G4AQB Astro Wiki

Today I went to W.H. Smith to get a copy of this months Sky at Night Magazine. Guess what?
On page 75 under 'Super Sites' my Astro Wiki Site is listed with a screen capture of my site!
I'm really pleased, especially when I checked the traffic to the site. (Fame at last!) I wonder if Patrick Moore or Chris Lintott has looked at my sites? Click HERE for my Astro Wiki.
OK...what is a WIKI?
Well, you can add and edit pages on a WIKI (WIKIPEDIA) Quite a powerful medium for adding and building up information on a particular subject although there are a lot of sceptics as I found out when I posted on SPA!
I did know earlier when Sarah Reed from S@N sent me an e mail but I wasn't sure which month of the magazine it would be in.

M52 Scorpion Cluster and M103

M103 (top) and M52 (lower)

Here are a couple more images taken on 7th August. Again, widefield views with the Canon 350D and ST80.

There is a nice piece of software called DSLR Shutter which allows the camera to take multiple exposures of any length. Problem is...it appears to work from an RS232 port which my laptop has not got. I'm trying to find a way of using a USB port, but if i'm also controlling the scope and i'm not sure if another USB - RS232 converter will work.

Well, Summer continues to be anything but! Now we have winds from the North, clouds and cool...and I mean COOL. Last weekend it rained non-stop...and i'm getting a bit fed up!

Bank Holiday Weekend coming up, you know what Bank Holiday weather is like!

I wonder if for once it could be nice?

Quite a crop!

Above is the Coathanger Cluster, M15 Pegasus Cluster and my best image yet of the huge M31 Andromeda Galaxy with M110 and M32 along with it.
These images taken on the 7th August 2007 with my Canon 350D and ST80 Telescope. I think I could have carried on imaging some of the less known objects as the telescope was controlled by my laptop with the 'Starry Night' software. All I had to do was point and click and the telescope and camera would do the rest.
Since that night things have gone downhill weather wise. For the last few nights I have waited to be able to image the ISS with the Space Shuttle 'Endeavour' attached to it, but at the the time of the pass nothing but clouds and rain!

A grand night out!

The Great Hercules Cluster M13, Dumbell Nebula M27 and Owl Cluster NGC 475.

Last week on August 7th the night was perfect! Warm, still and perfectly clear...the best for months! I set up my Skywatcher ST80 with the SLT mount and Canon 350D camera at prime focus. Tracking was perfect and the laptop was used to control the slew and position of the mount. Camera was controlled and monitored by the laptop so that I could get perfect focus.
The wide field images that I captured blew by cotton socks off!
The scope slew perfectly from one object to another, had to wait 5min or so before imaging to let the scope settle. Here are the objects that I managed to capture:
Coathanger Cluster, Great Hercules Cluster, M15 Cluster in Pegasus, M103, Owl Cluster NGC 457, M52 Scorpion, Andromeda Galaxy, Wide angle views of Cygnus.
A grand night out!

Star trails in Cygnus

Took this picture last week of NGC 7000, The North America Nebula (centre) I was trying to capture this in detail by using a long exposure with the Canon 350D and wide angle lense. The camera was attached to the Celestron SLT mount so that it could be tracked. You can see that the centre is spot on, but then other stars appear to be rotating around the centre. This is because the SLT mount is actually an Alt - Az device, which means that on very long exposures like this, the tracking stays on course but the rotation will be obvious.
Exposure time was about 6min. This is a problem with an SLT mount, you can only take images without the rotation up to about 1min.
This makes a lovely image of part of the Milky Way! The colours of the stars in the region are amazing!
I have sent this image to 'Sky at Night' Magazine...fingers crossed!

Phoenix Lander heads for Mars

At 5:26 EDT the Delta II Rocket carrying the Phoenix Mars Lander lifted off from its launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Base.
In less than 90 minutes the spacecraft had left Earth's orbit headed for the Red Planet. This marks the beginning of Phoenix's 10 month cruise to Mars.
Phoenix will land on the northern plains of Mars and will dig into the soil and water-ice looking for evidence of past habitability.

A quarter million names -- including those of all Planetary Society members -- and many of the greatest works of Martian literature, are headed off to Mars. Remember this is not a standard DVD -- its an archival quality silica glass mini-DVD designed to last for hundreds of years in Mars' hostile environment.
The mini-DVD hardware heritage goes back to a design for the cancelled 2001 Mars lander. A few years later, with the LEGO Company, we flew a similar DVD on the landers for both Mars Exploration Rovers. And, now, our DVD is flying on the very spacecraft base for which it was originally designed, as Phoenix is the rebirth of the 2001 Mars lander—risen from the ashes and improved.

I'm also on my way to Mars, along with my Dad and Melissa engraved on the DVD!

Links:

http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/main/index.html

http://www.planetary.org/programs/projects/messages/20070804.html

Jupiter and Moons

Jupiter and 6 Moons!

Jupiter is very low in the Southern sky at the moment, but very bright. It is actually between the bushes above my fence, which makes it difficult to image. This was taken about 10.30pm on the 1st August between the leaves of my bushes! If you look carefully (click image to enlarge) you can see Six of Jupiter's Moons. Look carefully for one very close just to the left of Jupiter itself.

Again, taken with the ST80 and Canon 350D attached. Single exposure of 20s @ iso 800.

Widefield M27

Another image captured the other night, M27 - Dumbell Nebula. (bottom right) better if you click the image to make it bigger.

This one is really hard to find, but with the SLT mount controlled by my laptop I was able to simply point and click on screen and the scope with the Canon 350D fitted slewed straight to the object. I discovered that it takes about 5 minutes or so for the mount to properly settle before capturing the images. A couple of weeks ago I bought a 'bulb' for the 350D (remote exposure switch) came from China and cost about £2! This has been great for long exposures of over 30s. I also used the Canon capture software to take single exposures and then check the focus, problem is that the images are saved to the desktop in .TIFF format, so a lot of messing about converting the files was needed as my version of PSP will not accept .TIFF files.

Anyhow..here is the final cropped image of M27, stacked 5 subs at 30s each, iso 1600, processed in Photoshop.

Summer at last!

The last few days have actually brought SUNSHINE and even some clear nights. After what is officially the wettest June and July on record we now move into August. I'm now looking forward to a great Indian Summer!

The last couple of nights I went out in the garden and managed to image NGC 7000, the North American Nebula in the constellation of Cygnus. I've always wanted to capture some good images of this, particularly in wide field. My first attempt was taken with the Canon EOS 350 and the Skywatcher ST80. 6 frames of 30 seconds stacked with Deep Space Stacker.

The images are amazing individually, Cygnus is in the Milky Way belt and the number of stars are breathtaking (even from my back garden!)

More to come soon!