Observing Highlights - Jan-Jun 2007

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At one point when I was looking to the east and watching the Moon rise I noticed the other gas giant blazing away so I swung my Dob around to have a quick look. The arrangement of it's moons was quite unusual. So I fired off a few shots with the point and shoot held up to a 12mm eyepiece. I'm presenting my best lie of that. (Don't ask how I processed it because I don't remember and I don't really know what I'm doing)

The second image was taken just as I turned off of Rocky Point Road. Venus and Saturn setting into the hillside with the trees and the house in the foreground inspired me. I stopped my truck and set up the tripod in the middle of the street.

DONT MISS THIS !!
There MAY BE (?) a dual fly by tonight of the Shuttle Atlantis followed by the ISS (22:37) If you have ever seen one of these duets (it like astro ballet )it is absolutly mind boggling ! It really gives you a sense of some one being up in space !p.s. Last nights "ISS fly by" from my home went Through the Moon AND Saturn. It was a sight I will never forget.  Blair Pellatt

Thanks for the heads up on this -it was a great sight ! - haven't seen this before.  Chuck F.

Amongst a decent sized group of people viewing the ISS and Shuttle pass was a blast. The night sky viewing with the home schoolers out in Metchosin was perfect in my estimation. Venus, Saturn and the Moon with Regulus showed themselves well. Even managed to throw in a couple of Binaries.

The climax of the evening was the ISS Shuttle flyby. They arose in the west on cue. It was a beautiful sight. They could easily fit in the FOV of my 80mm refractor fitted with a wide field 40mm eyepiece. I was able to track them quite easily. I even snapped off a couple of shots of each individually. I linked them together and then rotated it. I took each shot at exactly the same point when each entered the FOV so I'm fairly sure this shows them with the proper separation. In the image the streaked line on the left is the ISS and the one on the right is the Shuttle. They are heading east which is to the left.

There is also this second image which was a shorter exposure. It was a small point of light on the large scale. After cropping and enlarging I ended up with this blurry image. What do you think, Shuttle or ISS? Not bad for a hand held point and shoot shot through an ED 80mm.  Bill Weir

Bill Weir's photos (above)

Earlier this evening I was at the Village Green here in Metchosin, doing some H-Alpha Solar observing while my son was at Scouts. Occasionally there would be a passer by who had a look. I was also showing them Venus through my little 80mm refractor. It was kind of funny because they would say," I don't see it I only see the Moon." Then I would tell them, that that little crescent was Venus. Then I would show them how to see it naked eye. I mentioned that I knew that Saturn would be also visible but I wasn't sure where it was. Duh!

Alberio - June 16, 2007

I pointed the DSI pro on Albireo to test the colour of that CCD. The result is not bad, the primary look like white-yellow and the secondary blue. For sure, there are some limitation with that camera but I still enjoy it and I will try to push the limit with it...

Thanks to Malcolm's fine article on Vesta, I'd like to contribute a little. I managed (with some difficulty I might add due to my wooded property) observations of Vesta on Sunday the 10th and last night the 13th. For doing the observation I was using my little 80mm refractor at only 18X. The almost 3 degree FOV made identification easy. The fact that the asteroid is in close proximity to two 6.1 mag stars also helped in making identification easy. The third, 6th mag dot had clearly moved in the 3 day time span. On Suday the trio formed a very squat, drawn out V. Last night Vesta was less than a degree directly north of the eastern of the stars. This created more of a backwards L or check mark shape. I'd estimate Vesta to be 6th mag because the three dots appeared almost identical. I say almost because there was a slight golden appearance to Vesta. The two stars were white. When I increased the magnification to 54X the golden colour increased.

If anyone is wanting to pursue this more there is a website you might want to visit this website, which was created to compile observations around Deep Impact. It has now resurfaced because of the impending launch of the Dawn Mission that will send a craft to visit Vesta and Ceres. Observations, Images/Animations and sketches are welcomed. It is also a source of star charts for the future. In the grey panel on the left of the page click on Star Charts and then scroll down. Then just pick a date for a widefield chart. On the right is a far more detailed 5*X8* chart, for if you are having trouble picking it out of the field.

Bill Weir

Last night was very mixed for sky conditions with some clear periods with some wind and increasing cloud and lowered transmission in the am. At the suggestion of Jim Nemec I had a go trying to capture NGC 5053 and 5466. Bill Weir had warned me that these objects need a good dark sky and and noted that 5053 is really difficult so I was not expecting great results from my backyard. Still, I like the challenge of seeing what I can image from my urban location and it is possible to see both of them in the images (barely in the case of 5053). I could not really be sure 5053 was in the frames while I was shooting but I positioned M53 at the edge hoping that would put 5053 in the frame. It worked although the framing is not the greatest. You should be able to see 5053 on the left side and M53 is clearly shown at the upper right.

While I was waiting for the Eagle Nebula to get high enough on Thursday night I spent some time on clusters to get good focus. I ended up taking some frames of M13 and M92 and the attached shows what resulted. The one of the Hercules Cluster (M13) goes deeper than I had managed before and as a result it shows more stars. M92 is dimmer and smaller and had less exposure but still came out fairly well.

John McDonald

Seeing as things were boring on the Sun I decided to do some day time Lunar observing and this was where I had one of those light bulb going on moments.

Down close to the south polar region of the Moon is a fair sized crater named Maginus. In it I could make out a nice Sunrise crater ray going on. In fact, I stumbled across this ray before, a little over a year ago. I also saw it when I was in Costa Rica just this last March. Now this is where it gets interesting, or at least it is to me. This past March it was also seen the day after the X (which I didn't see due to rain) happened. When I first saw this ray it was on May 6/06. I don't know if the X appeared the day before that date, but I do know it happened 2 months earlier on Mar 6/06 because I have a photo that I took. It's also when I did that progression map. The X happens in 2 month cycles so I'm thinking that it probably happened on the May date. Now stay with me, because I'm finally getting to my point.

Used a Nikon D80 dSLR prime focus through a Vixen 4" apo refractor with a 2.5x Powermate.

Used a Nikon D80 dSLR prime focus through a Vixen 4" apo refractor with a 2.5x Powermate.

I have observed the Lunar "X" feature several times now, however this event produced the brightest "X" by far.  Here is an image I took of this feature through my TV-76 a-focally using a 2.5x Powermate and my Canon 30D.

I took these two shots between 2200 and 2300hrs May 23/07. In the complete Moon shot the X is really tiny and just barely visible but what is also in the shot is the 3.9 mag star rho Leo, (the forward sticking hind foot of Leo). The Moon skimmed just south of it. That shot was taken through my 6" dob (I rotated the image for realism) hand holding my wife's point and shoot to a 22mm eyepiece. The larger cropped image was through a 12mm eyepiece.

In the bits of clear air I had a go at M5 and M10 last night from my back yard. I am fascinated with globular clusters because of their age and the puzzle of how they formed and have lasted so long. I am pretty happy with the image of M5. M10 could use more exposure but I ran out of clear sky.

Jim Cliffe got a lovely image of the conjunction earlier this evening. The view from the parking lot at the CU was also nice tonight at 10:20PM when I took this image. Clouds everywhere except for the Moon and Venus. Pretty lucky!

Some success tonight. Had a few folks looking, and had some nice views of the Moon/Venus and Saturn for them. The clouds didn't help, but there were a few breaks. Here's how it looked from Clover Point with my Olympus E-500 & 150mm.

This was taken from where I live on Mt Tolmie around 20:25 tonight.
Telescope: Antares 102mm, f5
Camera: Nikon D50 modified, 1/200, ISO 200.

This picture of comet Lovejoy and NGC 6015 was taken from John McDonald's backyard. Interestingly, I was reading from Wikipedia that comet Lovejoy was discovered using a Canon 350D DSLR!

Well it's crude and could use a bit of tidying up but that will have to wait until tomorrow. This is how I saw this conjunction tonight as viewed through my 12.5" dob. I could actually just fit both objects within the single FOV of my 17mm Nagler. That puts them at approximately 0.88 degrees apart. I had to stop sketching due to a contrail. I hope someone managed to image this tonight, it looked very cool. Coincidentally it was exactly a year ago, that fragmented comet Schwassmann-Wachmann was making its dramatic fly by of M 13 and M57.

After capturing comet Lovejoy last evening, M104 was well situated for imaging and the skies got fairly clear as well. There was still quite a bit of sky glow so I decided to use ISO 400 with 58 sec exposures. I am attaching a full frame wide field image and the cropped version.

Last night after the RASC meeting, Charles suggested we go to Cattle Point and stay late as it looked like a good night. As the night progressed some of the objects that are rich in H-alpha came up giving me a chance to try my recently acquired 350D camera. This is one with a modified filter to pass H-alpha light. I tried the North American Nebula and got the attached result. The modified camera appears to be quite sensitive overall and especially good in the red as expected.

The Sun halo was spectacular. I took the opportunity of using my scope
to apply a little art to the situation.

More info on Tangent Arcs.

We are having a very interesting development with the sun. Sunspot 953 is putting on quite a show and there are some very nice filaments.

ISO 800 @ 1/800

ISO 100 @ 1/800 full auto, untouche

M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy - April 15, 2007

Here are some more images from Saturday night in my backyard. While Charles was shooting his wonderful ultra deep field of the Coma region, I focused on two galaxies, M51, the Whirlpool and M64, the Black Eye. I did M64 first and planned to stop as the clouds kept obscuring the target but it got better after midnight so I had a go with M51 until 2:30AM. I'm glad I did as there have been few nights as good recently.

Here's my version of the poor man's Hubble ultra deep field. After making my way to John's backyard last night, I aimed my 200mm lens at the constellations Virgo and Coma Berenices. Unlike the Hubble ultra deep field I couldn't afford to keep the shutter open for days on. Still I was able to expose for about 40 minutes and got a picture that reveals dozens of galaxies. Notice the Markarian's Chain and the Siamese Twins. The field is approximately 6.4 x 4.2 degrees and north is up.

Charles and I met in my backyard last night to do some imaging and Joe dropped in as well. It was a strange night with some good clear periods followed by fast and slow moving clouds nearly totally obscuring the sky at times. I tried imaging Venus and Pleiades first and the attached are some of the results.

It is tough to find a hole these days but I managed to get some clear air for a while last night. It was quite moist but the seeing was not bad and I got my personal best image of Saturn before it socked in at 2AM. I like the color which is just as it came out of the camera.

Thanks to a 200mm camera lens, John McDonald's go-to capabilities, and a bit of luck I was successful in imaging 2006 VV2. Here is the result of 24 stacked (and cropped) images showing asteroid 2006 VV2.

Two sets of images taken March 17 & 18
RGB 15 minutes each using an AP 155mm at F5.25
Images combined using RegiStar, with final processing in Photoshop Elements

I took this image on Saturday, March 17 from latitude 37 degrees 48 minutes, longitude 119 degrees 04 minutes near June Lake, California, in the eastern Sierras, so I had the advantage of about 12 extra degrees of latitude.
Exposures were RGB 15 minutes each using a 155mm AP at F5.25
Final processing was one in Photoshop elements.

Last evening the usual clouds were missing and I took the opportunity to do some imaging from my backyard. The transparency was not great and there was some wind at times but it was better than most of the recent nights.

Astronomy Caf� has been rained out or clouded out for so long, we can't remember the last time we actually did some observing on Monday night.  This evening presented us with mostly clear skies - an opportunity we simply couldn't pass up.  I decided to concentrate on imaging Saturn, since this shallower ring orientation is something new for me. Both the planetary shadow on the rings and the rings' shadow on the planet are visible, as well as a mid-latitude band and a polar region.

This is the best shot out of a dozen I took from Mt. Tolmie.

John McDonald and I went to the DAO on Thursday night. I set up in the lower parking lot which in retrospect was probably not the best decision due to the city lights. Here's my image of the Seven Sisters.

Here is my picture of the Orion Nebula taken on Thursday night from the DAO. I meant to take short exposures in order to image the trapezium but I forgot. As a result the core is overexposed. Colour balance is always challenging with my Canon 20Da and I hope that my choice of colour temperature is pleasing.

Here are two images of Comet McNaught taken from Mount Tolmie. The first is a combination of six images in Images Plus and the second is one image. All images were exposed at 1/5 th second at ISO 250 with my new Nikon D80 and a Nikkor 70-300mm lens at full telephoto.

Burrr!!!!! Was it ever cold up there!

Gearing up this morning paid off. I went straight from work at 1630 to the Duntz Head viewpoint and set up. What a lovely evening! It would have been worth it even without the comet. But I agree with Guy. It was very cold.

Here are my first two processed images. The first is just the comet, slightly cropped from full frame, and the second is a wider view with Venus and McNaught. There's more detail in the tail, and I'll have to work to tease it out. Equipment for these was my Olympus E-500 with a Zuiko 45-150 zoom. Being mounted on a steady tripod, I took advantage of a smaller aperture to ensure a good focus and hitting the resolution "sweet spot". Jim Cliffe

This image is taken from my back porch, which looks westward where the Sun had just set. I scanned the western horizon with my 9x63 binoculars, and there it was - Comet McNaught! When I looked again without the binoculars, it was an easy target. The comet has a very bright core, and a super long and broad tail.

Joe Carr

Wow, it is a beautiful comet. I went to Moss Rock at sundown today and got several images of the comet. Here is a sample.

Saxe Point turned out to be great. Attached are some images from tonight. Ron was pretty impressed for the first time since I've been dragging him out to look at the stars...:)

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