Garradd you’re back…

 Comet, Solar System  No Responses »
Oct 082011
 

We have had several nights with absolutely beautiful skies, which of course means there must be some interference.  Wednesday night the Moon was only a week from being full so I spent the evening covering a couple of bright comets.  

”]Comet Garradd is currently in Hercules and is nearing my tree blocked western horizon during the early evening so I started with it.  I still haven’t tried to view it with binoculars, but it was easy to see in the 6″ newtonian at the Topsail Hill event last Thursday.  With a bright star in the FOV, I kept the exposures to only 5 seconds limiting any camera blooming.  The star ended up cropped out of the final image so I could have gone deeper for each exposure.

”]
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Comet Gehrels is currently approaching the ‘Circlet of Pisces’.  On Wednesday it was on the opposite side of the meridian than Garradd and the image shows some sky glow from the much nearer moon.  Also visible in the image as fuzzy smudges, right and slightly below the comet, are galaxies NGC 7731 and NGC 7732.  Motion in this image is from upper right to lower left.
 Posted by at 18:24

More visitors…

 Comet, Meteor, Solar System  No Responses »
Aug 072011
 

The weather has been very spotty recently.  To add to the frustration, work nights leave little time to observe with astronomical twilight not ending until after 9PM.  But a week ago last Thursday the clouds cleared enough so that I was able to get one target of interest covered and then last Thursday the automated motion detection system of the All Sky Cam support software caught another. 

”]Comet C/2009 P1 (Garradd) is currently in the Pegasus constellation.  As the image shows it is fairly bright and it will continue to slowly brighten until Feb of next year.  It will peak just under naked-eye visibility but should be an easy binocular object.

The image is a stack of 120 thirty second exposures with the stack aligned to the comet leaving the stars trailed.  I reported the comet at a magnitude of 11.4.

 

Meteor 20110804 0329:53.512

This is the first motion detection captured by the sky camera’s automated system.  I’ve checked several sources that report satellite positions and this appears to be a legitimate meteor.  It looks like the camera can take and save about 4 frames a second and it archives an image once every minute.  The motion detection system will save the image that the motion is detected on along with the preceding image.  This streak is only on two frames. 

The meteor is quite bright.  The bright object to the right of the left tree line is Jupiter at a magnitude of -2.5.  Vega is visible in the prominent notch on the left edge of the right tree line.  Its magnitude is 0.0. 

 

 Posted by at 05:58

On it’s way…

 Comet, Solar System  No Responses »
Apr 112011
 

I’ve spent the last 3 clear nights getting imagery of comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin) currently in the constellation Leo.  My current imagery shows a nuclear magnitude of about 18.0 but by October of this year it is predicted to be as bright as 5.0 and should be a naked-eye object.  It will pass within 21,000,000 miles of the earth on the 16th of October.   The image below is one used to construct the video I just linked to the comet video page.  The video consists of twenty-seven 300 second images.  I had a problem with the guiding and had to restart the guider during the evening which is why there is a stutter in the video.  

”]

There are a number of web pages and theories pertaining to comet Elenin currently being published from realities other than our own.  Media attention to these and others is bound to increase the closer to October we get.  However, the comet should put on a good enough show by itself without any added enhancement from us.

 Posted by at 21:11

Distant formation

 Comet, General Commentary, Minor Planet, Solar System  No Responses »
Mar 292011
 

The comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann is currently undergoing one of its random outbursts.  I measured it at a magnitude of about 14.0.  While processing the 9 images I was surprised to see an additional object moving very close to the comet.  It is seen as a streak of dots left of the comet.  This turned out to be minor planet (19698) 1999 SR4.  It is quite bright and I can’t believe I didn’t see the movement while taking the images.

”]I also need to update an earlier observation I reported.  My initial evaluation of the footlights in the observatory has proven incorrect.

During the alignment and calibration process I have been getting a strong glow in some of my images.  I have been blaming the street light across the street from my house.  It is high and bright enough to light the top of some of the trees in my back yard.  The observatory dome is also high enough that some of the street light falls on it.  I attributed the image glow to that light reflecting off the dome into the dome room.  So I took some time Thursday night to see if I could position the dome to block the incoming light.  No arrangement of dome position or amount of shutter closure would block the light.  Just as a sanity check, I closed the shutter;  the glow was still visible in the images.  Even though I cannot see any red light on the inside of the dome from the safety footlights, it is obvious my camera can. 

I am glad that the fix will be as easy as always turning off the footlights when exiting the dome room.  I was envisioning having to replace the street lights with more modern, less intrusive models.

 Posted by at 21:56
 Newer Entries