Lunar Eclipse, 15 May 2022

 After reviewing a hundred nearly identical images I took during the May 15 lunar eclipse, I decided none cleaned up better than this 5-second exposure:

This image was taken with a 3-inch APO refractor at F5, 100 ISO and cropped to 1920x1280 pixels. The mount is a Losmandy G-11 and I used its lunar tracking rate. I believe the tracking rate made a difference in quality of fine detail, because I see motion blur in the background stars that is consistent across many images. If not for the lunar tracking rate, the motion blur would be in the moon image. The motion blur of the stars is detectable in my 5-second exposure but obvious in this 15-second exposure:

I've been seeing a number of eclipse composites, where the images of the entire eclipse event are superimposed on a scene. Most bother me, for the scale looks wrong. I prefer that composites be an honest depiction of scale and motion, or contain a caveat.

Here's the eclipse with a 28mm lens.

This shows the size of the moon against the roof line of a two story house about 60 feet away. 

A half hour earlier, the moon was in the trees:

The distance the moon travels between my wide-field images and it's apparent size are hard to squeeze into these composites from other sources: 

jg

Comet NEOWISE 2020

A modestly bright comet has made it around the sun in one piece. These photos are from Southern California the morning of July 9, 2020.

Image taken through a 3-inch telescope at f5.

Image taken with a 50 mm lens.

jg

Lyrid, Meteor of the Century (again)

Smoke and Meteors:

I captured a Lyrid meteor last night, shooting 30-second exposures between 11:20 and 11:50 pm. I caught two meteors in this time, but one made it easy to quit for the night.

I didn't see the meteor, and noticed it only when examining my photo on the camera view screen. On a whim, I took a second exposure and noticed that the vapor trail was visible:

"This is interesting," I thought, so I tried to see how long the vapor trail would remain visible:

After about 5 minutes, the vapor trail drifted off of my field of view. I moved the camera twice before the trail was gone, and even captured a faint, second meteor next to the vapor trail. You will probably have to enlarge the image to see the 2nd meteor near the star cluster (Coma Berenices) in the top of this photo.

The last image I captured was very faint, so I boldy tweaked the contrast:

I also made a video of my images, but think just viewing the still photos in sequence is more effective:

• Lyrid Meteor on YouTube

jg

Pluto System Animation (Pre-New Horizons)

I had trouble finding an interactive model of the Pluto system on the Web. There are either two many static illustrations that clutter up search results or not enough of the interactive kind, so I created my own, which is available on my website here:

Interactive Pluto system animation

I used the now archaic Flash to program to effect the animation. I respected the orbit distances and speed of revolution, but didn't attempt to scale the sizes of Pluto and it's moons.

Most important, I wanted a way to compare Pluto to our Earth-Moon system. Buttons will scale to the Earth-Moon system size and display our Moon. You can also tilt the orbits to get an aesthetically pleasing view.

Regrettably, the animation doesn't work on most mobile devices. I'll be working on version that does. The delay in producing the mobile device version will be advantageous in that I can build in any new discoveries made by the New Horizons space probe. Now, my animation may look like an old map of Europe before a world war. In one month, this may be the archaic pre-New Horizons map of the Pluto system.

jg

Update: A great visual summary by Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/pluto-fly-by-a-graphical-guide-to-the-historic-mission-1.17927

Nova in Sagittarius

A nova has appeared this week in Sagittarius. This time of year, Sagittarius is in low in the south between 5:00 and 6:00 am. I made a video comparing Sagittarius as seen on March 18 with Sagittarius seen last year.

Two years ago I photographed a nova in Delphinius. My regret is not following up over the year to observe the fading of the nova. Therefore, I have no personal estimate of how long a nova will last. I know it's not hard to research, but I prefer to observe first, a bit like reading a book before watching the movie.

Sagittarius is a summer constellation, so I will have a good six months to observe the nova's decline.

jg

Not a real planet

I've been tracking some sunspots this week, figuring that this is my best opportunity to capture a week or more of the sun's rotation in images. Last night, Christmas evening, I abandoned my scope to join family festivities, and when I returned the sun had moved behind stratified clouds. Normally, that means the end of a photo session, but in this case, I thought my cloud-draped sun images would make nice gas giant planets to use in my solar system presentation on Jan. 6. Though I'm depicting Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, my depictions will be of these worlds 4 billion years ago, so it's reasonable to portray them as gas giants, but different from how they appear today. Saturn, for example, would not necessarily have rings. Some color and texture differences would also be in order as the outer planets would be much closer to the sun and therefore receiving more energy to invigorate their climate systems.

So here is my sun through clouds, modified to look like an ice giant planet with two transiting moons. The shadows are the sunspots I've been tracking.

jg

A shooting star off the shoulder of Orion and double meteors

I watched the Geminid meteor shower from Borrego Springs the morning of Dec 14th 2013. The moon had set by 4:00 am, which allowed for a dark hour or two before sunrise. I saw a few fireballs and captured six or seven faint meteors with my camera. I'm sharing the brightest of these faint meteors below:

Geminid passing through Orion's shield. 

Exposure: 800 ISO, 26 seconds, F2, 28mm lens

Most of my 35 photos between 4 and 5 am were 1 minute long, the exception being that when I saw a meteor in or near my field, I'd stop my exposure so the background doesn't get any brighter. My photos represent about a 1/2 hour of cumulative exposure. Catching six or seven out of 35 minutes suggests a rate near 10 per hour. If my camera's field of view were 1/10th of the sky -- I'm confident its field is smaller -- that would suggest that the predicted rate of 100 per hour under a moonless sky was accurate. Caution should be taken with this estimate as it's based on my small sample group.

Why do I keep saying "six or seven"? Because one photo has three streaks but two are so closely in line that they may be one meteor:

Three faint streaks can be seen in this photo of Coma Berenices.

Tracing the streaks reveals that two are on the same radiant.

I've photographed two meteors apparently on one radiant during the Leonids in 2001, but this was on slide film and the two meteors were far apart on the film. So, I expected some distortion: that is, the lens would introduce some distortion and the film's slide mounting (lack of flatness when scanned) would introduce more.

Two or one meteor passing near the Pleiades in Taurus.

Tracing reveals parallel paths that could be on the same radiant. 

Curvature of the slide film can be seen at the bottom center of the frame.

I never believed that I had captured a meteor appearing, then dimming, then reappearing, but I think I have now.


jg

Sun spotting

The weekend of Nov. 2/3 offered some sunspots, a phenomenon that should be at a peak in it's 11-year cycle. This peak, however, is looking like a modest solar maximum. Here are sunspots photographed through a white light filter:

Viewed through a hydrogen-alpha scope, a Coronado PST, I saw an unusual brightening. The bright area was intense enough be visible in this photo, taken by holding a camera to the eyepiece (the afocal method).

I lack a means of getting effective photos through the hydrogen-alpha scope, but on rare occassions, a feature has been bright enough to photograph using the afocal method. You can see the bright spot just left of center.

This was the brightest spot I've seen on the sun, but more interesting, ten minutes after this photo, the bright spot was replaced by a sunspot with only brightness around the edges.

Two weeks later (the weekend of Nov. 16/14) I saw the largest sunspot I've ever observed, through my sunspotter telescope:

You might say, using my iPhone to photograph an image projected onto paper is taking the afocal concept to the extreme.

The following day, a Monday, was the first opportunity I had to get a better picture using a 3-inch scope:

  

Ideally, I would have used my larger scope on this, but it being work day, I had to go with what was portable and easy to set up in a parkeing lot. Here's a close ups of the interesting regions, which is the best I can do with the smaller scope:

jg

Comet Hunt for October

Comet ISON is in the morning sky, but I haven't seen it. I took some photos of the region this week. In the photo below, ISON is supposed to be a coupled degrees distant from Mars and Regulus (the two bright stars in the picture):

I scrutinized the picture, but can find no sign of a comet, suggesting that viewing the comet needs a telescope, which can improve the contrast between it and the glow of my light polluted sky. Perhaps a longer exposure under a darker sky would reveal the comet. My photos were taken on the morning of Oct 16. By now, the full moon interferes, so the next prime opportunity to search will be in about 9 days.

Meanwhile, the morning sky enabled my first photo of the southern star Canopus, which is the second brightest star in the sky. Here is Canis Major, with canopus on the horizon (just right of the tree).



This  is the same area, but a little longer exposure. The stars and star clusters in Canis Major are easier to see, but Canopus is not as bright because it hadn't yet cleared the tree:

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, and the brightest in Canis Major. Canopus is the second brightest star in the night sky. It is rare for northern hemisphere observers to see both. 

jg

Nova and the Dolphin

Amateur astronomers are glowing over the appearance of a nova that is visible to the naked eye. Though the nova is in the eastern sky in the evening, I waited till it was in the west to photograph it. The moon was just past first quarter and bright enough to interfere with photography, so I waited till 3:00 on Thurs morning (8/15/2013) when the moon had set. Below is an annotated photo of the region I took last year with my 8/15 nova photo superimposed. An arrow depicts the nova.

(Tap or double-click to enlarge)

I was going to create an animated version to fade between last year's and this year's photos but had trouble aligning the stars in the two photos. Though both photos were taken with a 28mm lens, last year's image put the region of interest at the edge of the field of view, where the lens's distortion is greatest. My nova photo was centered on the Delphinius, so the stars wouldn't align. However, I found the misalignment revealing. The nova is the only star in this composite that doesn't have the illustion of a motion blur.

All stars that are in both images appear in motion or blurred, but the nova lacks a blurry companion because it appears in only one image. Below is the same composite image with an arrow depicting the nova.

The nova should be viewable at next Saturday's free public star party at Lake Skinner. Details to follow.

jg

Two Scorpions in 10 hours

I recently had some time in the desert to watch scorpions. The first was expected: Scorpius, a favorite constellation of the summer sky. This time of year, Scorpius rises in a upright position. By midnight, you can see all but part of its tail.

The next morning I was blessed with the visitor that inspired this constellation:





Scorpion with size 12 shoe

This is the first scorpion I've ever seen. Online searches for "California Dune Scorpion" reveal a lot of photos showing a very similar creature.

A close up of my visitor whom I believe to be Smeringurus Mesaensis,

the California Dune Scorpion

Scorpion enthusiasts report this as a very fast moving scorpion, that is, quick to scurry away. They also describe it as a bit passive, more likely to hide than sting. This one was in no hurry. Instead, it kept a slow and steady march toward my car. I suspect that it took refuge under my vehicle and felt exposed when I pulled out of my campsite. It appeared to be trying to return to the vehicle's shade. I was able to get my photos and persuade it to choose a different direction, so that I could leave without worrying about driving over it.

Scorpius reinterpreted thanks to my campsite visitor

jg

Dark Horse of Midnight

Last weekend's star gazing at Palomar Observatory Campground had probably the darkest sky I've ever seen at this location. The reason? We were expecting a storm to move in on Sunday, and during Saturday night, the clouds covered the nearby cities for a few hours before covering the mountain top.

At 1:00 pm, looking south at the Milky Way, you could detect dustlanes that look like a horse standing above the back of Scorpius.  I've never seen this before.  Double-click the photos below to enlarge the image, if necessary. The horse is diagrammed in the third image along with Scorpius. 

A wide field, portrait view.

A crop of the above photo.

The horse drawn (pun intended)

 jg

Omega Centauri

From our position in the solar system, Omega Centauri is the brightest of the globular clusters, which are dense packs of gravitationally bound stars forming clusters that are billions of years old. Some theories suggest that globular clusters are remnants of galaxies that have been eaten by our own.

Omega Centauri is best seen from the Southern Hemisphere, but in May, obervers at low lattitudes of the Northern Hemisphere get a glimpse of it skirting the southern horizon. The following photos show Omega Centauri in a gap of trees on my southern horizon.

Omega Centauri emerging from one tree and going behind the next.

(80 seconds, F4, 400 ISO, 70 mm focal length)



After adjusting the camera (during which Omega Centauri moved noticably) I resumed tracking of the object through the gap in the trees. (120 second, F4, 400 ISO, 70mm focal length)

Last best exposure before I lost it in the trees. (120 second, F4, 400 ISO, 70mm focal length)

These photos were taken at 10:43, 10:53, and 10:56 PM, when Omega Centauri was due south. I highly recommend that anyone with a low southern horizon look for this object now with binoculars or a small telescope. In general, any object appears two hours earlier the following month, so this weekend, Omega Centauri, it should be due south at approximately 10:30 pm.

Find Omega Centauri's general region by using corvus (right in the image below) as a pointer. Depending on the clearance of your horizon, you may also see scorpius in an upright position (left).

The dotted line shows the path of Omega Centauri. Scorpius on the left and Corvus on the right can be used to find the general location.

jg

Temecula Valley Astronomers host Dr. Eric Grosfils speaking on Impact Cratering

The March meeting of the Temecula Valley Astronomers will be held this Monday, 3/4/13 at 7:30pm at the RCWD Boardroom, 42135 Winchester Road, Temecula CA 92590.

Dr. Eric Grosfils is the Minnie B. Cairns Memorial Professor for the Geology Department of Pomona College and will be speaking on impact cratering. His talk will include the recent recent meteor eplosion over Russia.

A brief presentation on what's up in the March sky precedes the presentation by Dr. Grosfils.

All of the Temecula Valley Astromers meetings are free and open to the general public. For more information on the Temecula Valley Astonomners, see www.temeculavalleyastronomers.com.

jg