Intentions - Dorado and LMC

So this time of year the LMC and SMC are high in the sky, so I should get out with Dobby and see what I can see from the backyard. Not this weekend though, sounds like some record breaking rain coming out way.

International "Observe the Moon" night

Saturday, Oct 28, 2017.
Missed it, for many reasons.
Principle reason, I was up in Canberra at a wedding - so I was a little preoccupied that evening.
Secondary reason, even if I had of had the presence of mind to glance upwards that evening, it was a cloudy evening with passing showers, so the weather continues to limit this year's observation record.
Tertiary reason, yeah - totes forgot.

October update

Another quiet month for Dobby. Poor thing must be feeling a bit forgotten.
Storms today, so no reprieve yet - there'll be no observation tonight.
The most astro thing this month was providing some moral and thinky support to T as he worked on an exam for his course. I learnt a bit more about Red-shift and heard about Lyman-break galaxies for the first time. Interesting!

Almost time...

DSN 43, Tidbinbilla, Canberra is looking after the comms with Cassini through to the end.

Last orders, please...

The last images have been taken by Cassini and are being received now.
The Bad Astronomer tweeted this out as an example of the gorgeous shots still being produced in these last hours.


(As an aside, reading some of the replies to his tweet it is amazing to see people who think these images are CGI, and the space program is fake. Words fail me... Incomprehensible? Tragic? )

Cassini's final days

Cassini just had it's last rendezvous with Saturn's moon Titan. This final encounter has adjusted Cassini's orbit so that it is now on its final plunge into Saturn's atmosphere on Friday (in 2 days, 13 hours and 2 minutes as I write this) That's just before 9pm, while the elimination finals footy is on. Sydney should beat Geelong.

It's going to be a strangely empty feeling knowing that there will not be new amazing photos of Saturn arriving almost daily. There'll still be good science being generated from all the data, and more images to be processed and released, but nothing brand new for at least another decade.

Bon voyage, Cassini

Voyager 2 Launch Anniversary

Oh, and Aug 20 was the 40th anniversary of the launch of Voyager 2. (I was 5 and a monthish years old then)

The amazing images sent back from its rendezvous with the outer giants some 10 years later were foundations for my love of astronomy.

Raise a glass to Voyager's 40 years and may she sail for many more!

Eclipse USA

The things we do...
It's 3am, and I'm on the couch watching the live coverage on BBC News on the ABC, with the live streams on the laptop beside me.

The American Eclipse of the USA

So the eclipse happens in the US tonight/tomorrow morning (1:30am onwards or so) (Tues 22 Aug), I guess I'll try to stay up and see what is on TV and what is being tweeted. Shame it isn't as convenient in timing as the Svalbard eclipse, then the kids could get involved.
It's a perfect setup for the yanks, running right across the country smack in the middle of the day. There should be some spectacular images recorded.

July update

The update is that ... there is not much to update.

July  has been typically cold and wet, which discourages this amature astronomer from getting outdoors with the telescope.

Even though tonight is quite clear after some rain this afternoon, it is all of 7 degrees C out there and it is a warm Wednesday evening in here.  So, warm wins again.

T and I are trying to work out another attempt at a dark sky evening at Ararat on the next meeting of New Moon and weekend - so here's hoping that works out.  Next New Moon is 21st of August...hmmm, a Monday - so the Saturday before that is the Waning Cresent which sets at... 1500!  So that should be OK.  Man this is easy with a few good apps on the phone these days.

Cassini is still going strong and has just completed ring crossing number 15 (out of 22).  The pictures being returned are awesome.

Juno and Junocam are still surving the environment at Jupiter, and last week images of the Great Red Spot were released that are a-maze-ing. 

Dark sky evening plans...

dichotomy

dʌɪˈkɒtəmi,dɪˈkɒtəmi/

noun

noun: dichotomy; plural noun: dichotomies

1.

a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.

Such as, for instance, how Winter provides beautiful long dark nights, with some interesting constellations and objects to check out ... but Melbourne provides nothing but bloody clouds whenever you want to try to get out to a dark sky on a particular Saturday evening.

Dammit.

Here's what it could have looked like...

Moon occults Regulus

I managed to get out and check out some of the occultation of Regulus last night.
I missed it disappearing behind the dark limb unfortunately, but was ready for its re-emergence just over a hour later.

I was looking right at the moon through my 25mm ep, allowing me to keep an eye on the entire disk. The sudden "switching on" of the tiny intense blue light of Regulus was really striking! I took a few photos and videos after watching it for a short while, so the photos show the star not right on the edge any more.












I also took some other photos as well...

Cassini back in touch

Phew! It was just announced on twitter that Cassini is back in touch and is now downloading data via DSN Goldstone.

Another 22 loops and dives through the rings and then end-of-mission into Saturn's atmosphere.

Cassini - Dive! Dive! Dive!

Wow - as I'm typing this, Cassini is 3 minutes from diving through Saturn's rings.  It will be using it's high gain antenna as a 'shield'.

This will be really interesting.

Also, the NASA team recently released this awesome photo of Earth and the Moon taken through the gap in Saturn's rings.  Beautiful and so awesome.

10 seconds to Dive.

Cassini just tweeted - "...instruments are on, but we're out of contact with Earth. Here we gooooooo!"

This is cool, but I'm going to miss Cassini and the amazing images and science it has produced.

Jupiter, Centaurus and a bit of Scorpius

Inspired by the three days of ABC's Stargazing Live, and finally free of Dance-Dad duties and cloudy skies - I got Dobby out into the back yard last night for a look at a few objects.

With Jupiter in opposition (on the 8th) it is big and bright and rising at just the right time to be nice and high by the later evening, so that's the first target.

I was getting a lot of shimmer in my image, which made pushing the magnification up a bit pointless. However, there were moments of clarity where the bands were clear and sharply defined. Three moons were visible to the left of Jupiter, and yet again I experienced a little thrill to see this system. I was not able to identify the GRS, so a bit disappointed there, but moving on.

I played around with the filters a bit as well, and tried a few photos with the mobile holder device which I'm steadily redesigning in my head, as this prototype is more problematic than solution.

However, with all the time spent fiddling around with these things, I noticed an interesting event - the missing Galian moon was emerging from the right of Jupiter's disc! Very cool! As I watched, it changed from a bright speck on the edge of the planet to a distinct object and extended away from the planet in the same plane as the other moons. Nice, now I'll have to keep a watch out for other similar events on the calendars.

Some research after identified that the moon was Europa (my favorite) which had been passing between Jupiter and Earth (but I couldn't make it out in the shimmer) swinging out back into view.

After that excitement, it was on to the next target. Dr Brian Cox had mentioned Omega Centauri on StarGazing a couple of times, and got me thinking that I hadn't checked it out for a long while, and I wasn't even sure how to find it again. So it seemed a good inspiration to move on to the second round of constellation refreshers - Centaurus.
Before launching straight into star hopping, I spent some time staring straight up and comparing what I saw to the image on SkyEye. I still can't see a Centaur in it, but I'm more confident I can trace all the significant stars from Rigel Kent through Hadar and then hooking around and over Crux. I didn't check for other named stars, though - I must remember to add that to my 'training'.

Then on to Omega Centauri, star hopping from Rigel Kent for the practice. Got a real crick in the neck, as this was nearly at zenith so I had to get right down and look up through the spotter scope.

Other than the contortions, finding Omega Centauri (NGC5139) wasn't too hard. I even deliberately moved away from it and star hopped to it again.

The light conditions unfortunately made it not as spectacular as it should be, but even then it's impressive. Nice to think I'm looking at the remains of a dwarf galaxy that our galaxy has stripped much of its mass from. Also interesting that I'm looking right at (well, in the direction of) a black hole of some 40,000 SM.

I've been meaning to start collecting the Caldwell Catalogue, so this can be the first official tick on that list...
Omega Centauri, C80 - Tick!

Next session will be to explore Centaurus more and tick off some other targets.

Then I noticed on the SkyEye map that M83 was close to where I was looking, so I decided to have a go at that. It looked like it might be difficult again, it was even closer to the zenith, so I tried out the indirect navigation mode on SkyEye. With rubber bands I attached the mobile to the spotter scope, and then swung around and registered Jupiter, Spica, Antares, and Rigel Kent to get it oriented. It seemed to know where it was pointing accurately after that, so my failure to find M83 was either because it wasn't dark enough, or I just failed. It was getting late...

The final random target was M4, which I was reminded of while registering Antares. I was intending to play around a bit more with SkyEye indirect mode, but then the battery died. Fortunately, it is not hard to find, as it is very close to Antares. Again, the light conditions made it dim, but still was nice to see. Looking at my notes later, it's been almost exactly a year since I last looked at it!

Before going in for the night, I had a last look at Jupiter and noticed that it was much steadier now. While it may have been an improvement in the atmospheric conditions, I'm sure now that Dobby being at ambient temperature helped as well. Another reason to plan ahead whenever possible and get the scope cooling down for a while. Last night was unplanned though, so you get that.

I'm really Jones-ing for a dark sky now.

Getting focused

Here's something interesting... just read about a "Bahtinov mask"

It is placed in front of the primary mirror (not sure if that has to be right in front of, or up at the aperture is OK) and the offset grids create diffraction spikes in the image of a bright object than you can then line up to ensure perfect focus.

I wonder if I can make one? Hmm...

Eta Carina

Tonight is a full moon, or nearly, and finally a clear night after a few warm evenings that were still clouded over.  I was curious how clear the Carina Nebula would be when the moon was so bright, and it would also be good practice to try to locate it again in more difficult circumstances.

It did take a while to find again, even though I had a fairly good idea of where to start.  I initially tried to start with the star at the bottom (or right when it is rotated) of the False Cross asterism that makes the end of Carina and then move down from there.  I did get a small distraction from NGC xxxx which is a nice open cluster, and then I moved down from there but I started to feel lost, as it proved to be a long way down.  I then tried jumping to where I thought I remembered it being but ended up in a relatively featureless bit of sky - or so I thought until I stumbled across what I think was the centre of a tight globular cluster that showed as a very interesting small blurry patch.  I'll have to look that up on Stellarium.  Unfortunately, I knocked the scope when changing an eye piece and lost track of the object before I could even try to memorise where on the sky I was looking.

I then noticed that my averted vision was picking up some faint spots halfway between Crux and the False Cross that looked intruiging, so I swung the scope around to the best of those and immediately landed on NGC xxxx, which is another open cluster.  Recognising that from last time, I was then able to track the scope a bit higher, and finally landed on the Carina Nebula with Eta Carina shining bright orange in the middle of it.  The nebula was almost impossible to see, and without the memory of last evening observing it I would have had a hard time identifying it.  The nebulosity was very faint, and I could only just make out the structure of the lobes and the dust lanes across the middle of it.

I spent most of my time here switching between my 30mm looking at the big picture, and then zooming in with my 13mm and 6mm and then added the Barlow for 2x magnification.  I think the best results this evening were with the 13mm plus the Barlow, which allowed very nice viewing of the faint nebula and Eta Carina in the middle, with the lobes of its nova event just discernable.  I also spent a lot of time just staring at the sky and double checking through the finder-scope the location of th the nebula, so I will be able to find it much easier next time.  

The evening closed after midnight with some faint whispy clouds moving in from the South West, so it was time to pack it in.

Getting familiar with Carina

This year, as part of my constellation upgrade process I'm planning to pay more attention to a single constellation each time I go out to observe.  That way I can get familiar with it before I then move on.

I started last night with Carina, which is a pretty big constellation, so I think it will take a couple of evenings to cover fully

Starting at Canopus, I then hopped up to Avoir and underneath that found the open cluster NGC2516. From there I hopped across to Aspidiske and worked my way down the open clusters NGC3144, NGC3293, NGC3532, and NGC3766 that wrap around the asterism 'the false cross' and down to the real cross Crux. (and a quick diversion into splitting the binary stars in Acrux)

The find of the night was stumbling across a nebula with a orange star in it. I'm sure I should know it, so I'm going to research and put my findings here...

(some research later...)
OK - wow.  I guess this is the result of mostly observing in city skies and usually with some moon interfering as well, but last night the quarter moon had already set - leaving the sky dark enough to make finding NGC 3372 easy.  Otherwise known as the Carina Nebula, the Grand Nebula or maybe the Eta Carina Nebula!  Returning to this object is going to be a regular challenge now as I continue to add hits to my NebulosCity roster.  It is a beautiful structure, showing three lobes, divided by a distinct dust lane down the middle.  I'm looking forward to looking at it more closely under better conditions and seeing even more details.
Its interesting that I haven't identified this nebula before especially since I went looking for Eta Carina some time ago, and found it.  The night must have been too bright to make out the nebula around it.  I've got this one dialed in now, so I'll be returning to it as frequently as I return to Orion.

Then I finished up the evening looking for a planetary nebula above Carina - but I was getting tired and packed it in before succeeding, those can be for another evening.

Constellations

Stepped out the back the other night for some Mk 1 eyeball observations. I've decided that this year I want to memorise more of the constellations, as I've only really committed the basic landmarks to memory.

So looking up the other night I easily spotted Orion, and then above that is Canis Major - signposted by Sirius. Those ones I've got down, but I do want to memorise the significant stars:

In Orion:
Betelgeuse - is obvious
Rigel - I know
Bellatrix - I am learning to remember
Saiph - Is newer to me

Then over to Canopus, bright on the South Western horizon. So that's the start of Carina which is a very long constellation stretching right up to near the zenith. The key points of this constellation are the big hop from Canopus to the next star, and then the bend around to the four stars that make the rhomboid at the end, often mistaken by the kids for the Southern Cross (Crux).

(Screen snaps from Stellarium)

Fading into history

Only 12 people have ever walked on the Moon, and now there are only 6 of them left alive after Gene Cernan died yesterday, aged 82.

Cernan stepped off the Moon on December 19, 1972. I was only 6 months old.

The next manned NASA mission to the moon might be, *might be*, 2030.

Oh! *That* faint dot of light!

Bingo! Spotted Neptune last night!
With the help of the laptop and Stellarium next to the telescope, and the assurance that it had to be one of these spots close to Venus - I finally identified the right stars around Venus to be able to star-hop to the right small bluish dot.
Even better, I was able to capture the moment using my new phone holder thingy. The thingy still needs some work to improve the view port, the centering of the camera, the securing of the phone and the stability of the unit over the eyepiece barrel. However, it did make lining it up and holding it still easier, so that is a good start.
The pictures are not well exposed, and the stars are streaking a bit, but given the dodgy seeing conditions near the horizon and the amateur equipment I'm pretty happy with the fact that I still managed to capture the spirit of the moment - having Venus and Neptune visible in the same eyepiece. They were close too, as these images were taken through my 17mm ep.

So that's a big TICK for another planet spotted.

Actually, that's all of them. Wow!

(although I'm still not 100% about Uranus through my own telescope, but I have seen it through an old refractor up at Mt Stromlo observatory about 30 years ago)

The search continues...

So last night had another look for Neptune. Although there wasn't the smoke haze this time, it was a full moon - so still hard to see anything faint. So I'm still not sure I have seen Neptune, although I might've as I had a real good look around the part of the sky where it should be. But if it was one of the faint specs I looked at, I couldn't distinguish it at all.
So tonight I'll see if I can spot the spec near Venus. Amazingly it is the third clear evening in a row, although there is a distinct haze low on the horizon.
I also couldn't see comet Honda45 either, but I wasn't expecting too much there.

Mobile phone eyepiece mount - Mk1

So last night I finally started making a thingy to hold my mobile steady and level against the eyepiece of Dobby to make taking photos easier.





So far this prototype needs something to make it fit tighter over the EP barrel, and probably some screws to finger tighten it as well.

The search for Neptune

Last night I started the search for planet 8.

On Jan 12 Neptune and Venus are going to be in very close proximity, hopefully visible in the same eyepiece.
So last night I decided to take advantage of a nice evening to drag Dobby out to the back yard and check out Venus, Mars and then see if I could pick out Neptune in the sky between.
Unfortunately, the transparency was not great. It is low on the horizon, so there is a lot of bad air, plus there was a big grass fire during the day which didn't help either. Therefore, I'm unable to report with any certainty that I spotted it. I did see a number of objects, including a faint one that may have had a faint bluish hue. I'll try again tonight to spot Neptune before the big moment on Thursday.
I also took a couple of pictures of Venus and Mars. The Venus one is using the yellow filter on the EP, but has still flared out a bit. You can still see the half lit phase of the planet. The photo of Mars is a fairly accurate representation of the size and lack of detail visible.

Venus and Luna

Noticed that tonight there was a beautiful scene with Venus and the Moon in the low Western sky.  So I rushed out the back with the camera and tripod.

A New Year!

So that's it for 2016.  Not too sad to see the back of it.
Some good things happened - Juno reached Jupiter, Cassini continued to be awesome, Curiosity maintained the awesome,
I also managed to blog an entry at least once a month, as I promised to myself.

2017 - going to do more dark skies, finish the Luna 100, and learn more constellations.

Woo