Doncaster Astronomical Society

5.11.09 Thursday

2009-11-05T23:45:00.004Z

See the Observatory Log for more detail, but this is a picture of the arrangement in the new dome, taken this afternoon. I'm hoping I can attach the monitor to the pier so it leaves the table top and cupboard top clear.
We will be able to use the table for laptops when we work there, and will be able to drive the monitor from laptops too.
Brian

Problems -Force En Majeure

2009-11-04T14:19:00.006Z

Due to primordial forces beyond the control of mortal man,

there will NOT be a workshop on Thursday 5 November.

However, there will be a minutes silence at

7 pm for the oppressed and downtrodden!

SAO68943 Chi Cygni

2009-11-02T23:55:00.006Z

This is a Mira type variable star with a very wide range of brightness, 5th to 12th or less. That's a variation of more than 3000 times.
John Cox is following it an I'm helping by taking pictures of it and its field every two weeks or so.
The first of these two pictures was taken in August and the second this Sunday night. The star is the one in the middle, in the second picture it has a flare round part of it which it didn't have in August. All the kit was the same though the exposure for the first was 10x120sec and for the second it was 15x60sec.
So what is the flare? It's on every one of the subs.
Brian

2009-11-01T11:01:00.001Z

This was the first Post on this Blog. Over 250 posts ago!

It shows the International space Station which

is getting brighter as they add on more bits.

It is now a faint Daylight object!

I am surprised at the number of people who have not seen it.

So if you live in England, particularly near Doncaster,

you will see it on:

14th November at 17:46, from SW to SE getting 36° high in the SE

The exact time will vary depending on where you are.

For an exact time, sign in at www.heavens-above.com

You will need to select a nearby town under configuration.

Photo D. Adshead

M42 - the first of the season

2009-10-30T00:51:00.007Z

Taken by Paul Booker with an 80ED on the Meade, using his DSLR. The exposure was 17x20sec, no darks or flats used, though they would have helped as there was a lot of noise. The session was curtailed at 3.30am by cloud, just as he'd got the guiding going too. It had been a good night till then, but we'd used it for visual work with several people there. M31 was magnificent said they, the dust lanes were seen too.
Focusing proved to be a problem though, better to use numbers for it but had to use the iterations method, adjust, take a picture, magnify, judge, adjust again, take a picture etc. Time consuming. I was in charge of that, and I couldn't see the dust lanes of M31 either.
Nonetheless, a creditable result for a first.

Solar activity at last

2009-10-28T13:24:00.004Z

I registered with an aurora watch site at Lancaster University about 18 months ago and never heard anything else till today, when I received an AuroraWatch red alert indicating a VERY LARGE increase in local activity. So I dusted the cobwebs off the celestron fitted the mylar filter and there was a sun spot,lets hope things are moving at last ! Regards Dave

M31 the Andromeda galaxy, a second try

2009-10-25T23:58:00.004Z

Taken on the 11th of October on a reasonably good night. The target was at the top of the sky but I couldn't see the Milky Way, so there was some haze to make things difficult.
Using the FLT98 and M25C I was able to get 14 frames of 600sec, the aim was to stack them by sigma combine and still get some depth. I'd tried adding 5 min frames in pairs to get a series of 10 min frames but it didn't seem to work well so this was done with 10 min frames. Guiding was done with an H9C, nice wide field to choose stars to guide by, using two instances of AA4. Focused with a bit more care than usual. Processed in AA4 and Photoshop7. I've been admonished for using 7 and told to upgrade to CS2 at least to make use of its 16bit capability, so I probably will. I have tried to get the centre of the galaxy in the centre of the frame this time.

Olhos d'Agua - 9.10.09

2009-10-15T14:36:00.007+01:00

A picture of the only members to turn up for an extraordinary meeting of the society on the beach of Olhos d'Agua on Friday 9th October 09.
The Bookers arrived early by plane. The Snowdens arrived late (but they did come by Taxi) and Brian sort of appeared out of the ether.
The meeting started with a drink, then had a break for a drink and concluded with a drink, to the satisfaction of all members.

Paul

update on the new observatory

2009-10-11T08:48:00.004+01:00

Having spent a couple of days down at the observatory last week I can now say it appears to work as it should.Problems I thought we had, turned out not to be so and after a visit from Neil and (stepping outside the box) to view things differently the dome now has a desktop pc controlling the rotation,shutter control and sky6 planetarium software.
A few things still need attention , some of the settings need tweaking as the vixen scope is not in the centre of the shutter on a full 360 degree rotation and we need to replace the 17 inch monitor with a flat screen to give us more space but basically we are getting there.
Next project is remote access and webcasting any volunteers ?

Completely off topic but

2009-10-09T15:17:00.005+01:00

Completely off topic but let me introduce you to a new member of the society.After visiting the observatory today a group of children booked in for a star and moon session honoured our esteemed observatory director by naming the latest addition to the school vivarium after him.The beastie is a bearded dragon now named Brian.

IC 1848 The Baby or Soul nebula

2009-09-28T19:17:00.001+01:00

The Baby nebula in Cassiopeia also known as the Soul nebula, the catalogue designation IC 1848 actually refers to the open star cluster in the Baby's belly. Perhaps I should have gone wider on this to give the baby some room to kick and breath.

Constellation: Cassiopeia. Distance 7000 light years.

Imaging scope - Takahashi FSQ-106ED f5 refractor at prime focus

Camera - Canon 40D

Filter - Astronomik CLS

Autoguiding - TMB 80 mm f6 refractor, Starlight Express Lodestar camera, EQ6 Pro mount and PHD guiding software.

Exposure - 32 x 300 seconds

Dark frames, Flats and Dark Flats used

Software - Nebulosity for focus, acquisition, aligning and stacking. Photoshop CS3 with Noel's Actions and Russell Croman's Gradient Xterminator.

Temperature 12° to 9° Celsius

NGC 6992 and NGC 6995 the Veil nebula, part 2

2009-09-27T14:34:00.001+01:00

Further subexposures added to the image in the posting below.

Constellation: Cygnus. Distance 1,400 light years.

Imaging scope - Takahashi FSQ-106ED f5 refractor at prime focus

Camera - Canon 40D

Filter - Astronomik CLS

Autoguiding - TMB 80 mm f6 refractor, Starlight Express Lodestar camera, EQ6 Pro mount and PHD guiding software.

Exposure - 36 x 300 seconds

Dark frames, Flats and Dark Flats used

Software - Nebulosity for focus, acquisition, aligning and stacking. Photoshop CS3 with Noel's Actions and Russell Croman's Gradient Xterminator.

Temperature 12° to 9° Celsius

NGC 6992 and NGC 6995 the Veil nebula

2009-09-25T13:38:00.003+01:00

This is the eastern part of the Veil nebula a supernova remnant found in Cygnus, this section of the nebula is sometimes known as the Face, and is catalogued with two separate NGC numbers. I only captured 4 x 300 second subexposures before the clouds paraded across the sky and put paid to any more imaging, on one of these subs you can see evidence of an aeroplane.

Constellation: Cygnus. Distance 1,400 light years.

Imaging scope - Takahashi FSQ-106ED f5 refractor at prime focus

Camera - Canon 40D

Filter - Astronomik CLS

Autoguiding - TMB 80 mm f6 refractor, Starlight Express Lodestar camera, EQ6 Pro mount and PHD guiding software.

Exposure - 4 x 300 seconds

Dark frames, Flats and Dark Flats used

Software - Nebulosity for focus, acquisition, aligning and stacking. Photoshop CS3 with Noel's Actions and Russell Croman's Gradient Xterminator.

Temperature 10° Celsius

M57 The Ring Nebulae

2009-09-24T16:35:00.003+01:00

I finally found time to process images taken a few weeks ago here is a image of M57 also known as the ring nebulae it's the first time I've tried this subject and still managed to mess it up, the camera was set to jpeg so we are starting with compressed data it's a steep learning curve trying to remember everything especially in the dark' I still need the camera handbook anyhow 14 frames of M57 5 flats and 5 darks using Deepsky stacker.
Regards Dave

NGC 7635 The Bubble nebula

2009-09-22T12:40:00.032+01:00

The Bubble nebula in Cassiopeia near to the boundary with the constellation Cepheus. As the image scale would be small in frame even when imaging at f8, I decided to make a cosy twosome with a near neighbour the open star cluster M52.

Constellation: Cepheus. Distance 2,500 light years.

Imaging scope - Takahashi FSQ-106ED with Extender-Q 1.6X at f8

Camera - Canon 40D

Filter - Astronomik CLS

Autoguiding - TMB 80 mm f6 refractor, Starlight Express Lodestar camera, EQ6 Pro mount and PHD guiding software.

Exposure - 24 x 360 seconds

Dark frames.

Software - Nebulosity for focus, acquisition, aligning and stacking. Photoshop CS3 with Noel's Actions and Russell Croman's Gradient Xterminator.

Temperature 12° C to 9.6° C

CP8841 - 19.9.09 Saturday

2009-09-21T23:01:00.009+01:00

This is CP8841, the Bill and Ben mallet, renown for its similarity to a cooking pan, taken at Kelling Heath, about midday on the 19th of September, using a Samsung M110, set at Auto and carefully focused by auto. The sky was clear and without a sign of haze. The processing was done in Photoshop7 and uncropped but reduced in size for transmission. You may notice some camera shake, fortunately that couldn't be avoided.
Brian

Carry on camping

2009-09-21T15:05:00.006+01:00

What an eventful weekend, on our way to the Kelling Heath autumn equinox sky camp we had a close encounter with an articulated lorry full of a famous brand of pickle, our car was crunched and had a nasty scrape and dint on the bumper and over the wheel arch. After exchanging insurance details and reporting to the pru we decided the car seemed safe to drive so we wiped off the pickle onions and continued our journey.

On arrival we passed our previous number 1 and 2 with their tent laid out on the ground and scratching their heads staring at the pieces of material and collection of poles. We popped up our tent (literally) and went to their rescue, they had only been trying for several hours to put up the tent inside out! they had no mallet and was using a pan to bang in the pegs! After a good laugh we went off to the camp bar until it was dark.

Fortunatly we were blessed with a clear sky and after a spell of laying on the lilos stargazing at the milky way and looking at Jupiter through the huge binoculars, we ventured around the field observing through various telescopes and chatting to other astronomers. We enjoyed great views of the veil and the blinking nebula and the blue snowball through a Dobsonian. Phil was dying to have a session on an 8" refractor he had admired earlier and spent 20 mins observing Jupiter.
Brian arrived on Saturday and we had a good hunt around the site looking at Astrophysics and Titan mounts and asking how good they were. I had a look through a solar scope and saw a small prominence.

We enjoyed the afternoon lectures by Bob Mizon and felt blessed that our light pollution problem has been vastly improved. Brian was astounded to be asked advice from Nik Szymanek after we had been to his Astrophotography lecture. We finished the day over a leisurely drink and dinner in the restaurant chatting with other astronomers about the merits of a new astrotrac tracking mount. I was impressed with its design and it could be something to aspire to in the future. truly portable. Unfortunately it was cloudy and a sea fret came in once it was dark. The clouds cleared briefly to give us only 30 minutes of hazy constellations to look at, so we finished the evening sat under an outside lamp chatting while Phil and Colin played chess.

We enjoyed alfresco breakfasts together and sunny afternoons, David and I walked across the colourful heathland and through the woodland to the station, where lots of people were dressed in 1940s clothes. It was lovely stepping back in time, listening again to the 1940's music as we peered over the bridge at the steam train arriving at the platform stacked with old trunks and suitcases. It had a war time feel with men dressed in WW2 uniforms and ex army motorbikes and 1940's cars parked outside the station.

On the way home we called at Blakeney and Wells next to the Sea and finished our weekend with fish and chips sitting on the harbour wall admiring all the fishing boats and sailing dingys bobbing about on the sea. It had definatly been an eventful weekend. Lesley

Observing Report of 12.9.09

2009-09-14T23:33:00.006+01:00

Austerfield.
Very clear skies gave us a wonderful evenings viewing. Jupiter
so bright we watched Io's shadow slowly cross its disc over about three
hours. Also roamed about the Veil Nebula amazing sight as the telescope
tracked through it guided by Phil.
Many thanks to both Phil and Brian.
You are certainly worth a few jaffa cakes.
Elaine

When the visual observers had gone, about 1am, Paul set to with his DSLR and the 80ED on Geraldine, and took 25x120sec frames of M45 the Pleiades. Guiding was with the H9C and the Meade.

North America and the Pelican in Cygnus

2009-09-13T12:46:00.013+01:00

This area of nebulosity sits near the star Deneb, in the constellation of Cygnus the Swan, however Deneb is not in this photograph. I've not cropped it other than nibbled a few alignment pixels from each edge, this is the way I composed and framed the image.

As usual, I was using software called Nebulosity to focus, but for the first time, I'm also using it to acquire the image and in conjunction with PHD guiding software, the mount was dithered between exposures. In the past I've always used EOS Utility to acquire the image and I have never dithered before. Well, not in the way I mean here.

Modification of the camera greatly improved its ability to catch those Ha photons and also made it a bit easier to process the image and bring out the colour. I don't consider this photograph to be perfect, I can see a few faults but as my experience grows with the modified camera, these should diminish.

Constellation: Cygnus. Distance 1,800 light years.
Imaging scope - Takahashi FSQ-106ED f5 refractor at prime focus
Camera - Canon 40D
Filter - Astronomik CLS
Autoguiding - TMB 80 mm f6 refractor, Imaging Source DBK 21AF04.AS camera, EQ6 Pro mount and PHD guiding software.
Exposure - 29 x 300 seconds
Dark frames, Flats used.
Software - Nebulosity for focus, acquisition, aligning and stacking. Photoshop CS3 with Noel's Actions and Russell Croman's Gradient Xterminator.

M27

2009-09-12T11:00:00.004+01:00

Reworking the version on my Gallery, with Ha in the Red, OIII in the Green and OIII in the Blue, using Steve Cannistra's method of making a false green out of OIII.
Lots of work involved but as I said of the other one, I prefer the "natural" colours, if natural is the right term.
Less star infested scenes would suit the process more, but it was worth the effort to try the process.
This version, I think, brings out more effectively the purpose of the process, which is to gain more detail in the picture, though I shouldn't really have to say that, should I?
It was taken with the WO FLT98 and M25C on the 20th of August 09, using Ha and OIII filters. I used the green channel for both Ha and OIII, adding rather than sigma combining as I usually do.

Brian

NGC 6888 the Crescent Nebula or Van Gogh's Ear

2009-08-30T23:26:00.004+01:00

This is a try at narrowband colouring. The picture consists of an Ha and an OIII version of the Crescent taken on different nights, the Ha on 090601 and the OIII on 090720. They are slightly different in size, possibly because I didn't adjust the flattener to the same degree for them both. Getting them to match took some effort, different scale and different angle too.
I used the Steve Cannastra method of producing a synthetic green from the Ha and OIII, then coloured them. The Ha frame has much more in it than the OIII one, so loaded the final result in its favour, I should have spent more time on the OIII,I suppose.
Nonetheless this is the result after ages fiddling about. To get it exactly right, I'd tried it before without success, I printed out the method from his site and also all the other pages where he says, it should look like this etc., to save me getting lost in the processing. And finally it came down to adjusting the colours to get what I thought to be relatively pleasing, and I'm not good with colours, as everyone tells me.
Towards the bottom left you'll see the small cluster, IC4996.
The usual kit was used to take the pictures, a WO FLT98 and flattener and the M25C, sat on, and guided by, a Meade 14", from Austerfield.

This is an alternative version. All sorts of colour combinations are possible, most quite strange.
Brian

Dark Skies of Dorset

2009-08-29T13:55:00.003+01:00

On our recent trip to darkest Dorset the sky was the blackest I've ever seen, just to try and photograph the milky way I pointed my old olympus camera skywards and took twelve exposures at f2.8 for 10 seconds each then twelve darks at the same, no flats, and this is what came out after stacking with deepsky stacker software.The area of sky was somewhere near Cassiopeia but just laying the camera on the grass pointing skywards it's difficult to say.Regards Dave

My go at M33 the Triangulum galaxy

2009-08-22T17:37:00.012+01:00

I finally managed to image this member of the Local Group of galaxies, also known as NGC 598 and the Pinwheel galaxy.

You have to admit it's a beautiful looking spiral but a bit faint, I can't see it as such through my 106 mm refractor. As it's face on, the magnitude of 5.7 is spread pretty thinly over an area of 73' x 45', also the type of sky I'm looking through may have something to do with it. I've read that it can be seen with the naked eye from a dark site, maybe one day.

This is the resultant image, I'm certain that this could be improved with more subexposures, which hopefully I'll get over the coming weeks. This galaxy has little knots of emission nebula running through it, but not in my case because I'm still using a standard DSLR which isn't very sensitive to the light from emission nebulae.

Constellation: Triangulum. Distance 2.4 to 3 million light years.
Imaging scope - Takahashi FSQ-106ED f5 refractor
Camera - Canon 40D
Filter - Astronomik CLS
Acquisition - Canon EOS Utility
Autoguiding - TMB 80 mm f6 refractor, Starlight Express Lodestar guide camera, EQ6 Pro mount and PHD guiding software.
Exposure - 14 x 360 seconds subexposures
Darks and Flats used.
Software - Nebulosity for focus, aligning and stacking. Photoshop CS3 with Noel's Actions and Russell Croman's Gradient Xterminator.

Temperature 12° to 10.5° Celsius

Solar activity in Richmond

2009-08-21T13:39:00.018+01:00

I recently spent a few hours wandering around the North Yorkshire market town of Richmond with my camera, whereupon my eye was attracted to this sign on this cottage gable end.

A closer look shows that it was put there by the Automobile Association and commemorates the total solar eclipse of June 1927, which lasted for 24 seconds.

Keeping to the solar theme, I then happened upon these Georgian sundials affixed to this cottage.

M33 - the Triangulum galaxy - taken 24.7.09

2009-08-17T10:08:00.010+01:00

This, of M33, was taken some time ago but not fiddled with with any care till now and it still needs some work done on it in terms of processing, but I'm not a gifted worker in that field so it'll come slowly and in an haphazard fashion. It is more difficult than at first thought being of low surface brightness, so needing long exposure, and with less than enough I tend to overcompensate by excessive stretching, and that's never good for a picture.
The instrument was a WO FLT98 with flattener and the camera an SX M25C. It was acquired and processed mostly in AstroArt4 and Photoshop7. The exposure, in hazy though cloudless skies was 13x300sec. It was really too low in the sky for good work, so I'll do it all again later in the year.
I've reprocessed it a bit to increase the blue content in the arms, is it noticable? Compare it with the one below.
Brian

Him of Worksop suggests it would look better if cropped, and here it is, so modified (mutilated?).
Brian