October
Local:Atalaia (Montijo 38º44N 8º48W)
Atalaia, Saturns and AVIs...
It was a session without many objects to look to, but the moonlight, clouds and cold (1 degree celsius) didn't stop us from gathering once again.
The clouds circled around the site all night, but we had some good breaks, especially for Saturn and Moon. The turbulence wasn't as strong as on the previous weeks, and did improve as the night passed. There weren't present many telescopes, but still good ones. The Mak's were very well represented with several specimens from 5.5" to 7", two apos 90mm and 130mm, two dob newtons 8 and 15" and several others that Ididn't noticed. The prefered targets were Saturn, the Moon (shadows over the Plato and Alpine valley rima), the Orion's trapezium wich showed 6 stars on all telescopes, among few others. At mid session Gregório and Rola and the excellent idea of serving hot coffee, tea and cookies, that was very quite welcomed, as also the "abafadinho" a couple of hours before.
Making a play on the words with a known film generic, The views os Saturn looked like lies... I don't remember having seen such a perfect direct vision image of _any_ planet. But what impress me most wasn't to be able to observe almost anything at 1000x on a 15" Obsession without image break (that's usual), or even to be able to observe the Encke division directly, but yes the Cassini's division perfect cut around the rings, of "an capilar finesse", and that was only one of details on a almost interplanetary view. The fog does gives this out of this world low turbulence conditions.
Despite being almost two months from the oposition (14/01/2005), Saturn won't "grow" much more, and will hard to surpass this observation's quality. It was a rare moment.
Seed also Atalaia.org with more images and reports.
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| Saturno 20041121 02:45 UT Takahashi SKY90 f/41 (3720mm)+Toucam 0.31"40% Takahashi P2Z exp: 2' (1/5"x600) |
13/11/2004
Local: Pousados
at Pousados...
Once again I've traveled to Pousados, near Alcanena, were there also Mário Santiago and the place's onwer Pedro Mota.
The Mota's orchard it's quite a dark place giving a zenital limiting magnitude of 5.5, being possible to observe the Milky Way from Nascent to West. But from 15 degrees and below it is better to forget it, and at some azimuths the light polution from neighbourhood populations goes a bit higher. The turbulence and the wind were strong, sometimes with gusts, turning the act of focusing quite a challenge, (typically an quarter of an hour to achieve a minimaly acceptable focus and for each object). One of the images was losted - the M79 globular cluster at Lepus.
Started the session with two kind of inadequate objects due the weather conditions - The M77 galaxy at Cetus, and faint galaxy M74 at Pisces. None had the necessary minimum exposure time, well, they had, but the turbulence, wind and a dog head :) made me loose about 50% of the subexposures.
M74 was quite faithfull to the fame of being an galaxy "terrrible" , and cost me half an hour just to put it on the CCD field of view. Visually was not detectable, since this object required darker sky and maybe a bit more aperture (90mm), being forced to star hop using 10 magnitude stars. Not easy on the neck, the Sky90 with reducer/corrector doesn't reach reach focus with the star diagonal.
After a gastronomic pause (smoked sausage, porc stakes a the famous Mário's "abafadinho" (wine liquor)), during wich a small clouds front had passed by, I've putted the Nikon D70 at prime focus and registered the huge M44 at Cancer and the M35's populated field.
The astrophotography session ended with the lenticular galaxy NGC 3115 at Sextant, also known as the Spindle Galaxy, having sumed a grand total of 52 exposures, having beneficted by a calm weather by the end of the night. It as the only decent image. It's bright and enlongated core was perfectly visible with an 90mm at 35x.
Finally, putted the ExtenderQ on th Sky90, and pointed it to Jupiter, already at a generous altitude, discovering the sensation not of being observing from an aquarius but from an geiser. It was a night of memorable turbulence - it must be hard to get worst than this at open sky, but on the other hand I don't recall to have such a dry conditions. By 06:00 AM thre wasn´t any condensation whatsoever. Saturn showed much less aquous views, supporting with some patience 200x-250x.
By 06:30 AM all was packed and ready to hit the road. It was a long and pleasant night.
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| Pousados |
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| NGC 3115 Takahashi SKY90 f/4.5 (400mm)+ATIK-1HS 2.9" res 60% Takahashi P2Z exp: 52' (52x60") |
NGC 3115 is located at the faint Sextant constellation, being somewhat dificult to find due the lack of nearby bright stars, but nevertheless is quite visible even with modest apertures. Is also known as "Spindle Galaxy".
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| M74 Takahashi SKY90 f/4.5 (400mm)+ATIK-1HS 2.9" res 60% Takahashi P2Z exp: 24' (24x60") |
Probably the hardest Messier object for small aperture telescopes, requiring dark skies to distinguish it from a mere ponctual object.
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| M77 Takahashi SKY90 f/4.5 (400mm)+ATIK-1HS 2.9" res 60% Takahashi P2Z exp: 14.5' (29x30") |
A Seyfert galaxy, active nuclei galaxies type. With closer look a extremly faint halo can be seen around the galaxy.
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| M35 & NGC 2158 Takahashi SKY90 f/4.5 (400mm)+Nikon D70 4,0" res Takahashi P2Z exp: 2' (1x120") iso 400 |
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| M44 Takahashi SKY90 f/4.5 (400mm)+Nikon D70 4,0" res Takahashi P2Z exp: 2' (1x120") iso 400 |
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| M44 Takahashi SKY90 f/4.5 (400mm)+Nikon D70 4,0" res Takahashi P2Z exp: 1' (1x60") iso 400 (clique na imagem - click on the image) |
12/11/2004
Local:Pátio (Leiria 39.75N 8.82W alt:60m)
And the party continues...
The skies are still open and dark here at the pateo - and chilly too (4.5 celsius).
This one was a relaxed session at low resolution and short exposures time - I've spented more time to locate and center the object and focusing than actually capturing it.
Determined that typically under this 4 mag sky , the maximum subexposure time at f/5 was 30 seconds, at f/4 20 seconds, and with h-alpha filter it could go up to 120 seconds, with Atik 1hs's thermal noise starting to show up a little, and the mount's pratictal limits being also reached. This limitations shortens the list of type and number of "imaging" objects, but is still quite educative.
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| NGC 457 Takahashi SKY90 f/4 (360mm)+ATIK-1HS 3.2" res 60% Takahashi P2Z exp: 6.6' (20x20") (mag 4) |
NGC 457 is located at 2.5 kpc and have a age between 10 and 30 million years. It's one of cutest open clusters with several nicknames: "ET Cluster", "Owl Cluster", "Flydragon Cluster" etc. It's also one of my favorite's.
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| M35 & NGC 2158 Takahashi SKY90 f/4 (360mm)+ATIK-1HS 3.2" res 60% Takahashi P2Z exp: 2x6.6' (20x20") (mag 4) |
At 2800 and 13000 light years respectively. This clusters have the same physical dimension but are separated by 10000 light years. It's easy detectable with naked eye and an impressive view with binoculares or low power telescopes.
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| NGC 2261 Takahashi SKY90 f/5.6 (500mm)+ATIK-1HS 2.3" res 60% Takahashi P2Z exp: 30' (60x30") |
At 2500 light years. This bright nebula changes it's intensity and form with R Monocerotis variability, that curiously it's not quite a star but a "cocoon" nebula with star within. It's one of most dinamyc deepsky objects. Is also known as "Hubble's Variable Nebula", not for being it's discoverer (that was Herschel), but for having noticed it's variability. It's also a well studied object, and a good place to start searching formation of planets.
10/11/2004
Local:Pátio (Leiria 39.75N 8.82W alt:60m)
Little session
Dark nights here at the pateo, that woud have been excellent if the turbulence wasn't so high. This time I've decided to test the new Astronomik 13nm h-alpha filter to see how well it does on this suburban sky that reach more than limiting magnitude 5.
The h-alpha filter subtracts almost every photon that doesn't belong to 656nm spectrum's line, allowing to be able to capture images like tha below Pacman Nebula, NGC 281, under a sky that without the filter, produces almost white saturated images.
This kind of object requires long sub-exposure times, with at least 2 minutes each, that results on great demanding on the equipment, and well, the photographer's patience too.
In this particular case, the capture didn't run that well, with several problems like worm desengaging, or mount unbalance etc, having to split by several AVI's the sub-exposures, resultin on 18 2 minutes frames usable- very short time - but somewhat acceptable for a non guided mount. A little displacemnt between AVI's made the picture shorter than usual, but showed that at least it is possible. The purple red is obviously a false color, but adds some dramatism to the scene, but I Think it evidences better the present structures.
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| NGC 281 & IC 1590 Takahashi SKY90 f/4.5 (400mm)+ATIK-1HS 2.9" res 80% h-alpha Takahashi P2Z exp: 36' (18x120") |
The "Pacman Nebula" is a HII region that is partially obstructed by interstelar dust (drawing the pacman's mouth). At the center is the the young and esparse IC 1590. The image only shows the upper part of the ludic personage head. It's possible to observe several Bok globules - star formation sites.
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| M103 Takahashi SKY90 f/4.5 (400mm)+ATIK-1HS 2.9" res 60% Takahashi P2Z exp: 9' (18x30") |
06/11/2004
Local:Atalaia (Montijo 38º44N 8º48W)
Great evening
Another unexpected large gathering at Atalaia, despite the great doubt regarding the weather, many members had already joined the group at traditional service station. The Atalaia's site is now organized by sectors, one for digital astrophotography, and other for visual observations and film astrophotography.
The "line" disposition of the "digital" area curiously looked like one of those desert telescopes "array". This separation was necessary due to the use of portable laptops that are strong enough white light source to make lose or not to let acquire dark vision, well, until the moon or suns rises anyway.
Until 2:00AM, besides chating around, I've left the equipment unnatended taking light frames of M78 and neighbourhood, that included the recently famous (and also recent concerning it's visibility) McNeil's nebula (keep the mouse over the image to make labels appear), and taked some walks to the "dark side" to enjoy views of two brand new apochromatic refractors TEC 140mm, both mounted on a G11.
Unfortunely there was some turbulence that didn't allowed (at least in my case) to fully atest their great quality. Also spended some oberving time using a Nagler 31mm with my SKY90, combination thar result on 5 degree field at 16x with an 5.6mm exit pupil, giving very bright images. Remained the impression that this 31mm nagler it's better corrected for short focal ratios when compared with nagler 9mm type6 "sister".
The SKY90 has a new and confortable "nest" on Pelican case (model 1520). With this case, the "sensible" colimation helded well , even with the banging and specially the micro vibrations of car's trunk. IMO is perfect, having spare space to include all the optical acessories. 2" diagonal, Extenders, reducers, quickfinder, several adapters and an eyepiece.
The rest of the night I had imaged some opens clusters to join my snapshots collection. This kind of objects doesn't require an absolute dark sky and are fairly quick and low demanding. Ended the night with Saturn, that due condensation over almost optical component was quite horrible.
Despite the turbulence, the sky had good tranparency and relatively low humidity, that even with the moonlight, the last ones to left the site have done so quite past 05:30 AM.
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| M78 & McNeil 1 Takahashi SKY90 f/5.6 (500mm)+ATIK-1HS 2.3" res 60% Takahashi P2Z exp: 30' (10x60"+10x120") (manter rato sobre a imagem para legendas - keep mouse over the image for labels) |
The McNeil is a variable reflection nebula, wicht visibility is related with eruption of a new star, or even a "re-birth". This star is callled IRAS 05436- 0007. It's like we were listening the first baby cries...
 M34 |
 M36 |
 M37 |
 M38 |
 M46 |
 M47 |
 M93 |
This Messier's open cluster collection were registed with the same exposure time, and equally processed, being a good comparative of their relative dimensions and brightnesses. As usual, you can go also to Atalaia's site and read the report and images.
05/11/2004
Local:Pátio (Leiria 39.75N 8.82W alt:60m)
Jupiter and Venus Conjuction
I'm no early bird, but this Jupiter-Venus close conjuction made me wake up at 05:30AM. This planets are usually the brightest celestial bodies after the moon, and of course the Sun, promising a good show, since isn't everyday that we can watch two extremly bright objects so close. The closest aproximation happened at 01:55 TU with just 33 arcminutes, with -1.7 and -4.0 magnitudes respectively, being both well below the horizon then, so had to wait almost to the dawn to be able to observe them from me "pateo". By 05:30 AM, the planets had emerged from de neighbour's roofs, having mounted the telescope at less obstructed place possible.
It was a better visual show than photographic one. With unaided eyes, both made an impressive pair of points of light that was both beautifull and unusual. I believe that no one could had failed to noticed. At 54x with a Radian 14mm on Tak SKY90 f/9 was possible to confortably observe both at the same time, permiting also to notice the late Venus phase (81%) and some banding on Jupiter and his four main satelites, with Ganimedes and Europa also on close conjuction (7"). The turbulence was quite bad, in general and due the pair's altitute. The images are a static testimony and for future memory, not certainly because their photographic hability, but yes for the incredible adaptation hability that the human eye has to process such disparate brightness intensities - sometimes the CCD linearity isn't a convenient feature...
And for last, also not an usual view, observed and photographed the moon on her precise Last Quarter (05:53UT), with the sky quite blue by then.
Regarding the difraction spikes, their are not a special effect, but caused by the 50mm lens diaphragm. In this case there are 14 spikes because it forms an heptagon (7 vertices). If it was even sided, there would have a been an equal number of spikes.
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| Vénus & Júpiter Nikon D70 50mm f/4 exp: 8seg. iso 800 |
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| 06:09 UT Takahashi SKY90 f/9 (800mm)+Nikon D70 2" res Takahashi P2Z exp: 10" iso 400 |
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| 06:31 UT câmara: Nikon D70 + 50mm f/9 exp: 6" iso 200 (manter rato sobre a imagem para legendas - keep mouse over the image for labels) |
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| Lua em Quarto Minguante Canon G1 afocal (clique na imagem - click on the image) |