It allows one to measure the night sky and see how dark it is compared to total darkness. In addition, users can submit the data that they find to the Save Our Stars (SOS) program, which will assist the SOS program in their efforts to chart light pollution in our skies. The links are:

http://www.jshine.net/astronomy/dark_sky/

http://www.darkskymeter.com/

After some time, I decided to call it a night, and brought my telescope into my house.

A few days later, I was thinking about what my priorities should be during this period of the Full Moon. Knowing that the moon and the surrounding light will obstruct my view of the stars, I decided to recommit myself to observing the Moon when it is visible in the sky. When the next clear night comes, I will be there to see the Moon.

Today, I processed a number of images that I took and I achieved this result:

IMG_0198

The night sky post-processed.

IMG_0212

Jupiter through a DSLR Camera. Post-processed

WORKS CONSULTED

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_pollution

http://www.rasc.ca/lpa