Antique Saturn

This rather poor image of Saturn was taken using a camera phone through the eyepiece of the Alvan Clark & Sons refractor at Sam Houston State University. The telescope was purchased in 1884 by the university (then known as Sam Houston Normal Institute) and sits on its original No. 5 mount. Mike Prokosch, the director of the SHSU Planetarium brought it out after a show one night to view the Moon and Saturn. The views were spectacular! Lunar features were crisp, with high contrast, and I could make out cloud bands on Saturn and the gap between the rings and planet quite easily.

A picture of Mike standing next to the telescope is located on Mike's web site.

Saturn; 1884 4.5" Clark refractor on No. 5 mount; Kyocera Loft camera through 0.6" eyepiece

Reprocessed Images and Something New

The recent lousy weather (for astronomy) has kept me indoors for some time now, and when that happens, I sometimes dig into the archives to see what I can reprocess.

Messier 27, the Dumbbell Nebula, was the first thing I imaged with the Epsilon-200. For some reason, I recorded all of the subs in JPEG format instead of CR2 (RAW). Regardless, I was very happy with the original image at the time. I've learned a few tricks for reducing noise, though, so I thought I'd take another stab at it:

Messier 27, the Dumbbell Nebula

For comparison, see my previous post of Messier 27.

I've never been very happy with my image of Messier 17, the Swan Nebula. Like my M27, I only collected JPEG images. The images were very noisy, which made it difficult to bring out the fainter details of the nebula without swamping the rest of the image in colored streaks. A program like Neat Image can be your friend in those circumstances.  Here is a redo of M17:

Messier 17, the Swan Nebula

And, finally, here is a "new" image of Messier 8, the Lagoon Nebula, that I imaged some time ago. I think this is the first time that I've posted it in a public forum:

Messier 8, the Lagoon Nebula; Epsilon-200 on NJP; 17x120

Supernova 2011dh

On May 31, 2011, amateur astronomer Amédée Riou of France discovered a supernova in Messier 51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. It was independently discovered by other astronomers shortly afterward, and is currently being observed by professional and amateur astronomers world-wide.

Below is an image that I took of M51 on June 8, 2011. A first-quarter moon was up and the sky was hazy, so the detail isn't that great. The supernova, now designated SN 2011dh, is as bright as many of the foreground stars in this image. Considering that M51 is 23 million light years away, that's pretty bright!

SN 2011dh in M51; ST80 on Vixen SP; 14x180

For comparison, here is a shot of M51 that I took with the Epsilon-200 on April 24, 2010, reduced and rotated to approximately the same size and orientation as the image above.

Below is the full-size version of the Epsilon-200 image. The moon was about 85% full that night, but the sky was much clearer than the other night.

Messier 51, the Whirlpool Galaxy; Epsilon-200 on NJP; 25x120

SN 2011dh is expected to remain visible for the next few months. It has been determined to be a Type II supernova, which means that it was caused by giant star that collapsed in upon itself. The debris from this star will be scattered into interstellar space and may end up becoming the raw material for new stars and planets. The core of the star likely collapsed into either a neutron star or a black hole.

SN 2011dh is the third supernova observed in M51 in the past 17 years, which is a remarkably high frequency considering that our own galaxy averages only one supernova every 50 years!

Lightning!

Here are some shots of lightning taken from my back porch on May 25, 2011.

Star Trails

This is a star trail image taken from my front yard. The stars are seen here "swirling" around the North Celestial Pole (NCP), which is located near the bottom of the image. The bright star near the NCP is Polaris, the North Star.

Located about one third of the way between the NCP and the upper-right corner of the image are two bright trails that were formed by Kochab and Pherkad. They form part of the bowl of the Little Dipper. The bright stars at the top of the image are part of the Big Dipper.

The light trails of several aircraft and a few satellites are also visible.

This image is a composite of 282 30-second exposures (2.35 hours total). They were combined with a neat little program called Startrails.

Star Trails around the NCP; Canon EOS Rebel XS (1000D); 282x30

M81, M82 and friends

Sometimes things don't work out as planned. For example, a couple of months ago I wanted to see how M81/M82 would look in my ST80. I took a test shot and it looked promising; so, I started an imaging series and went inside the house.

Later, a check on the series revealed that things were not going well.  The alignment was off. Perhaps I had bumped the mount without realizing it. For whatever reason, only the test image turned out halfway decent. The rest had significant star trailing.

I recently took a closer look at the series, salvaged the best ones, and applied a star rounding filter to them. The results weren't spectacular, by any means, but with a little more processing and a few tricks I managed to throw together a wide-angle view of the area around M81/M82:

Messiers 81 and 82 and friends; ST80 on Vixen SP; 8x180

This version labels the brighter galaxies, as well as a few of the dimmer ones that I was able to find:

Heart of the Scorpion

Antares is a supergiant star in the constellation Scorpius. It is nearly 300 million miles across, which is larger than the orbit of Mars! Antares is sometimes called the "Heart of the Scorpion."

The area in the sky around Antares is full of exciting objects. I imaged a small part of it while waiting for M8/M20/M21 to rise one morning. I took only a few images, but after heavy image processing I came up with the following:

Antares, Messier 4, NGC 6144 and IC 4605; ST80 on Vixen SP; 6x180

Antares is the yellow star at the bottom of the image. It appears orange to the naked eye. The yellow color here is due to the fact that the star is overexposed, and the camera is less sensitive to the red part of the spectrum.

Clouds of interstellar gas and dust fill the area, adding unusual patterns and colors to the scene.

Messier 4 is the large globular cluster at the top. It is about 7,200 light years away and is one of the closest globular clusters to Earth. Messier 4 is also called the Cat's Eye cluster because of the conspicuous bar structure across the middle.

Globular cluster NGC 6144 is located to the upper-left of Antares. It is about 33,000 light years away.

The blue reflection nebula IC 4605 is in the lower-left corner.

I plan on revisiting this and the surrounding area one day. There is a lot more to see!