Backyard observing with my C8

Last Friday night I imaged for the first time from my backyard with the SBIG camera and did so on my 8" Celestron SCT, another first. Fall weather is definitely setting in. I could feel the moisture in the air and the temperature was much lower earlier in the evening than on other nights I've observed. I put together my setup with the idea that I would finish by around midnight to avoid any risk of dew affecting my optics or my camera.

Doing the setup for the first time with new equipment took awhile longer than usual of course and there was some learning involved. I had to use all three of my eleven pound counter-weights to balance the telescopes and accessories (C8 with the Orion 80mm guide scope attached, ST-402ME, flip-mirror, 30mm eyepiece) properly. I did the polar alignment with just two stars and it seemed to be adequate. What made it difficult was that I hadn't taken time to align my guide scope and C8, which made centering the alignment stars difficult. Using the APO I typically use a reflex sight, but do not yet I have it mounted on the C8 (something I need to do but it isn't trivial). As expected, with the C8's longer focal length I don't have the wider field of view that I have with the 80mm refractor, making finding the stars more difficult. It took longer than it should have, but I got it done.

My targets were to be Jupiter and the Dumbell nebula (which I've imaged with the 80mm refractor). Unfortunately, Jupiter passed behind the trees before I could get my scope set up, leaving me only a narrow window later in the night to capture it as it passed through a narrow gap between two other trees. I moved on to the Dumbell nebula and my alignment was good enough to put it in the scope on the first try, though some centering was necessary. I took a quick 30" monochrome image of it and was struck immediately by the higher level of background noise which I believe is associated with the light pollution in the city. I set up the auto-guiding and took a 120" image and found it to be decent enough to go ahead with an RGB image. Again I limited it to 120" and a version of it is shown above. Focus was good based upon the use of the Bahtinov mask, but this image has the appearance of being a bit out of focus; I believe (hope) that this is just a function of the poor seeing conditions. I am pleased with the fact that I fairly easily found and imaged this object with the 2000mm focal length C8 after being told by more experienced people of how difficult it is. It definitely makes me want to use the C8 more often in the future on the smaller objects. You can go to my earlier posting with the Dumbell through the 80mm refractor to appreciate the difference in the size of the object in the picture.

I did capture Jupiter in the narrow window available to me later that evening. However, as I half expected, it was way too bright for my camera even at the shortest exposure time. When I processed the image later and reduced the brightness I could barely make out the bands in the atmosphere. To try to address this in the future I've ordered a polarizing filter that should allow me to reduce the brightness up to 40%. I can also try to stop-down my aperture. Unfortunately, I apparently have no ability to adjust the gain on the ST-402. I'd like to hear other recommendations if anyone cares to comment.

Unfortunately clouds and rain are moving in and I will not be able to image again for the foreseeable future. I'm still hoping for an opportunity in October on the east side of the mountains.

Orion Captured in Color

I spent last night at the White River Sno-park about 6 miles east of Government camp on Hwy 35. It's just a big parking lot which is almost completely unvisited this time of the year. Of course my goal was to complete the quest that began on Sunday to image M42 in Orion. This time I powered down the computer with about 72% computer battery life remaining (around midnight) and waited for Orion to come up over the eastern hills. I spent my battery's first 28% on the Veil (West) Nebula after having captured the "East" version last Sunday. That image is as yet unprocessed because I spent all of my time so far on M42.

I'm learning something new each time I go out. I learned this time how to use the "auto-grab" feature to capture color images... manually selecting the filter before the "grab". I took exposures at 5", 15", 30", 60", 90" and 120" and found that blooming (over-exposure) of stars was very bad on the blue filter at 120" and bad at 90". When I got back I found that they were also present at 60". After seeing the blooming I spent the rest of the night gathering 30" exposures with RGB and Clear filters, getting about twenty four exposures in all (12 minutes). The challenge now is finding the best way to calibrate, register, stack, and RGB-combine all of them. With the software I have (CCDOps and DeepSkyStacker) it looks like a very difficult task.

I did just find out that I can easily fix the blooming artifacts using a utility in CCDOps and this has enabled me to produce the image above from the single 120" exposure. Sorry... no RG colorblind version yet. Had I know they would have been this easy to fix I would have taken more of them. Given that I have six times more data than what is contained in the image above, I believe I should be able to improve the image significantly with more work... but it won't be any time soon. I think this is why most imagers talk about image processing being their "winter project".

Wind and the moon are returning, so last night was my last night imaging with the 80mm refractor for at least another month. If the weather ends up being good, I'll go to SkyView Acres in October. I may try to set up my 8" SCT in the back yard (moon or no moon) if the weather permits, just to start debugging that setup and appreciating the difficulties associated with a longer focal length scope.

Orion the Hunted

I just returned today from a new observation site (for me) called Skyview Acres near Goldendale, WA. It is a piece of land owned by a Washington astronomy buff who bought it with the intent of using it to host star parties. I just went for one night (Sunday), however people were there from Thursday through Sunday nights. Sunday, as I had suspected, turned out to be the best night for observing/imaging with almost no wind, no significant dew and very clear, dark skies.

My main objective was to use my new color capability to image M42 in the constellation Orion (The Hunter). Unfortunately, with Orion coming up only after 1am and not getting reasonably high in the sky until about 2:30am, I ended up draining most of my battery life before 2:30am. I felt I was getting some very good images and was on a roll that was hard to stop. I powered down with about 18% battery life remaining, which I thought was enough, however shortly after I started imaging the computer automatically powered down and interrupted the imaging after the exposure with the green filter (leaving the blue not done). It was only a 30 second exposure, but I got a tantalizing taste of what Orion can be like on my camera. Despite my not taking the time to carefully center it, I got lucky and it was very well centered (amazing because it nearly fills the field of view). The red filter exposure is shown here with the contrast range increased to show detail in the outer boundaries (saturating detail in the core). Amazing! I've got to get back to this and this time save my battery power!

Okay, now for those good images I was speaking of... at the top, after M42, is the Pelican nebula followed by a blue version for the red-green color-blind people of the world (like my two brothers). Following this are (likewise paired with blue versions) by the Veil Nebula (East), and then the Bubble Nebula. I used the new Bahtinov focus mask to establish my focus up-front, and I thought it was doing pretty well until I got home and saw the Bubble Nebula image... which seems to be a bit out of focus. I had rechecked the focus later in the night with the Bahtinov (before M42) and it looked good, so I don't really know what went wrong. Pelican and Veil are both pretty good.

I also imaged Pleaides, M78 (also in Orion), and M1 (the Crab Nebula), but those did not seem worth publishing here. Crab doesn't have a lot of color, but has a lot of detail that is worth going back and imaging with longer exposures. Pleaides is just tough because it is so bright. M78 also requires more time than I gave it.

The Skyview Acres site worked out very well and I'm looking forward to possibly going back in October. It is NOT a quiet site. There were two donkeys that brayed intermittently through the night. I can't describe the sound well here but I can say that it would have been a bit spooky if I hadn't known that they were donkeys and if it wasn't at the same time so funny! There were also dogs barking, coyotes yapping and howling, bird sounds, guns being fired in the distance, car noises in the distance, and in the morning a lot of noise with neighbors getting up and tending to chores. There was one bright yard light in the distance but it was very tolerable for people imaging (all three of us there were imaging). There was a lot of wildlife... I mentioned the coyotes, but there were a lot of deer walking through the meadows in both the evening and the morning after. I also saw a flock of six wild turkeys and a bunch of bluebirds (seldom seen here in the west side of the mountains).

Both of the other guys there had pickups towing trailers. I had the back of the Honda Civic to sleep in and no, I didn't get any sleep, despite trying after the computer battery died. I got home on a caffeine tablet and haven't yet gone to bed. I already thinking about how I might be able to get out and take another shot at Orion tomorrow night!

Color!

Being quite happy with my SBIG ST-402 camera in monochrome... and not liking several aspects of using the Nikon D40... I decided to order a color wheel for the ST-402 so that it can take RGB color images. Last night I tried it out at Larch Mountain and captured the image you see above of M27, the "Dumbell Nebula" (planetary nebula). Right now my image processing skills and software are not up-to-snuff, but I did what I could (what was obvious) with what I have and this was the result. There are couple of stars that saturated and flared and there is slight off-set in the red image (corrected as best I could in CCDOPS). The focus is not too bad, but should get better in the future, as I've ordered a Bahtinov focus mask, which is known to be quick and effective in establishing sharp focus. The image posted is only a combination of three images red, green and blue each 30 seconds in exposure. I a couple of other done the same way that I'll be processing and potentially stacking with each other. I did use guiding but used shorter duration exposures due to the wind being a bit of an issue (some fairly strong gusts).

Since the moon was coming up around 10pm, I didn't have much time. My priority was M27 and I'm pretty happy with my first color image on the ST-402. I did use some extra time to shoot the Veil Nebula (East) and the one brighter comet that is up now (2006-Christie/Aql). The Veil was a learning experience because it takes a longer exposure that most just to see that it is there, which makes framing the image more difficult. If I had had time I would have rotated the camera for the first time to improve framing since the Veil is long and skinny and needed to be horizontal (but was vertical in my view). Being faint, I needed more exposures that what I had time for. So... I'll come back to the Veil in the future.

The comet did not have a significant tail, so wasn't real exciting. I'll post it here once I finish the processing on it. Just out of curiosity, I did one set of RGB exposures, but don't expect to see anything much. I took seven monochrome exposures of 30" each. It was on this comet that my guiding started failing on me. I suspect it was due to either 1) shabby polar alignment (since it happened right away when I went to this new object, which was farther south), 2) poorer signal-to-noise ratio on the guide star due to the increasing moonlight... though perhaps both were at play.

The night was pretty peaceful with only a few other people up there. Two cars and a motorcycle were there when I first came and the two cars left, but a few more cars came after dark, making me wonder what the heck they would be doing up there. Two drove into the parking lot (fortunately not while I was taking light-exposures), one driving all the way down to the end and back and the other kindly turning around as soon as he saw me (an astronomer perhaps?). The only other annoyance were the planes routinely coming over, though I don't think they ended up having any effect on my images.

I wonder how many days we'll have left in September to do some decent astronomy. The prime time is Sept. 16th to 25th with no moon, but the near term shows some clouds moving in. If they go away sometime later next week I may just head out again for another imaging session, so stay tuned.

The Fearful Cry Out

Last week, when President Obama declared his intentions to give a “back to school” talk to American children, there was an outcry from some conservatives who felt that he was trying to “indoctrinate” their children with his political views. This was a week before they even new the detail of what he was to talk about. They called the speech “politically motivated”. Many declared that they would keep their children home from school because they shouldn’t have to listen to the speech.

While they looked like fools at the start, they look even more the part now after the speech has been made and the reality was that was not a political speech but rather one to inspire the children to stay in school and to work hard at it. Of course that is the way the Obama administration was describing the speech from the beginning. However, now the Republicans can claim (and some are claiming it) that Obama changed the speech because of the objections raised. Of course it can’t be proven that they are wrong and those who believe it was all political and indoctrination will go on believing it because that is what they want to believe.

I’m not sure if the republicans are “being political” about this or whether it is just that the very conservative representatives of the party who are just as intellectually handicapped as the people who elected them. These people are certainly not opposed to the principle of indoctrination because they use it themselves on their children… not just to infuse them with their politics but also to infuse them with their extreme form of religion. I wonder how many of those complaining did not even have their children in public schools, but instead home-school… the long-time refuge for the fearful.

What they are afraid of is actually what most people would call a “good education”… one which would encourage children to use their minds freely and fully to understand the world around them and to apply that knowledge to leading a better life. They don’t want their kids to have ideas of their own (at least when they conflict with those of their parents) and they want their children to be fearful and obedient. They are masters at controlling their children with fear and censorship to mold them into good, upstanding, bible thumping, all-American, “my country right or wrong”, kind of people. The people that are speaking out fear intelligent and educated people because intelligence and education undermine dogmas.

While I don’t doubt that most of these people genuinely feel that they are doing what is best for their children, I feel that in many cases they are not. Most conservatives will passionately defend the concept of individual freedom and yet at the same time they will shackle their children’s minds with dogma, censorship, and various forms of manipulation. Truly free people are free to gain experience of their own and decide from that experience what is worthy of belief. Good, supportive parents promote broad life experience and the uninhibited exploration of a range of ideas. It is through this process that you raise a child who lives a life custom-fit with his/her unique personality and abilities... a path more likely to lead to their happiness. Whatever such people choose to believe in the realm of politics or religion I’m fine with. What the machines of fundamentalism and the new republicans are turning out today are not free individuals… they are robots chanting the same mantra and continuing the same politics driven by fear.