Michael A. Phillips' Astro Blog

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Moon, M45, Mercury - then Saturn and Ceres

Tons of great data the night of April 26/27.

Here's a wide-field of the conjunction of Moon, M45 and Mercury.
Taken after the Mercury caps by moving the tripod a bit further
up the road, away from the trees.

High-resolution Mercury
My 2nd high res Mercury in 2 nights. I'm not sure if its artifacts or real detail, but the CM is 114 which is on this section of the map:

http://www.solarviews.com/raw/merc/mer07.jpg

You tell me! I've only gotten Mercury at this FL like 1 time before these past 2 days.

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Moved the scope off the street back to the driveway.
Collimation and Focus on Regulus - Great!
kstars for adjustments and a good distance from the scope.
Long 300s @ RGB (no lum) caps
Seeing seemed to go bad after moving to Ceres, but moving
back to Saturn seemed it restablized and was the
best of the night and perhaps the best all year!

Saturn at 0159UT view 1:

Saturn at 0159UT view 2 - 200% OVERSIZE!! I think it held up well and am thinking it's time for a 5x PM and or scope upgrade!

....and finally Ceres. Someone help me find a site that details the angular size, but I do believe that Stellarium lists it as ~0.7"

Capture Notes:
I tried to get as much data as I could with 300s @ LRGB
NOTE: back to Saturn for last cap of the night

Processing Notes:
I didn't end up using the Lum, but took it anyway.
I had to manually align all the Blue data! UGH!

Wrap up:
Great data all-in-all. I still cannot find a good site for
the angular size of Ceres, but Stellarium says it's 0.7"
I am pretty confident that my exposures and processing
are giving a good view of the disk itself.

Now you pick your favorite.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Leo Triplet before the clouds...

Observation logs

Observations

Object: M65

Galaxy in Leo

Alias: NGC3623

RA:	11h 18m 56s
Dec:	13° 05' 37"
Size:	1.5′ × 8.0′
m(vis):	10.5 mag
Origin:	ObservationManager - Messier Catalog 1.0

Observer	Michael A. Phillips Mr.
Site	Home
Begin	2009-04-12 um 20:08:25-05:00
End	2009-04-12 um 20:18:25-05:00
Seeing	3 (fair)
Optics	LXD55
Filter	Hutech idas lps-p2-ff Light Pollution Filter Corrective
Camera	Canon XTI
Sitzung	2009-04-12 um 20:08:25-05:00

Visual impression

7*4min @ 1600 + 16 cloudy ones Darks and old flats Visually with th C8i, I was only able to see M65 and M66 after the clouds moved in.
Visual rating: Viewable with direct vision

References

Sessions: 2009-04-12 um 20:08:25-05:00

Begin:	2009-04-12 um 20:08:25-05:00
End:	2009-04-12 um 23:30:00-05:00

Weather:	S: ~6/10 Initially T=5/5 then haze and clouds moved in making it T: 1/5
Equipment:	Optics: Meade LXD55 Mount: CGE mount on JMI Wheely Bars Camera: Canon XTi with Hutech LP Filter (LPS-P2-FF) Focusing Aid: STI focuser Shutter control: Hap Griffin long exposure cable Software: MaximDL Guiding: DMK21AF04 with a piggybacked 4" SkyWatcher via PHD and ASCOM drivers Operating System: WinXP Lenovo T43 driven via RDP from inside the house
Comments:	Got 3-4 images under T=5/5 of Leo Triplet before trying to RDP in... and couldn't Then found that XP had crashed and rebooted Couldn't get camera to respond until reboot and or power cycle of XTi Start C8i @ 22:04:00 Then Trans goes to 1/5 :( Tracking on faint star is hit or miss... trying visual via the C8 as seeing on Saturn with no cooling was avg. Was able to see M66/M65 with 'nearly' direct vision, but not nearby 3 galaxy (NGCxxxx) Ceres visually? Maybe?! Definatley a mid-mag object near the Cartes Du Ceil coords MUCH further than the saved user sky location in the C8i

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Observer: Michael A. Phillips Mr.

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Site: Home

Longitude:	35.682°
Latitude:	-78.743°
Timezone:	UT-300 min

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Optics: LXD55

Type:	Schmidt-Newtonian
Vendor:	Meade
Aperture:	152.0 mm
Focal length:	762.0 mm

>> Observations <<

Filter: Hutech idas lps-p2-ff Light Pollution Filter

Typ:	Corrective

>> Observations <<

CCD Camera: Canon XTI

Vendor:	Canon
Pixel:	3888x2592

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Hi Res Ceres (Minor Planet / Asteroid)

Link

I was inspired by Fabio Plocostomos and Chris Go's work on Ceres at high res and decided to go for it myself near opposition or good seeing. So that single 2 day break in rain and clouds a week ago yielded some good Venus and Saturn images and also this great view of Ceres.

I had a hard time finding some good ephemeris data for angular size so calculated it myself as follows:

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

δ

= d / D, where

δ

is the angular size, d is visual diameter and D is the distance to the object.

So using the WRONG units I get:

1.64AU distance to Ceres and 950km diameter of Ceres gives 0.798".

I hope to not have overexposed the object which would have caused bloat or bloom in the data. I stretched in post processing and resized to 200%

Enjoy!

Mike

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Astronomy - Solar System - Extended Objects

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

1st Comet Lulin (C/2007 N3)

I was amazed at how far this comet moved. I started my search near Saturn as it was just there a week ago. I couldn't find it. I looked on skyandtelescope.com and found it halfway over to M44. It appeared easily in the 60mm finder-scope and didn't look like much in the 6" LXD. I guided via the 4" retractor on the comet for 21 x 3min subs. Turned out half were behind the tree branches and should be thrown away. I also forgot to rig a dew-shield and may also have some bad stray light. I found the DMK didn't show up on the T42, but did on the T61 under winxp. Stars were bright and round after focusing on the moon, but did find that there was not enough focus depth so I used the 90* televue diagonal. Guiding on the comet via PHD Guiding was easy and the CGE was very up to the task for over 1 hour! Unfortunately I did no align the guider and found the comet was in the corner of the frame and the tail was out of the frame. Since it was cold and dark I didn't try to align

Some things to change next time:

1) guiding and imaging on the same computer
2) alignment of the imaging and guide scopes (finder too, why not?!)
3) dew / light shield on the imaging scope

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Titan Transit Teaser 20090224

Observation logs

I think there's a name for titles like that, but at 25*F and early in the AM my brain's not so straight.

Bad seeing too.. looked like the whole continental US had bad jetstream. I hope someone west of here got better as it was fairly low on the horizon here.

I forgot about the time delay in stellarium but that was OK as I overslept a bit anyway. Most of the frames are washed out by the trees but you can make out the shadow in the final 3 or so frames. I also caught Dione in a few frames riding the upper left ring, long before it's transit. So no quad transit, but I was able to get something and that still counts! Lucky me, the sky was clear.

Animation from 1018 to 1114UT:

Object: Saturn and Titan

Planet

Origin:

ObservationManager - SolarSystem Catalog 1.0

Observer	Michael A. Phillips Mr.
Site	Home
Begin	2009-02-24 um 04:00:00-05:00
End	2009-02-24 um 04:10:00-05:00
Optics	C8i on CGE
Eyepiece	PowerMate (V=812.8)
Filter	Astronomik LRGB Color
Camera	DMK21AF04
Sitzung	2009-02-24 um 04:00:00-05:00

Visual impression

Titan transit!

References

Sessions: 2009-02-24 um 04:00:00-05:00

Begin:	2009-02-24 um 04:00:00-05:00
End:	2009-02-24 um 06:20:00-05:00

Weather:	Poor seeing Great transparency FREEZING 25*F
Equipment:	I used: Ubuntu 8.04 Linux and custom coriander CGE mounted 8" Celestron C8i SCT Lymax Cat Cooler DMK 21AF04 2.5x PowerMate Astronomik LRGB filters True Tek Color Filter Wheel with visu diag
Comments:	Didn't leave the scope out overnight and it may have impacted some but little of the conditions. I miss timed the Titan Transit becuase of the time delay / light propogation issues with Stellarium. I fixed that now1

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Observer: Michael A. Phillips Mr.

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Site: Home