RandomAstronomy

This is about 20 minutes of exposure after all the stacking, and a fair bit of post processing in photoshop to deal with the differences in brightness across the nebula. When I got home from the site, I setup again in front of my apartment to get a sense for how different the shot would be from the light pollution of San Francisco.

Turns out it was rather different. I put this quick graphic together to give a sense for the differences produced pre and post processing, and with different light pollution levels.

There was a family where we stopped, looking at the stars, and we chatted a bit. Their daughter was interested in finding the various Harry Potter characters in the sky (Draco, Sirius, Bellatrix, etc). We also pulled Andromeda up in the scope and showed it off, though with all the light pollution it was mostly a haze. The father was military, and was telling us about how amazing the stars were when he was deployed in Iraq.

After they moved on we tried to find h+chi Persei, the open double cluster in Perseus. It’s said to be one of the most beautiful DSO’s in the sky. We were able to find it, but unfortunately it was pretty washed out by all the ambient light. That said it was an easy find, and I’m looking forward to seeing it from a proper dark sight. I also trained my new camera rig on it this past Saturday night and had a little bit of luck, but that is for a future article.

We spent a while trying to find M27, the Dumbbell Nebula. At magnitude 7.5 it was right about at the limiting magnitude for that scope. It took some doing between the two of us, but Katie finally centered what looked like a dim lens smudge in the eyepiece. It was incredibly fait but we were pretty happy with having found it at all. Another future photography target I think.

Next we went after some binary stars. Albiero is an easy, and very pretty, binary to split. The pair make up the brightest star in the constellation Cygnus. The two stars shine clearly blue and gold. Katie being a UC Davis grad contends that it is in fact the Aggie star. After that we went after the Mizar-Alcor sextuplet group in the Big Dipper asterism. We weren’t totally sure we were identifying the dipper properly as it was just above the horizon, so splitting this group was the test. Turns out we were dead on.

I’ve been wanting to get a look at the Orion Nebula, M42, for a while now. This time of year Orion doesn’t become particularly visible until after midnight so I’m usually driving back from the dark sky site at that point. Being close to home we were able to stay out till it was above the treeline in the Western Sky. When I looked through the eyepiece I think I let out a few expletives. I was not expecting to see as much detail and structure as I did given the conditions. It’s really a beautiful structure, far closer to the beautiful pictures I’m used to seeing than I expected. Katie, was more subdued, “Oh that’s nothing, just wait till you see it from some actual dark skies!” Again, I’m much looking forward to that. Hopefully heading out the 22nd, if the weather holds. We shall see.

Tonight I decided to take my time, and after unpacking and collimating, I set up a chair and a blanket and just watched the sky for a while. I made a point to pick out the stars I’d been using the night before to get around, and caught a few meteors, probably early Orionids.

DSOs and planets are great, but there’s something to be said for the wide-field.

I found five deep sky targets Saturday night. Other than M13, I focused on objects featured in Turn Left at Orion, and used my star atlas to actually do the navigation.

Looking at the renderings of globular clusters I was kinda skeptical as to whether they’d really make interesting targets. I explored around my charts for a bright globular cluster to look at and found M13 on the right side of Hercules' torso — Ok, so I’m sold. This was a joy to find. Took some doing to get the focus just right but when I could hold averted vision, individual stars really sparkled. It didn’t occur to me to take a look at this one through higher magnification, but the next time I’m out I may need to find it again.

I find it really exciting when something pops out really nicely in the finder scope. I know I’m going to have a great view through the scope. The M34 Open Cluster did just this. It was a quick find and the cluster’s stars all resolved really nicely. I decided not to try and split the binaries this time around, I was excited to go find more targets. In the future I should really slow down and spend some time with targets.

I’ve been getting pretty good about navigating the space near Cygnus and Hercules, and the space between Cassiopeia and Andromeda, but I’m not as strong out to the west of Altair. Once I was confident I was in the right neighborhood, it took some scanning about but I was able to find the M15 Globular Cluster. Of the three GCs I looked at Saturday night this was probably the most striking, and the one in which my 30mm resolved the most stars. It still required averted vision to really get the most out of it, but it was a solid find. I tried to switch over to my 9mm lens, but fat fingered it and ended up bumping the scope out of alignment. Rather than reset the 30mm and find it again I decided to take a break and then move on.

The combination of Turn Left at Orion and the Cambridge Star Atlas is fun to use.

After a break to sky watch, and snapping some 15 second exposures of the Milky Way (see above) I moved over to another globular cluster, M2. Compared to M15, it was relatively small in the field of view of the 30mm. Still really pretty though. I moved over to the 9mm, this time without bumping the scope, and it filled the full field of view. Using averted vision I could resolve a number of sparkling stars in the cluster.

Finally I moved on to finding the galaxy M33. It was easy to see in the 30mm but compared to the clusters I’d been looking at, it felt a bit underwhelming. With averted vision I was getting close to resolving the spiral arms but couldn’t quite get it. It’s still pretty awesome to be able to look out and see an honest to god galaxy.

This was all well and good except for the part where “going out” meant a 2.5 hour drive each way. It was a heck of a lot of driving but the sky conditions were exceptional, especially Saturday night, and I did not want to pass that up.

The route to the dark sky site on Little Panoche Road. On a good night, Panoche clocks in at a 3 or so on the Bortle Scale.

Friday night was a bit of a learning experience. I’d thrown a last second invite out to a bunch of friends but nothing was able to come together so I decided to head out on my own. I had some minor car trouble to start off the trip and spent some time refilling the air in all my tires. I also got a bit sidetracked on the way down, ending up in Hollister when I missed the turn off for the 152 due to a google maps snafu. I got down to the site around 10:15pm and other than some mild clouds in the eastern sky, conditions were great.

After unpacking everything and collimating my optics I decided to target the galaxy Andromeda. I wanted an easy target for my first try with the star charts and Andromeda is easy to see even just in the finder scope. After finding Polaris, and mistaking Vega for Arcturus (which is retrospect was a bit absurd), I used Cassiopeia to orient myself and quickly found the Andromeda Galaxy. I’d found my first proper DSO! I’ve had friends find and show me others, but this was my first time actually navigating for it myself. It’s a pretty awesome feeling. I also had a meteor jump right through the field of view. I was able to resolve one of Andromeda’s companions, the magnitude 8.0 M32 dwarf galaxy, in the same frame. No luck getting the magnitude 10.0 M110 though.

One of the much more experienced observers I’d been talking with was really enamored with open clusters so I decided to take her advice and make one my next target. At this point I started to notice clouds further encroaching on the eastern sky so I moved westward. After spending some time confused about what was below the horizon I finally got on the right chart page for my target patch of sky. I looked about for a good sized open cluster and found M39. This proved a bit harder to find than Andromeda, but after some scanning about I caught it in the finder scope, and got a really nice view through the 30mm lens. The bright cluster of stars (mag 5.5) filled the whole of the field of view (I get a bit over half a degree of arc in the 30mm).

After that I took a break from the scope to spend some time with the new charts and learn the sky a bit better. I swear I also took the time to find another DSO but can’t for the life of me remember what it was.

After skywatching for a bit, I looked to find another open cluster in the same patch of sky as M39. I saw Stephenson 1 on the map right next to Vega, which felt like an easy find. It was also listed at a high magnitude and dimensionally large  so I figured it would be a good target. When I did find it I was a bit underwhelmed. Unlike M39 in which a large number of beautiful, bright stars filled the field, Stephenson 1 is made up of 3 or four bright stars and a smattering of just above average bodies. I was actually a bit skeptical I’d found the proper formation until I looked up pictures online when I got home.

The bright star in the upper middle left here is Vega, with the rest of the constellation Lyra protruding to the left. You can see the upper left of Hercules just above the sky glow, and the head of Draco in the middle right of the frame. I’m not absolutely sure, but I believe that bright star in the top left is Albiero (Cygnus Beta).

After this I spent some time taking some astrophotography. I’d set up my camera with a 30 second exposure and focused using the lights of the town out on the horizon. I did four 30 second exposures of the western sky that I ended up stacking in photoshop, plus a few red lit exposures of the site. I remembered to take a dark frame, which proved critical in post processing. I also couldn’t help but do a selfie...because reasons.

Turns out leaning over a Dobsonian is not the most flattering of poses.

By midnight, the clouds that started out as wisps out in the east had covered the sky up to the Zenith. The wind was also picking up and I was a bit chilly. Having arrived late and being a bit stressed out from the drive down I decided to pack it in for the night having learned a lot. The drive back was far less eventful, and I got home around 2:40am. Stayed up another hour or so processing photos. I noticed I was getting some subtle trailing with the 30 second exposures, so for the next outing it meant more, shorter exposures to stack.

I've had a ton of fun stargazing in the past, and I've used books like Turn Left at Orion to help guide my observing to good effect; but the limited star charts and lack of context left me feeling lost when I looked up at the sky. Now with a proper atlas, I'm learning how everything fits together and that makes looking up much more awesome. It also makes "Turn Left" a much more useful beginner resource. 

When my charts came in I immediately spent a few hours reading through the atlas. I got to know the reference charts and explored the detailed sky views. The maps themselves are beautifully done. The Milky way is subtly marked in various shades of blue and white. A quick glance shows you the magnitude of various stars, the boundaries of constellations, and the location of hundreds of various deep sky objects (DSOs). A closer inspection provides details and designations of stars, the types and names of various DSOs, and the various coordinates of right-ascension and declination. It got me really psyched up to actually go drive out to a dark site and give them a go. 

Using "Turn Left" as a guide of things to see and the Cambridge Atlas to find them was a good combo.

"I've since seen planets, galaxies, binary stars, globular clusters, and the like, but that first image of the moon; the mountains, craters, and maria, all in sharp shadowed relief; was uniquely striking."

Out on the far west side of San Francisco's Richmond District, we're mostly shrouded in thick, pea-soup, marine-layer fog. I was hopeful for a rare, clear night and a quick trip to Ocean Beach for an unobstructed view of the western sky. As it turned out, @KarlTheFog was having none of it. I walked out of my apartment into 3 foot visibility — damn. Undeterred I packed the telescope into the car and made haste to Twin Peaks. Surely the summit would be above the cloud layer and provide an exquisite view of the lunar surface with the city glowing through the fog below — nope. Probably 1 foot visibility at the summit — dammit Karl.

After checking the time, cursing, and wracking my brain for where I might be able to go, I recalled Treasure Island having a beautiful westerly view, and better yet, it was probably far, far, away from the fog. I booked it through the city, across the Bay Bridge, and over to the island; ending up at the brightly lit entrance to the Treasure Island Naval Station. Not the first place I'd have expected to go for an astronomical event. To my general glee, I was met with a great view of the now 80% eclipsed moon, glowing red in the sky. There were a number of other folks who had come out to the island to view the eclipse too. A smattering of small optical tubes dotted the waterline. Excited, unpacked the dob and swung it around at the moon.

The view did not disappoint. I'd been skeptical of the "blood moon" monicker, and figured most of the photos I'd seen had been heavily post processed. To be sure proper astrophotography and processing brings out the red coloration, but I was surprised by how red the eclipsed moon appeared to the naked eye. The most visually interesting time was after the full eclipse when much of the moon was in darkness but a faint sliver of bright light illuminated the moon's edge. The contrast made for a beautiful scene.

Three stacked photos of the eclipsed moon shot with my iPhone held up to a 30mm lens.

The real treat of the evening came from chatting with the other folks who were out to see the eclipse. Something I really enjoy about my scope is how simple, easy to use, and hard to screw up it is. As a beginner, this is a huge plus, but it also means I can let someone else drive the scope and not be terribly concerned about something getting messed up. The rules are basically, "Just don't touch the glass on the lens and you're good. Oh also everything in the eyepiece looks backwards." I got to meet, and share the view through the scope with a few folks who'd never used a telescope before, or hadn't in many years, which was really neat. 

One of the experienced observers, Peter, keyed me onto something I'd been unaware of. There was a conjunction (a visually close pass or grouping of celestial objects) between Uranus and the eclipsed moon. Peter had been having trouble finding Uranus with his camera. He was sporting an awesome 500mm telephoto lens and a monster tripod and mount. He told me Uranus should be at about the moon's 8 o'clock, about half a degree away from the moon. Lo-and-behold, there it was, just outside the view of my lens with the moon centered. If I hadn't known what I was seeing, I would have mistaken the bright blue disk for a star. Very cool. Peter ended up with some great pictures of the conjunction too.

I left Treasure Island around 5:45am. Headed home, packed everything away, took a shower, and headed to work. Needless to say I needed a lot of caffeine.

"There is a definite downside to having a hobby where key events happen at odd hours, during the workweek, in super small timeboxes." — Me to a co-worker as I drank my 5th cup of coffee...at 10:30am.