It’s been a while since I’ve updated the photos hanging in the “Astronomy Corner” of the basement. With my recent attempts at planetary and lunar imaging, I felt it was time to change up some of the photos displayed alongside the telescope. Without further ado, here are the prints along with a look at the aforementioned “Astronomy Corner”.

The summer months can be a tricky time for observing. The nights are short, the weather is erratic and dew starts to build up on the telescope as soon as the serious observing begins. Nights that are clear, calm and cool are rare to come by and should be taken advantage of. I did just that on the night of July 10-11 from 10:45 pm to 1:30 am.

Starting with the Solar System
Mars:
Viewing conditions were difficult, looking through the turbulent summer atmosphere, views of Mars were less impressive at high magnifications. Also, Mars continues to move farther from us, having made its closest approach to Earth on May 30, 2016 at a distance of 47 million miles, making surface detail harder to make out each night.

Saturn:
One of the highlights of the night, as usual, came from Saturn. With the Cassini Division in full view, this planet always tends to be more forgiving of rough atmospheric conditions, particularly compared to Mars and Jupiter. I was able to try out my new iPhone adapter with the telescope and after some initial alignment difficulties over the eyepiece was able to get a short video.

After being processed through Registax 6 and Adobe Premiere Elements, this image was the final product.

Into Deep Space
The main targets of the evening were Deep Sky Objects. I’ve been chipping away at the Messier List for about six years. These 110 objects are considered some of the best to view and most are attainable with affordable binoculars and telescopes if you are in an area with low light pollution.

Globular Clusters:
Of all the views from this night, the globular clusters were the most difficult to find and disappointing to see. These dense collection of stars were partially drowned out by light pollution and the Moon that had yet to fully set. M80 and M92 were two new ones that I was able to mark off my list. M13 was an impressive show, even with the viewing conditions working against it. The Hercules Cluster is one of the most impressive globular clusters in the sky. I find it hard to focus the object correctly because of how dense the star field is. Various levels of focus almost seem to bring out new layers of detail.

Open Clusters:
These collections of stars always impress me with their elegance and simplicity. Not nearly as dense and “fuzzy” as globular clusters, open clusters can be difficult to find but rewarding to discover. Take M18 for example, to verify that I had the correct collection of stars, I had to consult my star chart (Sky Safari 4 Plus on my iPhone) that I was in the correct region of the sky.  I did this by counting stars and comparing patterns between what was in my eyepiece and what the chart on my app showed. M23, M26 and NGC 6633 rounded out the list of open clusters viewed.

Supernova Remnants:
One of my favorite sights of the summer sky are the five to eight thousand year old supernova remnants of the Eastern and Western Veil Nebula. I wasn’t sure if NGC 6960 and NGC 6995 would show up from my viewing site, but sure enough with the help of an O-III filter they did. The scale of these two objects is an impressive sight and their ghostly outlines are fitting for the remnants of a dead star.

One last Planet
Neptune:
By around 1:30 am, I started to get tired but noticed that there was one planet which had just moved high enough for me to view. Neptune is the farthest planet from the Sun, making it one of the more difficult ones to spot, excluding dwarf planets, sorry Pluto. At 400x magnification, I could make out a faint circular disc with a blueish gray tint. Not bad for something 2.8 Billion Miles away.

Night vision is key to astronomy. On moonless nights when galaxies, nebulae or globular clusters are at the top of your observing list, properly adapted eyes can be as important as the aperture of the telescope for spotting a “faint fuzzy”. The June and July editions of Sky & Telescope each have articles detailing how to adapt a flashlight for astronomy. Inspired by these articles, I decided it was time to put together my own red flashlight. Since red light is more forgiving to the eye when it is dark-adapted, this is the preferred way to light up an area while still keeping most of your night vision. While red flashlights can be found from companies such as Celestron and Orion for fifteen to thirty dollars, I didn’t care much for their designs and decided to build my own.

Step 1:
After a trip to Target and Advanced Auto Parts,
I had an LED Flashlight and Red Tail Light Repair Tape.

Step 2:
Cutting out a small piece of the red tape, I placed it over the light.

Step 3:
Using a pair of scissors and a sharp knife from “Cutlery Corner”, I trimmed the tape and carefully cut it down to size, only covering the lens.

After using the flashlight to set up and organize equipment, I realized the beam was a bit more pink than red, so I added another layer of tape which turned it into more of a solid red beam. While the brightness, at 37 lumens, is slightly more than is recommended, I’m not too concerned about it because I already am contesting with neighborhood light pollution which will hurt my night vision long before this red flashlight will. For only about fifteen dollars, I now have a stylish LED red flashlight that will hopefully keep my night vision a little more intact on those nights of deep sky observing.

Returning to Deep-sky objects
Even though where I live has a decent amount of light pollution, probably a 4 or 5 on the Bortle Scale, there are still a great deal of Galaxies, Star Clusters and Nebula visible in the night sky. These DSOs (Deep-sky objects), provide challenging yet rewarding targets for most amateur astronomers. With the assistance of Skysafari 4’s “Tonight’s Best” guide and the Intelliscope Computer Object Locator of the XT8i, the location of some of these more difficult to find highlights of the early spring sky came into view.

March 29, 2016: Highlights
Beginning in the Western portion of the sky, M38, the Starfish Cluster, was visible around 9:05 PM. While observing M38, a satellite passed through the field of view. These kinds of events are pretty common seeing as how many objects are in orbit. To the upper right of the Starfish Cluster, NGC 1907 barely registered as a slight blur at low magnification using averted vision. Moving over to the South West, the Rosette Nebula continues to refuse to reveal itself, but the open cluster that makes up the heart of it, NGC 2244, was a nice sight. Shifting down towards the neighborhood of Orion’s Nebula brought Sigma Orionis, the highlight of the night, around 9:30 PM. What appeared to be a triple star system revealed a 4th star at 200x magnification. In actuality, it is a quintuple star system, but the 5th star is difficult to pick up with amateur equipment. Attempts at viewing the Crab Nebula came up as disappointing as usual, it was barely visible in the Western sky around 10:25 PM. Finishing out the night was the always impressive pair of galaxies known as Bode’s Nebulae, M81 and M82. At magnitudes +8.39 and +6.90, they never disappoint as distinctive galaxies even if they are around 12 million light years from earth.

ISS Passing Near NGC 2395

March 30, 2016: ISS Fly Over
From 8:53 PM to 9:03 PM the International Space Station sailed over from SW to NE. In an attempt to view it, SkySafari 4 was used to see if the station would appear near any objects during it’s 5 minute pass. This would allow the Computer Object Locator to know where the telescope needed to be pointed before the ISS reached this object, so there could be a quick view of it flying through the eyepiece. Thankfully, at 8:57:51 it would cross near NGC 2395. Right at that time and location, with Lauren looking through the eyepiece and myself looking through the finder scope, we viewed the ISS through the telescope. Traveling at 17,000 miles per hour and being viewed at 48x magnification, the station only appeared in the eyepiece for a second, but the details were impressive. As detailed before from a previous viewing in 2010, the solar panels and cabin compartments of the Space Station were visible. The only difference noticed was that the panels appeared more tilted than on the previous sighting of station back. After the initial contact at NGC 2395, the stations was tracked for another minute or two, on and off, providing additional views as it raced across the sky.

Nights like these were made for amateur astronomers. A cool 27 degree night with little wind and no moon awaited. Preparing for the session has always been half the fun. Creating a mental list of what is going to be out and putting on some coffee as various layers of clothing are added to try and eke out as much precious time as possible before the cold finally wins out and ends the night. Tonight, there were few things on the list after a sunset viewing of Venus and Mercury less than 1 degree apart. The main event was a comet recently discovered in August of 2014 dropping by the neighborhood, which goes by the name Lovejoy C/2014 Q2.

The hunt for Lovejoy began with Skysafari+ on the iPhone 6. Located on this night, near the constellation Taurus and in between stars Nu Tauri and Xi Tauri; Lovejoy shined at a magnitude +4.9 and was visible to the naked eye even from the orange/yellow light polluted sky of Southwest Virginia. Starting out with the 2 in. Q70 38mm, Lovejoy popped into life at 32x magnification revealing a diffused cloud with a slightly greenish/gray color along with a surprisingly noticeable nucleus. While others have been able to make out its tail, I was not able to do so, most likely due to light pollution. From 32x to 200x magnification, Lovejoy continued to impress with the best views being in the 48x to 96x range.

This comet was much more impressive than previous ones viewed, including Lulin in February of 2009 and Panstarrs in June 2014. If you have a telescope or set of binoculars, January will continue to be a good time for observing. But don’t worry if you miss out, most estimates have Lovejoy returning in about 8,000 years.

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 6,000 times in 2013. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

After leaving work a couple minutes early to beat traffic, my good friend and coworker Eric and I, arrived at the Science Museum for a presentation we had been looking forward to for weeks. Dr. Edgar Mitchell was the sixth person to walk on the Moon and with that feat he joined an elite group of astronauts, of which only eight are still living. Dr. Mitchell’s presentation centered around his Apollo 14 Mission with fellow astronauts Allen Shepard and Stuart Roosa to the Fra Mauro region of the Moon, which was originally intended for the ill fated Apollo 13 mission. Going through the details of their mission reminded me of the complexity and ingenuity that was required to successfully take these men to the Moon and return them safely to the Earth.  Even though there wasn’t time for pictures or a handshake at the end, I still consider it an honor to say that I was in a room and got to hear the story of how we went to the Moon from someone who has actually walked on it.

It is incredible to me that there are only eight people alive who have walked on the Moon. After all of the promises of lunar bases and tickets sold for the Moon in the late 60’s and early 70’s, I’m sure few during those exciting decades of space travel would have guessed that we would just simply stop going. While I’m sure there will be a time in my life when we will return to the Moon, perhaps in decent numbers, until that time comes, the era of the Apollo program will continue to be our nostalgic view back at a future we had hoped would be more promising for lunar exploration.

Thanks to everyone for all the views and comments!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 8,600 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 14 years to get that many views.

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