12/31/2008 Astronomy, Good for the Soul

It's the end of another year. Looking back I'll simply say that it's a blessing to have experienced it, there really are not many years given to us and despite occasional rough times, I'm grateful to have enjoyed another year of life.
2008 has certainly been full of negative news on the global scale. Economic turmoil has dominated our lives, and everyone has been affected. Yet no matter what happens, the celestial wheels continue to spin and the sky continues to present glorious views to those who are willing to spend the time to observe them. The problems of Earth seem so trivial when one ponders the immensity of the visible Universe.
This image is one that I took back in November over many nights of clear skies. It goes by the name "Soul Nebula", and is catalogued as IC1848, Sh2-199, and W-5. It's an emission nebula and star-forming region, but the shape is what really makes it unique. It's quite large (this is a 2-frame mosaic), and lies very close to another dramatic object known as the Heart Nebula. Click here to see a larger version of this image and more details.
Oh yes, and I would be remiss if I didn't use these final hours of 2008 to post a New Year's Resolution. Mine is to enjoy more time with an eyepiece (but don't worry, my camera will remain quite busy!)

12/13/2008 Our Colorful Universe

Look through a normal eyepiece and you usually see things in black and white. Some stars are colorful, but nebula and galaxies are pretty much always going to appear to be in "Greyscale" to most people's eyes.
Except, of course, when one places a color filter in the eyepiece. For example, put a red filter in, and suddenly the view turns from black and white to black and red. Filters do more than just change the color, though, they also block out other wavelengths, which can help to increase contrast or identify certain details. The same holds true for CCD imaging filters. Color filters are common but narrowband filters can really attenuate the light, allowing only a tiny slice of the electromagnetic spectrum to shine through.
Using CCD filters allows one to "map" the resulting image to any color. So for instance, Hydrogen-alpha emissions which are normally in the Red region of our vision can be represented by green instead. This can be desirable since other narrowband emissions, such as those arising from NII or SII, may also be in the Red. This "false-color" mapping is used in nearly every scientific discipline to help scientists translate data into a visual expression that simplifies analysis.
The commonly used "Hubble Pallet" maps SII as Red, H-alpha as Green, and OIII as Blue. Another common mapping is the "CFHT Pallet" (named for the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope), which maps H-alpha as Red, OIII as Green, and SII as Blue.
For the image above I first created both Hubble and CFHT pallet images, then combined them into a single image. This resulted in some interesting colors that you don't often see in astronomical images of nebula. Yes, this is a false color image; if you could fly to the Veil East, you might see the structure but the colors would not be like this. Of course, that's just the way our brains are wired; perhaps if you lived on Gliese 582, your brain would in fact map these colors like this! Either way, I find all of the parts of the Veil Nebula to be quite fascinating for their incredibly intricate detailed structure. Click Here to See a Larger Version of this Image

12/05/2008 TAAA - OBAFGKM & LSST

Just got back from another great monthly meeting of the TAAA (Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association).
The Astronomy Essentials portion of the meeting was presented by George Barber. His talk was "What Kind of Star" and gave some excellent information about various stellar types and the physical processes that make them different. Of course that included the OBAFGKM (Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me) stellar sequence. George is an energetic speaker and I always enjoy hearing his talks.
The main lecture was presented by Victor Krabbendam, who is a key player in the LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope), a huge project that will probably change astronomy in a big way. The LSST will basically image the entire sky every few nights, over and over and over again, providing the ability to explore the night sky and search for changing objects. The amount of data that this telescope will generate is simply incredible - they expect approximately 150 TeraBytes per night! Eventually it will reach into the PetaBytes range; that's a term that we certainly are not used to hearing (although at the rate technology changes it will probably be commonplace in the near future).
I've got my scope taking data right now, but it will probably only provide me with about half a gigabyte. My poor little ccd camera is probably feeling rather inadequate now!

11/30/2008 So Much to be Thankful For

It's Thanksgiving weekend here in the U.S. With all the crazy world happenings and economic crisis around the world, many folks are finding themselves in the pits of despair. It really is easy to allow all the bad news to dominate one's thinking.
Yet life goes on as always, and when I stop to think about things, I realize that the reality is that in general things are actually very good, and we really should be thankful for it all. Never in history have humans had access to the infrastructure and technology that we enjoy today. Sometimes I think our human nature is to act like spoiled brats rather than appreciative beings.
One thing I'm thankful for is the beautiful night sky with all of its hidden treasures. Another thing is the equipment that I've been able to assemble that allows me to image some of these treasures. Here is an example - this object is Emission Nebula NGC 6820, also known as Sharpless 2-86. In the center is a nice cluster catalogued as NGC 6823. There are also plenty of dark nebula to enjoy, as well as a myriad of stars that are beyond count. All told, a perfect example of something to be thankful for - the opportunity to explore this mysterious and wonderful region of our universe.
Click here to see a larger, higher-resolution version of this image.

11/23/2008 TAAA Observatory Dedication at TIMPA

Last night we dedicated a new roll-away observatory building at the TAAA's TIMPA site. Despite some clouds, a fair number of people showed up for the party. As Vice-President of TAAA, I gave introductions to the various speakers, who included David & Wendee Levy, George Barber, and Michael Turner. David & Wendee made the arrangements for a 14" Meade LX200R telescope donation to the club a few years ago, George was the driving force behind construction of the pad and building, and Michael coordinated numerous volunteers who participated in getting the telescope and pier in working order.
A video recording of the dedication was made and should be posted to the web soon, if I remember I'll come back and update this blog to include a link to it.
I didn't stay long because I had to get back to a Webelos campout with my youngest son. It did clear for a short time later and we enjoyed some stargazing around the campfire.

11/18/2008 Another Great AIC

I'm back home from a weekend at the Advanced Imaging Conference 2008. It was my 3rd time attending this gathering of astroimagers, and once again I had a great time. We heard from numerous speakers on various topics, including some big names like Timothy Ferris (author and producer of Seeing in the Dark). One speaker was from Pixar and he talked about producing 3-dimensional images - I expect we will be seeing a lot of those within the next few years (obviously they will be based on assumptions or simply rendered to emphasize details rather than scientific reality). The picture above shows me wearing the 3-d glasses that he handed out to view some sample images, and they were really cool!
The vendors were all there displaying there wares, making us all drool. There were some really cool items like the new ASA mount that has no gears, and a bunch of high-end RC scopes. There was also a lot of time for sharing ideas and networking with other imagers.
Unfortunately I did not win anything in the big raffle again this year!

11/14/2008 Blending Science and Art

Today was the first day of the 2008 Advanced Imaging Conference. I'm here in San Jose for the 3rd year, and enjoying every minute of it. The sessions today were primarily product workshops. I attended 4 of them, including:
-John Smith and Steve Walther discussing CCD Autopilot and CCD Navigator;
-Matt Thomas discussing CCD Commander;
-Doug George on MaximDL;
-Stan Moore on CCD Stack;
-The Bisque Brothers on the upcoming TheSky X Professional.
Of course I also saw a bunch of friends. There are a bunch of us from Tucson here, including Dean S., Alistair, Steve, Dean K., Scott, and Adam.
Dean and I are logging in back home and running our scopes at night. It's a lot of fun to be sitting in a CA hotel room and running the telescope at home! The moon's full but I'm getting some decent H-alpha data anyway.
Here's an image that I took over several nights back in October. It's emission nebula NGC 1491, which lies in Perseus. Narrowband filters were used, and mapped with the Hubble pallet (SII=Red, Ha=Green, OIII=Blue). I took 4 hours worth of 10-minute subframes with each filter, for total exposure time of 12 hours. Click here to see more information and a larger version of this image.
One of the speakers today referred to our hobby as a "blend of science and art". This is a good example. The narrowband filters are not "true color" (there's not really any such thing as "true color", but it's basically what we see visually), since they represent only a 60 angstrom slice of the spectrum. H-alpha and SII both generally lie in the red region, and OIII is closer to the green. So when astroimagers put together an image using narrowband filters, we often have to create a false color mapping to differentiate the fine details between the filters. I often use the "Hubble Pallet", as I did here, which is based on a color scheme often used for image processing on data taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The data has also been "stretched" to emphasize various contrast differences. So basically, I have taken scientifically accurate data and presented it with some artistic perspective.

11/06/2008 Veil Revisited

Here's an image of the Western portion of the Veil Nebula. I took this image over several nights last week - there is a total exposure time of 24 hours that went in to this one (8 hours each in H-alpha, OIII, and SII, using 10 minute subframes). I'm trying to determine whether extended exposure times will improve the signal-to-noise ratio enough to overcome some of the limitations I experience when imaging from my back yard.
I've shot this one a few times before with the 105mm refractor; this time I used the Takahashi Epsilon 180ED astrograph. It does seem that I picked up some extra faint wisps of nebulosity in the field. In fact this field has so much H-alpha emission that there's a slightly reddish tinge throughout the field. The OIII really has some stunning features as well.
Click here to see more detail and a larger version of this image.

10/31/2008 Beware of Witches in the Night

It's Halloween here in the U.S.A. Lots of people dress up in scary costumes and this evening the kids will be going around trick-or-treating.
Sometimes nights out with the telescope can be spooky too. I've had plenty of times when I've been observing and heard noises that I couldn't identify, causing my heart to race. Fortunately I've never had anything very serious, but there have been encounters with skunks, snakes, javelina, and other wild beasts, as well as plenty of imaginative scares.
Here's an image that I took over several nights of an object that always seems to stand out at this time of year, because it's common name is the "Witch Head Nebula". It's an easy target although it requires RGB which is more difficult to obtain from my back yard due to the light pollution. The final result includes 4.5 hours each of green and blue data, plus another 4 hours of red. I actually took about 20 hours total of data but had to discard quite a lot. Not because of scary goblins and such, but because neighbors turned on their glaring porch lights or the police helicopter flew overhead. At least, that's what I think...I wonder if witch's brooms have tail lights?

10/27/2008 Ghostly Whisps in Outer Space

The upcoming Halloween holiday here in the states is an imaginative time for many of us. Whether it's caused by marketing, childhood memories, seasonal movies, the changing weather, or something else, our minds are filled with images of fleeting shapes and ghostly creatures.
The skies are filled with some amazing objects that appear to be relatively static to our observation, yet they have an appearance that can only be explained by dynamic processes. It's like looking at a picture of a runner in action; the subject is captured by the camera in a moment in time, and the resulting picture isn't moving, but anyone viewing the picture will know very well that the person is moving. When we look at many objects in space, it's unlikely that we will detect any material change in their appearance even after years, and yet just one look and it's quite obvious that the objects are in a state of flux.
This image shows a portion of Pickering's Triangular Wisp, and to my mind it fits well with the season since it has numerous faint tendril-like shapes that cause me to imagine all kinds of forces at work. It's part of the large Veil Nebula complex, which is a remnant from a supernova that exploded perhaps 5-10,000 years ago. I took this image in my backyard over about a week's time starting on October 14th. I used narrowband filters and mapped it using the Hubble pallet (SII=red, H-alpha=green, and OIII=blue). This is a cropped portion of my final image, zoomed in on the most intersting part; the wider-field full version, as well as one mapped using the CFHT pallet, can be seen by clicking this link.
We sure have had a nice long run of clear nights lately. I missed the All Arizona Star Party this past weekend due to a client emergency, but still managed to image here at home. The data is really piling up.

10/23/2008 The Imperfect Universe

We all know how crazy things seem these days. There seems to be a lot of unrest in the world and many people are just plain scared. Nothing's perfect...maybe that's nothing new. Yet in a strange way it's possible for things to appear quite perfect on a large scale even though the small scale reveals serious flaws.
A photo of planet Earth taken from space makes it look like we live on a nice spherical (and calm) world, yet down here we are well aware of the mountains and valleys and storms that make it not so perfect.
Images of the California Nebula, NGC1499, like the one above, make one think of a huge bubbly cloud of gas. Not a perfect shape, but it's a beautiful image anyway. Or is it? This is only a portion of a 4-panel mosaic project that I worked on last November, using my Zenithstar 105mm refractor and CGE mount. I spent many nights collecting narrowband data on this object, in H-alpha as well as OIII and SII. Unfortunately the fields were not flat enough to allow a perfect stitching together of the frames. Zoom out enough and it appears to be a decent image; but zoom in and you'll find various problems including duplicate and elongated stars.
Maybe right now the whole world should consider taking a step back and viewing things from a wider perspective.

10/19/2008 Faint Fuzzies

Here's an image of M33, the Triangulum Galaxy, that I took at the 2008 Okie-Tex Star Party a couple of weeks ago.
M33 is fairly large in apparent size, so even though it is a little over 6th magnitude, it's rather faint in appearance. The dark skies at Okie-Tex this year allowed me to see M33 with the naked eye as a faint fuzzy patch in the sky. At one point, I saw an airplane fly right over the patch.
M33 is probably the farthest object that I have ever visually observed without the aid of a telescope. It's distance is believed to be somewhere around 2.8 million light years away.
The shape of M33 is truly awesome, showing a clear face-on spiral pattern. I've viewed M33 through an eyepiece many times, including through Bob & Glenn's Dobsonians at Okie-Tex, and it exhibits some definite spiral structure. Images really bring out the spiral pattern, as well as numerous H-alpha regions and newly formed stars. The spiral pattern is a fascinating shape that shows up over and over again in nature. Things from terrible hurricances to beautiful seashells display intricately wound spirals. Spirals can be described mathematically and the forces that shape them can be explained with physics, which only adds to the beauty involved when one observes them.
To see a larger version of this image, click here. I took a lot of data on M33, but had to discard much of it due to some clouds that rolled through.

10/07/2008 Back to the Home Galaxy

Okie-Tex is finished, at least for another year, and I've been back home since Sunday afternoon. It was a very successful star party, with five clear nights out of the six that I was there. I got plenty of good image data, had a great time with friends both old and new, and had some good practice with the equipment.
This image is one of my targets from Okie-Tex. Of course I have observed M31 many times, and imaged it a few times, but I wanted to give it a try in the Epsilon. Also my processing skills are a little different now (although I'm not entirely certain they are any better!) I captured 2 hours in each of the color filters plus another hour in luminance over a two-night period. Click here to see a larger version of this image. I've noticed that when I show a picture of M31 to people, they often comment "I wonder if there are aliens looking back at us from there". I guess the galaxy fits the 'traditional' idea of what a galaxy should look like, so it's natural to assume that there are civilizations over there watching us, just like we observe them. I don't suppose that they would call ours the "Milky Way", instead it's probably some mythical name just as we call theirs Andromeda. Regardless of what you call it, home is always a beautiful place, and after a week of camping I was certainly happy to return home to my comfort zone and my family.

10/01/2008 Another Day, Another Photon

It's day four of Okie-Tex and I'm still having a blast. A bit tired perhaps, but that's because there's not much time for sleep after all the fun stuff going on.
It's been clear every night so far, but that may change soon. The nights have been very calm and chilly, perfect imaging weather. The skies have not been perfect in terms of transparency and seeing conditions, but the clearness seems to make up for it. My mount is mostly behaving well - a few glitches with pier flips but we may have solved that, since it ran successfully last night. I have a bunch of data to process now, much of it color data since the darker skies provide better results in color than back home in the big city. My Sky Quality Meter has been giving readings of approximately 21.65 each night.
The Milky Way is positioned well, visible horizon-to-horizon. The moon has been absent as it goes through its new phase, just what we want. After I got my run going last night, I spent a lot of time doing visual observing with Glenn Sanner and Bob Kepple, authors of the Night Sky Observers Guide. I see them regularly at the Huachuca Club meetings and they are a couple of great guys. We had some fantastic views of various celestial delights including some of the more obscure, faint objects as well as some more popular ones. We spent a lot of time exploring the details in various portions of the Veil Nebula for instance.
The hills nearby provide some nice hiking opportunities and I've found a spot on top of a nearby hill that actually allows me to get a cell phone signal. There is so much open land around here, just what I needed for a little attitude adjustment.
I've had a lot of help as well as plenty of good times with various friends, many of whom I have met at star parties or conferences. To name a few, Rockett, Kent, Jim, Fred, James, Doug, etc...and of course Dean and I have been partying it up. A good star party includes lots of good observing but the people are what really makes it worth attending.
Here's an image that I took the first night. The bright star near the top is Gamma Cassiopeiae, and the nebulosity is known as Sharpless 2-185. It's unlikely that an eyepiece would reveal the nebula, but the camera shows both emission (red) and reflection (blue) components in this Hydrogen dominated cloud.

09/29/2008 Okie-Tex Star Party Day Two

It's my second day at the Okie-Tex Star Party. Dean and I arrived yesterday afternoon and we got everything all set up before dinner time. I had a few minor challenges with the Astro-Physics AP1200 mount that I unexpectedly acquired a few days ago from my friend Richard, but there are 5 other AP1200 owners in the area that I set up and they were all most helpful. I made it through the learning curve very quickly and was imaging for much of the night last night. This mount certainly tracks well.
I was tired from the driving and work of setting up, but the excitement of being in a star party with several hundred other amateur astronomers is enough to keep the energy level high. Star parties really are so much fun, the people are great and lots of stories are swapped. I'm very happy to be here and away from the routine stresses of normal life.

09/27/2008 Okie-Tex or Bust!

As I type this, I'm on my way to the Okie-Tex Star Party. Dean's taking a turn at driving and I'm clicking away on the keyboard. There is a new mount in the back (well, actually an old mount, but it's new to me), and I'm excited about the chance to put it to use at Okie-Tex. The weather prediction is a bit uncertain, we shall see how the upcoming week turns out.

09/23/2008 Reflections

Astronomy is the most peaceful hobby I can think of. When I'm out under the stars I find myself in a completely different frame of mind than when I'm frantically racing through the normal pressures of every day life. It's so calming to quietly sit back and reflect on my little place in this universe, so wonderous to try to understand what my significance is compared to the amazing objects out there in space.
It's been a rough summer. My mount was in for repairs most of the season, but bad weather would have prevented much use of it anyway. Work has not let up and other discouraging situations have brought me down. So it's been a very nice relief to have found some time to get back to astronomy the past week, as the skies begin to settle down and temperatures cool. I've been imaging a lot, and in less than a week I will be happily camping out with my astro gear at the Okie-Tex Star Party. I simply cannot wait!
Meanwhile I'm discovering that I have tons of unprocessed image data...I really have not done well with completing my image projects, nor have I kept up with these blogs. Here is an image that I took about 9 months ago, an object that is already finding it's way back into the early morning skies. It's reflection nebula M78, a beautiful little cloud in the rich Orion region. This may be among the last of my images taken with the William Optics 105mm refractor, as I'm now working with the Takahashi Epsilon 180. Click Here to see a larger version of this image.

07/30/2008 Finally Some Clear Skies

It's been very cloudy for quite a while, but the past two nights have been nice and clear. I missed last night, but decided to get my act together this evening. I'm definitely in photon-deprivation mode these days, so I opened up the dome and spent several hours in there. I have been doing most of my observing for the past year or so with the wide-field scopes, but my CGE mount is still in the shop so I fired up the RCX again. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had retained its alignment since the last time I used it, so it was just turn it on and go.
The RCX needs a lot more hand-holding when I image through it, and it is a work night, so I didn't stay out all night. My main target was M16, and here is a quick process of the first 10 subexposures. They were 300 second frames at -20C (I'm using the chiller that my wife used during her knee surgery recovery last year), and I also used the SBIG adaptive optics unit which really helps the guiding.
This is one of my favorite targets, I always love to see "The Pillars of Creation" show up on my screen when the frames download. I'm hoping for some more clear nights, if we get them I will try for additional data, including using the color and other narrowband filters.

07/13/2008 TAAA & Cloudy Skies

It's been real cloudy lately, the monsoons are arriving daily with plenty of rain, lightning, and wind. No damage around here yet but it's impossible to do any astronomical observing.
I did attend the monthly meeting of the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association on Friday night. George Barber gave a great talk on solar observing for the Astronomy Essentials, and then we heard Dr. Tim Swindle of the U of A Planetary Sciences Department tell us about his adventures hunting for meteorites in Antarctica.
I've got plenty of "administrative" astronomy tasks to take care of. The CGE is in the shop for repairs; I need to bake my CCD dessicant plug; there are a few items I want to list on AstroMart; I've got some configuration work to do; I have a ton of image data to process; and of course the big one is completion of the roll-off roof shed. But it's hard to get motivated to do these things when I know I can't do any observing. So instead I've mostly been spending my play time on ham radio stuff. But I did spend some time this afternoon teaching the Astronomy Merit Badge to my son's Boy Scout Troop.

07/07/2008 Jupiter is Near Opposition

Jupiter, the king of the solar system, is only about 2 days away from opposition. This means that it is basically 180 degrees away from the sun as viewed from Earth. When planets are at opposition, they are usually also roughly closest to the Earth and thus have a larger apparent size.
Here's a webcam image that I took on July 1st with the 14" RCX. I'm no expert at webcam imaging, and it was a work night so I was taking the images too early in the evening - Jupiter was only about 20 degrees up in the SouthEast when I shot it. I took several 2 to 3 minute .avi videos, then used Registax freeware to split it into frames and process them. I also didn't get a perfect focus. So the details are a bit rough, and I had to overprocess it to bring out the minimal details visible here. On nights of good seeing, it would not be unusual to see more detail using a high-power eyepiece than this image shows.
I may try to image it again soon, but that depends on the weather - we are in the midst of monsoon season so there is not much hope for clear skies most days.