O joy! Lovejoy!

Last night was finally a clear night. And I had to exploit it. I drove out of town and brought with me my two refractors. Wanted to use one as the guider for the other. When I arrived, I found that I was unable to reach focus with the guider camera... And I managed to fail the all star polar alignment several times. So in the end I had to settle for 1 minute exposure with the 71mm Zenithstar. One of the objects I tried my luck on, was comet Lovejoy. I missed it slightly (couldn't remember properly its coordinates. When checking the image afterwards, I see that this was a good thing, since I got a few other interesting objects in the same field of view. Down to the left, a weak red nebulosity can be seen. This is Simeis-22. And almost in the middle of the image, lower half, we can see NGC457, the Owl Cluster. And just up to the right from this, the small cluster NGC436. The tail of the comet didn't excactly show up well, but it is there up to the left on the comet. Click on the image for full size.

Tech spec : Pentax K5, ISO 1600, 10x1 minute unguided exposures, 24 flats, 71mm Zenithstar 5-element APO. Celestron AVX mount. Stacked in DSS, processed in PS and IrfanView.

Rosette nebula with new gear

The total solar eclipse of 2015 is coming up, and I'm going to Svalbard to watch it. So, I needed some new gear that would be easy to bring on a plane. I ended up buying a complete new set of everything. A Berlebach wooden tripod, a SkyWatcher Star Adventurer, and the crown jewel of the pack : A William Optics ZenithStar 71mm f/4.9 5-element flatfield apochromat. As always with WO : Beautiful piece of art and engineering.
The weather has been terrible for astronomy this season. Mostly cloudy or partly cloudy. And if there has been any opening in the clouds, it has been for a short while. On wednesday, the clouds finally departed, and I got a chance to try the setup out for a short while. before the clouds came pulling in again. I opted for the Rosette nebula. The Star Adventurer without autoguider was able to give me up to 30 sec exposures without star trails. I could probably have gone a bit higher, but I settled for that. I managed to collect about two hours of exposures. Some of the frames had to be discarded due to clouds, and some due to satellite tracks or airplanes crossing the line of sight. In the end, I had about 1h45m of imaging data. I tried pulling out as much as possible. Not the best result, for sure. But it is OK for testing the telescope and the tracking performance.

Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO 1600, Astronomic CLS filter, WO Zenithstar 71mm F/4.9, Skywatcher Star Adventurer. Stacked in DSS, processed in Maxim, PS and Irfanview.

Lovejoy is in the air again

A new Lovejoy comet is flying across the sky this month. The weather has been dismal to say the least this season, so I have been waiting and waiting for a break in the weather. Tuesday the 13th, the clouds finally parted in the evening. But this night, I had people over, so I didn't have much time to set up the gear. So I opted for real wide field. I originally thought I'd use my 85mm lens, but ended up using my 180mm telephoto lens. It is not as sharp, but I guessed it would show the comet better. I didn't take my time adjusting the polar axis. And I didn't calibrate the Goto. I probably should have. Cause I spent some time trying to find the comet from maps I had on my phone. But eventually I had it in sight. I set my camera timer to take 70 images of 30 second lengths. I forgot to take flats (it has been a while since last time, so I forgot my routine), so I have had some problems digging the tail out from the background. Since I am shooting from the middle of the city of Oslo, there is some light pollution to take into account. I am not very happy with my result, but considering the effort, I guess I cannot expect more. Hopefully, the weather will clear soon so I can make a REAL shot of this comet. BTW : The reason for the "double star" appearance is that there were some clouds that drifted through the field in the middle of the stack, so I removed those frames...

Tech details : Pentax K5, Carl Zeiss Jena Sonnar 180/2.8 @5.6, ISO 400, 50x30 sec exposures. Stacked on comet in DSS, processed in PS.

Pluto - a "wandering star"

I know that Pluto is no longer defined as a planet, but for most of my life, Pluto captured my imagination as a planet. So far out. So cold. I remember seeing artists' impressions of what it would be like to stand on the surface. Looking back at the bright star 5 billion km away. But I have never been able to see it with my eyes. Only in pictures. It moves slowly across the sky. Barely visible to the eye in a large amateur telescope. But with a short exposure, it is possible to spot. Not in itself, but by the very definition of the word planet. The word comes from Greek "Planetes aster", or "wandering star". The old Greeks didn't have telescopes, so to them, everything on the night sky, save from the Moon, where stars. And some of them moved. These are what we now know as planets. I decided a week ago to try to capture the movement of Pluto, the planet, on three days. To see it moving against the stars in the background.
The following image shows Pluto on November 11th. Try to find it! It is literally finding the "needle in the haystack".

And it is no wonder that nobody found it until 1937. First of all, it is very faint. Around magnitude 14 (which is more than 1000x fainter than the faintest star we can see with an unaided eye). But even when you use a long exposure like above, it looks just like a star in the image. It is impossible to discern it from the stars. But if you compare images taken a few days apart, it becomes apparent. Clyde Tombaugh compared the images taken a few days apart using a blink comparator. One of the stars moved. Today, we can use a computer to create an animation, and suddenly, it stands out from the background.
I added three images, taken a few days apart, and it is obvious that one of the "stars" is moving. It is a "wandering star", "planetes aster". A planet. The planet Pluto. Click on the image to get a bigger version.

The heart of the universe

The heart nebula (IC1805) in the constellation Cassiopeia. Last night, it was a beautiful, clear night here at Harestua Solar Observatory outside of Oslo. Only problem was a storm on the western coast of Norway that had its effect even around these areas. The winds made guiding a challenge. With some peaks of more than a pixel on my guider. But all in all, I managed to collect 4 hours of exposures. This is the best I have ever managed to capture of this beautiful nebula. I will later attempt the twin nebula (Soul nebula).

Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO 400, 48x5min, William Optics FLT98 CF w/WO AFR-IV reducer/flattener (F/5). Stacked in DSS, processed in PS and IrfanView.

A sky full of stars

Last night there was a clear sky, so I wanted to do some astrophoto. At least for the hours the weather forecasters predicted would be clear. So I set up my scope and spent the better part of an hour setting up the polar alignment. I got it pretty good at the end. Then I set up the autoguider, and set the telescope for 3 hours of exposures on M27. When I came this morning to check on progress, I found my laptop had died due to lack of juice (I had actually forgotten to switch on the power from the outlet, so it ran on battery only...). And when I checked the camera, I had not pressed the plug in properly, so the last 10 or so exposures were obviously just due to a wiggly connection, so they varied between 1/33th of a second to 7 seconds. In total, I got 15 exposures of 5 minutes each. They had, on the other hand, very good guiding on them. Round, sharp stars. So, with only 1 hour 15 minutes of exposure. What can I do. Well. Not as much as I had hoped, but I did get something out of it. And I decided to upload almost the whole frame. I love the view of all the stars in the Milkyway. And then, M27 in the middle of the myriad of stars. The universe is truly beautiful!
Tech details : Pentax K5, ISO400, 15x5 minutes, William Optics FLT98 CF w/ WO AFR-IV flattener/reducer (F/5), on Celestron AVX mount. Guided with QHY5II & PHD2. Stacked in DSS, processed in PS and IrfanView.

Western veil

Last night, I finally had a clear night after a few weeks of overcast. Despite the half Moon only 90 degrees away, I wanted to give it a go. So I did 2.5 hours on the western parts of the Veil nebula. (I actually did 4.5 hours, but the temperature dropped so much during the night that the last 2 hours were out of focus...) After stacking the images in DSS, I noticed a strange effect that I was unable to remove. It only happened in green and blue. Red was mostly unaffected. So after a bit of trial and error, I gave up on trying to create a colour image. Although I managed to create one, it looked like something I didn't want to publish here. I will give it some more tries in the future. Using the red channel as luminance worked fairly well, but the colors were weird. So I'll see if I can make them better in the future. So for now, this is the red channel, as a luminance image in greyscale. (Click on image to get bigger version).

Tech details : Pentax K5, William Optics FLT98 CF w/ WO AFR-IV flattener/reducer (f/5), Astronomik CLS filter, Celestron AVX mount, guided using QHY 5II camera and PHD2 guiding sw. Stacked in DSS, processed in PS and Irfanview.

Edit : I made a color version. I checked the image above, and found that it looked like crap on a bigger screen. Sooo. Maybe I should do a better job before publishing my images here. The picture below is a first version in color. Not perfect. But I managed to remove much of the strange colors. Enjoy!