Lost Pleiad Observatory

SDO does it again

2012-02-11T10:20:00.000-07:00

No time for a lengthy post, but I had to share this video released from the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Incidentally, today marks the second anniversary of the SDO launch....Just think, it is only over the past year and a half that humans have been able to observe the dynamic behavior of our star in high definition!

According to SDO: "As if it could not make up its mind . . . darker, coolerplasma slid and shifted back and forth above the Sun's surface seen here for 30hours (Feb. 7-8, 2012) in extreme ultraviolet light. An active region rotatinginto view provides a bright backdrop to the gyrating streams of plasma. Theparticles are being pulled this way and that by competing magnetic forces. Theyare tracking along strands of magnetic field lines. This kind of detailed solarobservation with high-resolution frames and a four-minute cadence was notpossible until SDO, which launched two years ago on Feb. 11, 2010."

Re-visiting Comet Garradd

2012-02-02T11:00:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge

Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd is back. Not that it really went anywhere, of course, but I had stopped following this comet when it was no longer visible in the evening/night sky due to its location in the constellation of Hercules. Recently I had heard that despite the passing of a few months, the comet was still fairly bright and even visible in binoculars. With Hercules now up in the early morning sky, I had been considering taking a look at it during one of my morning Mars observing sessions. Yesterday I learned that the comet would be within 1 degree of the globular cluster M 92 this morning, so set my alarm for 4 AM to observe this conjunction.

I was not disappointed! As can be seen in my sketch at left, the comet is quite bright, at approximately magnitude 7. It contains a bright nucleus, and while difficult to detect, there appear to be two tails. (These are hard to bring out in the scan of my sketch). It is unusual to see a bright comet in the same field of view as a globular cluster, and it was well worth the lack of sleep. I also made a sketch and observation of Mars, but the seeing conditions were poor and the drawing is surely not as exciting as the event depicted at left.

Update: The picture below was captured from New Mexico the morning following my observation and sketch, when the comet was within .5 degree of M92.

Mars update

2012-01-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

Ares(Roman), god of war

As January winds down, Mars is becoming increasingly convenient to observe. By about 11:00 PM local time, Mars is high enough for decent views, and it remains in the sky all night...meaning that if I miss the opportunity for the late night observation I can always get up an hour before sunrise to make an observation. In addition, as Mars moves towards close approach, its apparent size is now increasing rapidly. Closest approach will occur at 1701 UT (10:01 AM MST) on March 05, 2012 with an apparent planetary disk diameter of 13.9' arcseconds. Mars will be at a distance of 0.673678350248 astronomical units (AU) or 62,622,315 miles (100,780,847 km).

Mars, as most of you know, was the Greek mythological god of war. In 1877 astronomer Asaph Hall discovered two very small moons and named them “Phobos” and “Deimos.” These were appropriate names as in reality, war is accompanied by "fear" and "terror."

I have made two sketches of Mars over the past week. The first sketch, on January 20th was made in the early morning hours and was completed at 1325 UT (6:25 AM local time). The Sketch was made using my TEC 140mm APO at 196 power. Seeing conditions were excellent, with only occasional seconds of unsteady seeing. Dominating the view is the North Polar Cap (NPC) at top.

Central meridian: 111.7 degrees
Diameter: 10.7 arceseconds
Magnitude: -0.3
Distance: .875 AU (7.3 light minutes)

I made another observation on January 27th at 0552 UT (10:52 PM MST on Jan. 26th), using the same telescope and magnification. The sketch at left is the more interesting side of Mars. In addition to the NPC, Syrits Major is nearing the central meridian. To the lower left, I believe, is Mare Tyrrhenum, and the dark streak on the lower right is, I believe, Sinus Sabaeus.

Central meridian: 297.74 degrees
Diameter: 11.35 arceseconds
Magnitude: -0.4
Distance: .82.48 AU (6.8 light minutes)

Giant Magellan Telescope ~ The Flame is burning

2012-01-15T09:13:00.000-07:00

What a great weekend for astronomy related activity so far! Great observing on Friday night, and then a visit to the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab on Saturday during the casting process for the second of seven mirrors that will become the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMTO). We are now clouded out, so what better activity than writing a blog post?

Click to enlarge

As mentioned, Friday night my good friend Jerry and I drove an hour south of Tucson to a great little spot called Empire Ranch to do some observing. We arrived just before sunset and stayed until moonrise. While the seeing (atmospheric stability) was just above average, the atmospheric transparency was excellent with a naked eye limiting magnitude of 7+ at the zenith. The zodiacal light was quite bright shining from the horizon all the way up through Jupiter at the meridian. While Jerry was busy continuing his detailed observations of globular clusters within the Andromeda Galaxy (not for the faint of heart!), I spent a lot of time panning through the winter milky way in Canis Major with my 4 inch f/11 refractor (how often can you see the milky way in this region!?!?). I had also brought along a Meade 178mm f/15 Maksutov Cassegrain for evaluation and spent time observing Jupiter, M42, and various star clusters. Later on in the evening, I decided to make a sketch of NGC 2024, nicknamed the Flame nebula, in Orion. At right is my sketch completed through the Meade 178mm using a Panoptic 35mm eyepiece. This is a very diffuse nebula that I tried to capture on paper, so be sure to click on the sketch to enlarge.

First GMTO Mirror

Saturday afternoon, Dean Ketelsen had arranged to take a group of Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association Members on a tour of the Mirror Lab. I had been there a couple times previously, but never while the furnace was in operation. Dean is a knowledgeable and friendly individual who shares a passion for astronomy and blogging (check out his blog here). Dean began the tour showing us the first GMTO mirror, which is in the final stages of polishing. It is always impressive to see an 8.4 meter mirror in front of you, but when considering that this mirror is one of seven that will make up the 24.5 meter GMTO, and that is an off-axis mirror, it gives one pause to consider how cutting edge this project is. The first mirror is very nearly finished...while not perfectly smooth, the variations that exist are on the order of a millionth of an inch (you read that right). As this mirror will sit off-axis (in other words, it is not the central mirror of the seven, but one of the six that will surround the central mirror) it requires a very unusual figure and is to date the most challenging mirror that the mirror lab has ever produced. Here is a piece of trivia that will amaze- how much aluminum is used to coat a mirror of this size? Glad you asked! An amount about the size of a can of soda pop!

For those of you who are interested in the accuracy of the mirror, you can enlarge the image at right, which is a picture I took of a poster sitting next to the first mirror. The LBT referred to is the Large Binocular Telescope, currently the largest optical telescope in the world sporting twin 8.4 meter mirrors. Ironically, when the GMTO comes on line it will be competing to retain its position as the largest telescope at 24.5 meters as there is a consortium working to create the "Thirty Meter Telescope" as well as discussion of "The Extremely Large Telescope" of 42 meters!

Continuing on, Dean took us to heart of the days festivities, the rotating furnace containing the molten glass that will become mirror number two. There was something awe inspiring as we descended the steps into the room. Not only was it impressive visually, but the sound or the furnace moving and the sensation of the heat radiating from the furnace reminded everyone that we were seeing history. To stick with the GMTO theme, it was as if we were witnessing construction of the ship that Magellan would sail in the first crossing from Atlantic to Pacific oceans, or in the first circumnavigation of the world. At left is an image of the furnace as it rotates. From left to right in the picture are Dean and Melinda Ketelsen, and me with my friend and colleague Cathi Duncan who coordinates outreach for the Mirror Lab (she rocked the weekend!).

A BIG thank you to Dean for arranging this opportunity for TAAA members to experience this historic event. So what is the next best thing to being there? A video of course! I made this short video with my point and shoot camera and uploaded it to You Tube...if your volume is on, you can hear the furnace as it rotates. Several folks who have seen this video have asked about the speed of the furnace. As it turns out (pun intended) the furnace speed was about 4.8 mph while I was visiting.

Mars time

2012-01-08T09:59:00.000-07:00

C8+ She was a beauty!

Back when I still had my first "real" telescope, a Celestron Super C8+ I spent many nights and mornings observing and drawing Mars during it's 2003 apparition. this was the famously close pass between Mars and Earth when the apparent size of Mars exceeded 25 arcseconds in diameter. Two things happened as a result of all those observations: First, I decided I needed an even better planetary scope and sold that Super C8+ to fund a refractor. Second, I became a much better observer.

I regret selling that telescope for several reasons, including the sentimental fact that it was the telescope that took me from having a passing interest in astronomy into the realm of being a serious amateur astronomer. Using the Super C8+ I observed all the Messier objects, several comets, a couple asteroids, all the planets, and a few hundred other delights. Additionally, now that I have much more experience using telescopes, I believe it had the best optics of any of the SCT design telescopes I have owned (4 as of now). Sure I purchased an excellent Stellarvue 4 inch refractor with the money from the sale, but in hindsight that refractor should have complimented the C8+ not replaced it.

Click to enlarge

Observing and drawing Mars night after night back in 2003 honed my skills as an observer more than any other period of time. Many of you know that Mars reveals is dusky markings only to the most patient of observers, and perhaps more than most types of observations, practice and repetition makes a large difference. It is typical to sit at the eyepiece for 20 to 30 minutes to note the subtle shading of Martian surface features. Many times I will show folks Mars in my telescopes and all they will see is a red globe (or orange, or salmon, etc...depending on the observer). At right is a page from my log book from that 2003 apparition, including 2 sketches made with the Super C8+.

Currently, Mars is much farther from Earth than it was on that night in September 2003. Back then, Mars was .399 AU and had an apparent diameter of 24.9 arcseconds. Today, Mars is nearly the same distance from us as the Sun at .973 AU, and it's apparent size is a paltry 9.6 arcseconds! (One AU is the average distance between the Sun and the Earth, or approximately 93 million miles). Nevertheless, observing Mars in a fine planetary instrument like my TEC 140 is sublime.

Click to enlarge

I completed the sketch at left at 14:10 UT (7:10 AM MST) using a magnification of 196X. I began my observation of Mars about 40 minutes earlier at 6:30 AM local time and watching Mars as the dawn light was breaking was a peaceful and satisfying way to make my first Mars observation of the current apparition. At magnitude 0.0, Mars is fairly bright and observing in the light of dawn aided in reducing the glare of the planet. It is hard to capture in a sketch how subtle the markings on the planet are- however the feature that is most obvious is the North Polar cap, at the top of my sketch. the planet rotates from east to west, or from left to right in the drawing. You will notice that Mars is not fully illuminated, and is currently 92.3% full. In the coming weeks, I will continue to make morning observations of Mars and over the next month will observe features on the other side of the planet. Mars rotates once every 24.6 hours, so if one observes Mars at the same time each day, it will take several days to begin to see other areas of the Martian surface. In my sketch, the central meridian of Mars is approximately 233 degrees.

Wikipedia maintains an excellent page on Mars, and for more detailed observing information, I recommend Jeff Biesh's article "The 2011-2012 Aphelic Apparition of Mars." It is also worth noting that in November, NASA launched the latest mission to Mars, The Mars Science Laboratory, nicknamed Curiosity. The homepage for the mission has a tremendous amount of information and some cool video of the launch.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T14:33:00.000-07:00

Welcome to year three of The Lost Pleiad Observatory Blog! I started this blog on January 1st 2010, and am happy to report that it is still going. I see many very excellent astronomy blogs that end up gathering dust as the authors run out of steam. I have enjoyed maintaining this blog both as a means to share some of my astronomical observations and to keep in touch with friends who share similar interests. Those of you that follow the blog with any frequency (both of you) will know that I do a lot of solar observing. Upon counting up my sketches from last year, it turns out that I made 64 sketches of the Sun in 2011.

Today, in honor of the new year, I made two sketches of the Sun. First, at left, a sketch of the Sun in white light. This sketch was completed at 1904 UT (12:04 PM MST) under fairly breezy and stunningly clear skies. This type of observation is called white light as it represents the entire visual spectrum and is what you would see if you could safely look up at the Sun. Using a specialized prism that re-directs much of the sunlight away from the eyepiece, as well as dark filters (think welders glass), I am able to observe the Sun's photosphere and sketch Sunspots. The Sun rotates from east to west (right to left in my sketch) and has a period of approximately 28 days at the equator. Active region 11389 is the largest and most complex region with over a dozen spots in two groups. The constant shaking of the telescope from wind made it difficult to tease out small spots, and it is likely that there are more spots in this group than I could see.

The second sketch was made using my Lunt Solar Systems 60mm dedicated solar telescope. This telescope allows for viewing a very narrow band of hydrogen alpha light (red), that is also part of the visual spectrum. Being quite faint, this specialized telescope isolates this wavelength of light in order that the observer can see into the chromosphere of the Sun. This layer of the solar atmosphere is exciting as it is where we can observe many interesting features and active regions. The sketch at right was completed at 2014 UT (1:14 PM MST). Most interesting was active region 11389 which was exhibiting mild flaring during the time of my sketch. At the telescope, flaring appears within an active region as much brighter than the surrounding areas.

Happy New Year and I look forward to many exciting astronomical adventures in 2012!

Shadow of Mt. Lemmon

2011-12-27T08:35:00.000-07:00

Most of the time when I am at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter I am showing guests the sunset as part of our nightly SkyNights program. Last night I had gone up the mountain with my son Ian to do a little work and help out one of my colleagues. Given that he was leading the program I was able to look to the east at sunset and observed the shadow of Mount Lemmon being projected on the inside of the Earth's atmosphere. This phenomenon is observable from many high mountaintops, and last night the colors were particularly beautiful. Ian took the image below just as we were heading off the mountain. Notice the dark blue shadow just above the mountains in the distance.

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Lunar Eclipse ~ There's nothing to see here...move along

2011-12-10T07:46:00.001-07:00

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Odds are that if you are reading this blog you know that this morning just before sunrise western North America was treated to a total lunar eclipse. This eclipse was unusual in that the Moon entered totality at 7:06 AM local time, just before sunrise, and then set behind the western horizon while still in the central umbra of Earth's shadow. For a very good primer on Lunar Eclipses, visit the website of Mr. Eclipse, Fred Espenak of NASA. I took the picture at left during the total lunar eclipse of October 27th, 2004, with a much better camera than I presently own. Typically, total lunar eclipses render the moon shades of red/orange depending on the types and amounts of particulate matter in the Earth's atmosphere. Everything from dust to automotive exhaust, to volcanic ash affects the color of the Moon during a total eclipse.

I had planned to get out of bed at about 5:30 to brew some coffee and start watching the eclipse, but subconsciously I must have been fairly excited as my eyes popped open at 4 AM and I could not fall back asleep. I took a look outside as the predictions were for thick cirrus clouds and to my surprise the skies were reasonably clear. I had not been up at this hour to do any astronomy in quite some time, so with well over an hour prior to the eclipse, I opened up my observatory and took my first look at Mars during this apparition. Unfortunately, the seeing was poor and using my 12 inch SCT I had to keep magnifications very low to obtain a steady image at the eyepiece. As Mars is only about 7.5 arcseconds in diameter right now, it was very difficult to tease out any of the features at low magnification, other than the bright north polar cap...and even that was ill defined. Given that Mars was high overhead in Leo, I was not expecting much more when pointing the scope over to Saturn. Saturn is not far from the bright star Spica and is sitting much closer to the southern horizon. Similar to Mars, the image of Saturn in the eyepiece was mush. Back inside to warm up and pour a cup of coffee and start eclipse watching.

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It was quite relaxing to be able watch the moon move through the partial phases from the warmth of my kitchen window while sipping some fresh coffee. Occasionally I would go outside to appreciate the "all-sky" view that I was not getting through the kitchen window. I did not have a watch on, but sometime about 6:43 - 6:45 MST (1343-1345 UT) I observed a satellite moving straight up from the western horizon. What caught my eye was it's sudden brightening and immediate fading leading me to believe it may have been an iridium flare. As the moon approached totality and began to turn red/orange, I again wandered outside to get a better view and to try and capture a photo. The image at right was taken with my little pocket sized Cannon point and shoot but gives you an idea of how dark the moon appeared as it neared and entered totality. In fact, as the moon entered it's total phase, it became invisible to the eye. Binoculars did not help either. I believe that the lack of contrast due to the dawn light in the sky as well as the extinction of the moonlight as it passed through the atmosphere near the horizon led to the complete disappearance of La Luna. There is something quite tranquil about watching a Lunar eclipse, and as much as I wanted the eclipse observing experience to continue I immediately thought to myself, "there is nothing to see here, move along."

While I am not a photographer, I do want to call attention to accomplished Arizona amateur astronomer Tom Polakis who imaged the eclipse. Based near Phoenix, Tom Polakis captured several nice images that he stitched into a time lapse. Click on the image below to see the time lapse full size. This represents exactly how the eclipse appeared to me visually.

Tucson based amateur astronomer and photographer Sam Rua traveled east of Kitt Peak National Observatory and captured this beautiful photograph of the eclipsed moon and some thin cirrus clouds setting behind the observatories. You can visit Sam's gallery by clicking here.

Rock and Roll Sun

2011-12-10T07:20:00.001-07:00

This video is a must see- from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. You can watch it over and over and each time you will see more and more activity on the Sun...simply amazing!

According to the SDO group:

"Over the past 24 hours we have seen some beautiful solar events. None of them have a direct impact on Earth, but they are astonishing to watch. It just shows how an active Star our Sun really is. Far from boring.

On December 8, 2011 a twisting prominence eruption occurred on the lower eastern limb. The view through the AIA 304 angstrom filter shows us this beautiful eruption.

In the early hours of December 9, 2011 SDO observed a little bit of a different eclipse. An erupting cloud of plasma was eclipsed by a dark magnetic filament. The eruption is still on the far side of the Sun, behind the eastern limb and is slowly moving forward and over the limb sometime next week.

In front you can observe the filament of relatively cool dark material floating across the Sun's surface in the foreground. That filament partially blocks the view of the hot plasma eruption behind it."

Make sure your speakers are on for the full rock concerto....

Thanksgiving thanks to Herschel

2011-11-27T22:17:00.001-07:00

Tonight was the third clear night in a row here at the Lost Pleiad Observatory, and unfortunately, the last night of this extended Thanksgiving weekend. I knew that I would not last as long tonight so decided to concentrate on just two constellations in my Herschel 400 observing program, Triangulum and Pegasus. Together these constellations account for 6 of the Herschel 400 objects and one of them in particular is quite captivating...

Triangulum - The Triangle:

Click to enlarge

NGC 598 - The Triangulum galaxy, M33. This object has always been fascinating to me. I have seen it with naked eye averted vision from Portal, AZ., and on other occasions been unable to see it in binoculars. It has a very low surface brightness and despite it's large apparent size, detecting any spiral structure is a challenge. My best view has actually been in my TEC 140 APO from Portal, AZ. Tonight, in my 12 inch SCT I was able to make out the "S" shape of the galaxy, as well as several knots in the arms, particularly the northern arm. The small nebular HII region NGC 604 was the brightest. Not one of my best, but the sketch at left was completed tonight (0345 UT 11.28.2011) using a magnification of 145x.

Pegasus - The Winged Horse:

NGC 7217 - A fairly large and slightly elongated 11th magnitude galaxy with a slightly brighter nucleus.
NGC 7331 - A famous target in this constellation that I have observed in many different telescopes. Very bright, elongated galaxy with a very bright elongated nucleus, containing an even brighter central region.
NGC 7448 - Large galaxy, much fainter than previous two. No detail seen- slightly elongated.
NGC 7479 - Another galaxy that I have observed frequently in the Schulman 32 inch telescope at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter where I work. This galaxy is quite elongated in the eyepiece, but no trace of the spiral arms is noted tonight. Slight brightening in the middle.
NGC 7814 - A very bright elongated galaxy with a very bright but small nucleus.

Herschel 400 count: 65 down, 335 remaining!

Herschel 400 ~ Part Deux

2011-11-27T21:17:00.001-07:00

William Herschel

Well, night number two of the official Herschel 400 observation program was more relaxed than the aggressive pace of night number one. Last night, (Saturday night) I headed out a little bit later to continue my observations. We are just past new moon, and with a long Thanksgiving holiday weekend it is wonderful to have these dark nights with no reason to get up early in the morning. Unfortunately, the seeing (atmospheric stability) was basically garbage {I had some better adjectives, but this is after all a family friendly blog} in the best of moments. Bright stars were blobs of shimmering light and even the faint stars were hard to bring into focus. I consoled myself thinking about all those great nights we do have here in the desert and went ahead using a maximum magnification of 145x under what were truly very transparent skies. All observations made with my Meade Instruments 12 inch LX-200 SCT telescope. I took several breaks to drink some mint tea and just gaze naked eye at the milky way. Last nights constellations were in the same general areas as night number one and consisted of Auriga, Taurus, Orion, and Eridanus. While it may seem like a lot of sky, (and in truth, it is) these four constellations only represent 19 of the Herschel 400 objects.

Auriga- The Charioteer:

NGC 1664 - An open cluster that displays several relatively bright stars, spread well apart, with a nice line of faint stars leading away from the cluster.
NGC 1857 - Another open cluster with many more stars than the above cluster; more condensed and generally a more pleasing view.
NGC 1907 - A fainter cluster than the ones above, but I'd still consider it bright overall although it contains many more faint stars.
NGC 1931 - As stars go this is nothing unusual for an open cluster...however, near the center is a very bright patch of nebulosity that contains three very close stars. Most of the time, due to seeing, only two stars were visible but at high power during the fractions of a second where things steadied, a third star popped into view.
NGC 2126 - A medium sized open cluster with about 20-30 stars.
NGC 2281 - Another typical open cluster. Unremarkable. About 10 bright stars with a smattering of fainter ones.

Taurus - The Bull:

NGC 1647 - A very large cluster nearly filling the field of view (eyepiece TFOV = .7 degrees) with several brighter stars.
NGC 1817 - A pretty open cluster with well over 100 stars, the richest cluster yet tonight! Less than .25 degree in size.

Orion - The Hunter...I've spent a lot of time in this constellation and previously observed most of these objects:

NGC 1788 - A bright patch of nebulosity with two stars embedded. It is irregular in shape.
NGC 1980 - Another bright nebula at the end of the sword of Orion. Small, surrounding the star Iota Orionis. Often ignored in favor of it's famous neighbor, the Great Orion Nebula.
NGC 1999 - Another "bright" nebula. Not much to look at visually, but photographically this is the famous "keyhole" nebula, containing a true dark void (not dust) in it's center.
NGC 2022 - Yes, a planetary nebula...probably my favorite class of deep sky object due to their subtle nature. This one is definitely blue/green with a brighter center. No sign of the central star.

NGC 2024

NGC 2024 - The Flame nebula- have seen this in much better detail from a darker site...still obvious in the suburbs, but rather ghostly. Dust lanes most visible when Zeta Orionis is moved out of the field of view. Image at right copyright Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona
NGC 2169 - A nice compact grouping of similarly bright stars that exactly form the numerals "3" and "7"...I recognized this cluster at once as the "37" cluster but did not recall the NGC number!
NGC 2186 - A compact group of fainter stars, maybe 30 of them...a deep sky stepchild in this constellation.
NGC 2194 - An unusually shaped cluster, almost a rectangle. Fairly bright and rich and well condensed.

Eridanus - The River:

NGC 1084 - This is an elongated galaxy that appears a little brighter than its listed 12th magnitude. No details seen.
NGC 1407 - A round galaxy with an obviously brighter nucleus. These targets are low on the horizon making observations challenging.
NGC 1535 - A striking planetary nebula that is quite blue in color. Quite round. The central 2/3 of the nebula is markedly brighter than the outer 1/3.

59 objects down, 341 to go!

Herschel 400, the official start

2011-11-26T15:23:00.001-07:00

Often when observing at night, I tend to follow a familiar pattern. I will observe any planets that are in the sky, I make sketches of any available comets, I visit some of my favorite Messier objects, and then I'll pick a constellation and observe some of its deep sky objects until I am ready to head indoors. Last night was a very dark and clear night at the Lost Pleiad Observatory, and on a lark I said to myself "self, lets finally, officially, start the Herschell 400." Now faithful reader, you have been brought in on one of my secrets...I talk to myself. Why, you ask? Well, to be honest, I usually agree with myself.

According to Wikipedia, The Herschel 400 are a "subset of William Herschel's original deep skycatalog of 2,500 deep sky objects, selected by Brenda F. Guzman (Branchett),Lydel Guzman, Paul Jones, James Morrison, Peggy Taylor and Sara Saey of theAncient City Astronomy Club in St. Augustine, Florida, USA circa 1980." They represent 400 of the brighter deep sky objects cataloged by William Herschel and are all observable from mid-northern latitudes. I have probably observed well over half of these objects already, but I have done so in a haphazard fashion and being a poor note taker, likely have no record of many of them...and even where records exist in my notes, they are written in a notebook by date of observation and are not collected or organized in any fashion whatsoever. As a resource, click here for the Herschell 400 catalog arranged by constellation published by the Astronomical League.

Distribution of Herschel 400 objects

Red = Galaxy///Green = Nebula///Yellow = Star Cluster

We just had a fairly wet storm leave the area and temperatures last night were much cooler than they had been over the past few weeks. I had a feeling that the night could be one of the few at my observatory where dew would actually be a concern. I pulled the dew shield for my 12 inch SCT out of storage, screwed it on. After observing Jupiter and taking a look at comet C/2010 G2 (Hill) (ephemerides here), I began to officially observe the Herschel 400.

The darkest and best skies from the Lost Pleiad Observatory are to the North and East and I decided to start my observations in the constellation of Andromeda...that and alphabetically they are first on the list, so it just seemed the right thing to do. All observations are made at magnifications of 145X and 234X, with occasional looks at planetary nebula and galaxies at 305X. While transparency was excellent last night, the seeing 9atmospheric stability) was average to below average...it never really became steady. Regardless, in order of NGC designation:

NGC 891

Andromeda - The Princess

NGC 205 - Also known as M110 this is a large satellite of the the Great Andromeda Galaxy and at low power shares the view with M31 herself.
NGC 404 - Very close to the orange star Beta Andromeda, commonly called Mirach...sometimes called the Ghost of Mirach. Moving the star out of the field of view reveals a brighter nucleus and a round galaxy.
NGC 752 - One of only two Herschel 400 objects in Andromeda that I do not recall observing. An open cluster of stars, pretty, bright and not condensed. Magnitude 5.7

NGC 7662

NGC 891 - An old favorite. This is an elusive edge on galaxy that I have observed in almost every telescope of decent aperture I have used. Dust lane visible with averted vision, quite ethereal. Sketch above right made with the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter 32 inch Schulman Telescope
NGC 7662 - The Blue Snowball nebula shows a nice blue color and increasing the magnification reveals the incomplete bright inner ring. Sketch at left also made with the Schulman 32 inch.
NGC 7688 - The other Herschel 400 object in Andromeda not previously observed. Another bright open cluster...what else is there to say?

Aries (A good second constellation as it is my "sign"):

NGC 772 - A small 8 x 5 arcminute galaxy which is slightly elongated. No sign of arms, however, the nucleus is somewhat brighter than outer areas. Also known as Arp 78.

Cassiopeia - The Queen.

NGC 129 - Open cluster, attractive with many bright stars, probably 30-40 overall.
NGC 136 - A very small, faint, condensed patch of light...averted vision reveals a smattering of elusive pinpoints of light. Apparently an open cluster, but perhaps I am observing something in the background of the cluster?
NGC 185 - Also known as Caldwell 18, this is a small galaxy that seems slightly disturbed using averted vision. Also, a touch elongated.
NGC 225 - Another open cluster of bright stars...probably better in binoculars.
NGC 278 - A small round galaxy with a brighter nucleus. Just a couple arcminutes in diameter.
NGC 381 - One of the nicer open clusters so far with 50 - 70 stars, many of them faint giving the cluster a busy appearance.
NGC 436 - Yet another open cluster, containing many brighter stars with a few multiple stars among them.
NGC 457 - One of my favorite open clusters out there...looks best at low power where it looks like a winged creature. I like to call it the Owl, but at Halloween call it the Bat...some locals call it the Kachina Dancer. Whatever the name, it appears to have two bright eyes staring back at the observer while spreading it's wings wide.
NGC 559 - Another open cluster, bright stars, not very impressive.
NGC 637 - Duplicate of the above! Different stars, same impression in the 12 inch scope...yawn...
NGC 654 - OK, a little better in the eye candy department with twice as many stars as the above two objects and a higher level of condensation.
NGC 659 - Back to basics...maybe 10 cluster members well spread apart. Where are my (goto) binoculars?
NGC 663 - Now we are talking! Many faint stars, well condensed, at 145 power this cluster should be more famous. It has a delicate appearance with a dark lane running the length of the cluster.
NGC 1027 - Another open cluster, typical of others in this constellation. Bumping the telescope I think I can detect a subtle nebulosity enveloping this cluster...averted imagination? Maybe...Worth returning to at a truly dark site.
NGC 7789 - Wow! This is a beautiful cluster with well over 100 stars. As I continue to observe this cluster it started to appear as if it had a spiral shape to it...maybe time to get some rest. I took a walk around the yard to get the blood flowing, took a drink of water and came back to the scope. Sure enough, this cluster has a distinct spiral shape to it...once noticed I can not avoid seeing this obvious pattern. Favorite Herschel 400 object in Cassiopeia!!
NGC 7790 - What else? Another open cluster...about 30 stars gathered together...a let down after the previous cluster, but typical of these Cassiopeia clusters.

Cepheus - The King.

NGC 40

NGC 40 - This is a favorite planetary nebula that I have observed and sketched a couple times previously (example at left). The central star is easily visible in a circular shell of nebulosity with a bright "polar caps". Also known as Caldwell 2.
NGC 6939 - A well populated open cluster with many chains of stars emanating from its central regions. Probably upwards of 75 stars. In a lower power telescope one can observe this pretty cluster together with the galaxy below
NGC 6946 - A small low surface brightness galaxy that is very nearby to the cluster above. No sign of spiral arms, and only a slight brightening toward toward the nucleus. Also known as Caldwell 12, The Fireworks Galaxy.
NGC 7142 - Run of the mill open cluster- 20+ stars, fairly bright.
NGC 7160 - Barely an open cluster in the 12 inch scope...not many stars at all, although they are relatively bright ones.
NGC 7380 - A bright cluster embedded within some nebulosity. From a dark site this would likely be striking.
NGC 7510 - Open cluster (too many of these tonight!) with approximately 30 stars in the cluster. Relatively bright at magnitude 7.9

Perseus - The Hero.

NGC 651 - Planetary nebula widely known as the Little Dumbbell, M76. Pushing the power up to 305 reveals the bipolar nature of this nebula with brighter regions at the poles. Hints of the nebulous looping extensions noted when nudging the scope, although these would likely be invisible if I did not know they are there from previous observations.
NGC 869 and NGC 884 - The famous "Double Cluster" is the only object tonight for which I pulled out the 56mm plossl. At very low power I can almost appreciate the beauty of these two objects, containing several hundred stars, including some colorful stars near the center of each cluster.

NGC 1023

NGC 1023 - This is a bright elongated galaxy nicely offset by a chain of stars south of the galaxy. A bright nucleus with some faint extensions make for a sight unique so far tonight. I took a break from simply observing and sketched this galaxy as seen at right.
NGC 1245- An open cluster, containing a fair number of stars, somewhat condensed with stars of similar brightness.
NGC 1342 - Another open cluster, not much to note, maybe 40 stars.
NGC 1444 - Small and faint cluster of stars, Herschel must have been sleepy by this point!
NGC 1513 - This is an interesting cluster in that it is shaped somewhat like a "U"...it is a bright a large cluster with 30 to 40 stars.
NGC 1528 - This is also an interesting open cluster with dark lanes passing between the lines of stars.
NGC 1545 - Final open cluster of the evening...and not an impressive one by any stretch. Dominated by two brighter stars.

Well, that is my report on night one of the official Herschel 400 observing run of the Lost Pleiad Observatory. I may try and get a few more objects in tonight, but am already quite happy with my Thanksgiving weekend start. 40 objects down, 360 to go! That means that if I average one object per night I should finish in a year...we'll see!

Photon Phix

2011-11-20T10:46:00.001-07:00

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First time since November 5th that I've been able to observe and sketch the Sun- Life has been busy and the few chances I have had to observe at all have been quick looks at Jupiter in the evenings. I am a fairly dedicated solar observer so I was excited to have time on my hands this morning to get my photon fix. At 8:30 AM the sky was partly cloudy and it looked like I would have enough of a clearing to observe and sketch the Sun. Turns out I was being fairly optimistic as it took me about an hour and a half to make the sketch due to passing clouds. At one point I had to take a solid 20 minute break from sketching.

Seeing was fairly poor overall between passing clouds and the mostly unsteady air overhead- perhaps a 1 or 2 out of 5. The sketch was completed at 1721 UT (10:21 MST) using my Lunt Solar Systems 60mm pressure tuned hydrogen alpha telescope. During the time of my sketch, active region 11354 near the eastern limb exhibited a mild flare. I do not know what time the flare started or ended due to the clouds but I noticed it at approximately 1645 UT. While there are several numbered active regions on the face of the Sun right now, none of them were that remarkable. The complex of three regions rounding the northeast limb are enticing and perhaps the next several days will see some nice activity. The large filaments in the east are quite dark, which indicates that they are much cooler "waves" in the surrounding sea of plasma.

For comparison purposes, below are images taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory Atmospheric Imaging Assembly. The image at left was captured at 1727 UT and the image at right captured at 1722 UT, essentially the same time as my sketch. I have flipped the SDO images horizontally to match the orientation of my sketch with west at left.

NGC 7008 by eye and camera

2011-11-11T16:51:00.001-07:00

Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona

We continue to be completely clouded out here in the Old Pueblo (Tucson), prohibiting any observational astronomy day or night. At least we are in the bright moon period so I am not missing too much. Just this week, Adam Block published an image of NGC 7008 that was captured at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter using the 32 inch Schulman telescope. It is quite a beautiful planetary nebula, with a pair of bright (relatively) colorful stars to the south of the nebula. Looking at the nebula, I immediately recognized the object as one that I had sketched earlier this year. At left is the image and below is my sketch. Together they illustrate the difference between what can be seen with the eye versus a camera. In both the image and sketch, North is up and West is to the right. I completed my sketch on the night of July 2nd 2011, using my 12 inch LX200 SCT and a 10mm Pentax XW eyepiece yielding a magnification of 305X.

This nebula resides in the constellation of Cygnus the swan, approximately 2800 light years away. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1787 and is sometimes known popularly as the "fetus nebula." This nebula resulted from a brief phase near the end of life of the central star when it was shedding off its outer layers. This process resulted in a much cooler star, known as a white dwarf. Incredibly, that single star has created a nebula that is about one light year in diameter!

You can see some of the other examples of the world-class imaging being done at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter by Adam Block and guests of the programs by visiting this web page.

Sunspot region 11339

2011-11-05T14:34:00.000-07:00

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Currently, there is a massive sunspot region in the northern hemisphere of the Sun that has rotated into view over the past several days. Numbered region 11339 is large, complex, and already responsible for a X class solar flare. We are between weather fronts here in Tucson, and today the atmospheric stability was as bad as I have seen it in some time. I observed the Sun in white light using very low magnification (approximately 55X) to make the sketch at left. During the time of my sketch there were only fractions of a second every now and then where the seeing stabilized at all. I suspect there are many more small spots and pores in regions 11339 and 11338 than I was able to capture. As it was, this sketch took me about 40 minutes to complete, as I patiently waited to spot spots. I completed the drawing at 2020 UT (1:20 MST).

For comparison, below is the Mount Wilson Solar Observatory Daily Sunspot Drawing:

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This is a video I created using the freeware program JHelioviewer that shows the rotation of this spot group from about 2000 UT on 11/2 through 2000 UT today. The data is from the Solar Dynamics Observatory Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA):

ISS Solar Transit

2011-10-28T16:05:00.000-07:00

We had a very unique opportunity today in Tucson to see the International Space Station transit across the face of the Sun. I have seen the ISS many times naked eye, and have even observed it through a small refractor as it tracked across the sky one night...so in truth, while I thought it would be neat I was not that excited for the event. Fortunately I had thrown my white light solar observation equipment into my truck before work this morning, so as the time approached I was able to drive straight to our observing location, the Babad Do'ag vista on the Mount Lemmon Highway. There I met up with Dennis Nendza and Jerry Farrar who were already setting up for the event. Dennis was going to take both video of the event, as well as digital still images through his C8 telescope. Jerry was planning to observe the transit in hydrogen alpha and I was going to make a sketch.

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The transit was scheduled for 1:39 PM local time, and we knew that we had to be looking in advance and not paying too much attention to the exact time or we could miss it. The ISS after all moves rather quickly and in fact only takes approximately 1 second to transit the Sun! There was a pretty good breeze while I worked to sketch the Sun in advance of the transit, making it difficult to see fine detail. At Approximately 1:30 I had the spots sketched and was now ready for the event. At 1:38 I began to observe the Sun continuously and at approximately 1:39:12 the ISS flew on across! I have to say that it was actually quite exciting and I am glad that Jerry kept reminding me throughout the week that this event was upcoming. At left is my sketch which shows the approximate path of the ISS (hey, it flew by in a second!) as it moved northward. It was very easy to see the central module, as well as all the solar panels arrayed out to either side. In terms of size, the ISS appeared about the same size as the large sunspot AR11330 (although my sketch shows it slightly larger).

At the time of the transit, the Sun was at an altitude of 39.4 degrees and an azimuth of 210 degrees. I hope to see the images and video that Dennis captured soon, and see how closely I was able to note the transit path during the one second I had to observe it. The exact coordinates of the Babad Do'ag vista that we observed from are: 110:43:14.4 West, 32:18:32.9 North. At right is a picture of our happy group, after our successful observation.

Near and Far

2011-10-23T15:42:00.002-07:00

I just returned home from a quick two night trip to Portal, Arizona where I had two excellent nights with my good friends Jerry Farrar and Bill Gates. If you appreciate dark skies and stars, you owe it to yourself to make a visit to this little back country area on the southeast flank of the Chricauhua Mountains. The weather was extremely cooperative and we had two nights of very low humidity and transparent skies. While Friday night was excellent by most standards, Saturday night was very nearly perfect. (For the astronomers among you, Bill commented that his impression was that we were experiencing sub-arcsecond seeing). In terms of naked eye limiting magnitude at the zenith, I could see stars around magnitude 7.2...while Bill could see fainter. At left is a picture of the purple light that was filling the western sky shortly after sunset.

HST image of NGC 6751

I observed many targets over two nights, near and far, more than I can recount here without putting you quickly to sleep. For example, using my 12 inch LX 200 SCT, I observed the central star in the ring nebula at 610 power. In addition to this easy planetary nebula, I decided to make a tour of some of the planetaries within the constellation of Aquila. I made a few notes on about a half dozen of them with the most interesting (in other words, something more than a diffuse stellar blip, or an ethereal glow) being NGC 6751 and NGC 6804. NGC 6751 revealed an easy central star at 381x, and increasing the magnification to 610x brought out the delicate structure, central hollow, and slightly brighter arcs on the perimeter. NGC 6804 is a large oval shaped nebula with an easy central star and two additional stars superimposed on the nebula.

For some time I had been wanting to make a sketch of the Pleiades star cluster and nebula. Considering the honored place that this object has in my life (it is after all, the Lost Pleiad Observatory), I was waiting for a trip to Portal where using my TEC 140 APO and a low power eyepiece I could fit the entire cluster into the field of view and see the nebula. At left is my sketch completed at 0730 UT on October 23rd. The bright stars of the cluster are very young in stellar terms, only about 100 million years old. They are approximately 400 light years distant appearing in the constellation of Taurus the Bull. While I was drawing, I enjoyed memories of camping with my late sister-in-law very near to Portal and looking up at these same stars.

Relatively near to us, almost two astronomical units away (about twice the earth-sun distance), Comet Garradd continues its slow trek through the solar system. The comet has brightened considerably, and I would estimate it very close to magnitude 7. Under the dark and steady skies of Portal, the tail was extensive with three main streamers visible, although not nearly as bright as my sketch at right would imply. My drawing was completed at 0255 UT on October 22nd, at 147x with the 12 inch SCT telescope. Comet Garradd is currently in Hercules and is an easy target even in a pair of 7 x 50 binoculars.

Finally, something far away...well, extra-galactic anyway. Guided to the location by Jerry Farrar, I made an observation of Globular Cluster G1 (Mayall II) in the Andromeda Galaxy. At 2.52 million light years away, this is the brightest cluster in the Andromeda galaxy, and quite possibly the remnant core of a dwarf galaxy that has merged with Andromeda. What confirms this observation is separating the small 15th magnitude stars that closely attend the cluster. While not much to look at, it is incredible to consider that using a small telescope we are able to see this object as clearly non-stellar, in another galaxy! Obviously, it is very massive, probably twice the size of Omega Centauri, the largest known globular cluster in the milky way. It is theorized that there may be a black hole at the center of G1. I made the sketch below with my 12 inch SCT at a magnification of 381x. At right is an HST image of the cluster. This cluster resides approximately 130,000 light years from the core of the Andromeda galaxy. (If you are interested in hunting it down, it is at RA 00:32:46.8 ~ DEC +39:34:42)

HST image

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SkyNights update

2011-10-14T16:44:00.001-07:00

Momentum....Inertia...Whatever it is, I need to ride it. I have managed to make several blog posts over the past month and do not want to slip back into infrequent posting mode. The fact that you are loyally reading this right now is the very reason that I am taking a few quick minutes to post. As you know (or should), I have been working at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter leading public SkyNights programs and conducting occasional other outreach events. Last weekend I conducted a program and one of the guests was a professional photographer named Howard Paley. As it turns out, not only is Howard an accomplished photographer, he has known my family from as far back as the late 1980's. That is one of the neat things about Tucson - no matter how it grows, it still feels like a one-horse town. Howard sent me some images that he took during the program and provided me permission to post them below. I'd strongly encourage you to visit his website and see some of his incredible photos from around the southwest. All of the images in this blog post are copyrighted and should not be used without Howard's explicit permission.

One of the atmospheric phenomenon that visitors to our programs can experience, is to see and understand that shadows on earth are actually blue...not black or grey as commonly thought. The short explanation for why our shadows are blue is that our atmosphere scatters blue light and this is what colors our shadows. For the long explanation you need to come to a program.

Sunset is incredible from the summit. At right, is a very pretty image of the Sun heading toward the horizon, approximately 3-4 minutes before the start of sunset. At sunset, guests often see a unique phenomenon called the green rim. How do I know that this photo is 3-4 minutes before sunset? Come to the program, learn the answer, and see the green rim for yourself.

At left is an image of the nearly full moon that Howard captured during the program. What is incredible is that this image was not taken through a telescope. It was taken with a tripod mounted camera. No doubt what makes it special is the photographer.

Finally, a beautiful image of the inside of the dome just after sunset. While the red light was coming from dim lights within the observatory, the white light shining into the dome from the left is light from the moon. Know what constellation appears through the dome slit? If so, send me an email and if you are right I'll make it worth your while!

Solar sketch October 8th

2011-10-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

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A tremendous amount of activity on the Sun this morning, in terms of active regions and prominences. We are having a cold spell with temperatures in Tucson lower than those in Minneapolis due to the jet stream residing overhead. This is very unusual weather down here for early October and it has resulted in some poor atmospheric stability. I completed the sketch at left at 1547 UT (8:47 AM local time) with my Lunt Solar Systems 60mm dedicated hydrogen alpha pressure tuned telescope. Most unusual is the faint, expansive prominence off the east limb that appears to he lifting away from the Sun. There were two distinct brighter knots in this arc of plasma. Hopefully, some of the accomplished solar imagers around the world will post photos of this event soon.

Active regions 11309 and 11312 in the northern hemisphere both contain dark spots, and it appears that there is another active region rounding the northeast limb. The southern hemisphere is awash with activity, although much of the plage regions are faint and the poor seeing conditions made visual observation challenging. Region 11311 in the southwest contains a spot, as does region 11308 (or maybe it is 11310, I am having trouble figuring out which regions are which this morning...). In the southeast, active region 11313 is the most dynamic of the regions with bright plage and what appears to be some bi-polar activity. There are spots in the east and west ends of the region, along with some dark fibrils arcing between them. There is an additional region of plage in the southern hemisphere, on the meridian, which is as of yet unnumbered. Below are comparison images from Big Bear Solar Observatory at left (taken at 1556 UT) and from the Solar Dynamics Observatory at right (taken at 1539 UT). Note that the image from SDO captures the massive prominence on the east limb beautifully. Look closely at the Big Bear image and you can see that the prominence is ghostly just on the extreme edge of the field of view.

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Twice the fun

2011-10-02T10:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon I visited one of the local astronomy vendors, Stellar Vision, to see if proprietor Frank Lopez had some hardware that would allow me to piggyback my Lunt 60mm Hydrogen Alpha Telescope onto my recently acquired Astro-Telescopes 102mm f/11 achromat. I have been using the achromat for white light observations of the Sun and had been thinking about how great it would be if I could have both telescopes mounted simultaneously. The great thing about Frank is that he is like the Wizard of Oz- he goes behind his curtain (literally) you hear some wheels turning, metal parts clanging around, steam venting, and soon enough out he comes with some hardware that achieves exactly what you are looking for. Frank has spent years in the telescope business and deals in so much used equipment that I am not sure even he knows how many parts and he has behind the curtain. At left you can see my current set-up...Thanks to Frank for the mini, ring-top saddle that allows me to piggyback the Lunt! (Certainly I could have gone online and ordered this part from Losmandy, but I always believe in suporting the local vendor). While mostly convenient for me, this piggyback arrangement will be very useful for outreach activities.

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As luck would have it, we are in the middle of about a half-day of clear skies and I was able to get everything together this morning and make my first two sketches of the Sun without changing scopes. Right away I discovered how fun it is to notice a feature in either white light or hydrogen alpha and then to see if there is any associated feature visible in the other scope. The skies were not great, with passing cirrus and haze but I was still able to tease out quite a bit of detail, particularly in hydrogen alpha, as seen at right. This sketch was completed at 1535 UT (8:35 AM local). Active regions 11302 and 11305 continue to show significant activity as they rotate toward the Western limb. The spots in 11302 seem to have diminished a bit in size, although the plage and filaments in the region remain complex. Regions 11306 and 11307 seem to be decaying as the plage areas in these regions are markedly fainter than previous days. There is a new region that has rounded the NE limb that appears to have a spot (confirmed in white light...yeah!), and the region noted in the SE over the past two days has now been officially numbered 11308. There is a very large and beautiful prominence associated with this region.

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At left, is my white light sketch completed about 20 minutes later at 1557 UT (8:57 AM local). In addition to the numerous spots in the numbered regions, the new region in the northeast contains two very large spots, as well as a smaller spot. These spots appear elongated when near the solar limb, due to what is called the "Wilson Effect." This apparent elongation is the result of perspective- Keep in mind that the sun is a sphere. When looking near the center of the disc we are looking straight into the Solar atmosphere, yet when looking near the limb, we are actually looking across its atmosphere. Add to this the fact that sunspots are akin to depressions in the solar atmosphere and you get an obvious elongation. This same effect can be seen looking at craters along the extreme limb of the moon.

Welcome October!

2011-10-01T10:01:00.000-07:00

Today is the start of October and right on schedule the weather here in the Old Pueblo is changing. While the Sun is shining steadily in clear blue skies this morning, later today will see heavy cloud cover, and increasing moisture for a few days. By weeks end, temps in the upper 80's!!

Quick report today, the Sun appears much as it has for the past two days. 5 active regions are making their way westward across the northern hemisphere of the sun. AR 11305 displays the strongest plage, and 11302 covers the largest area and contains the most spots. There is potentially an emerging region that has come around in the southeast, as well as a small ephemeral region of plage that has persisted since yesterday in the south. My sketch was completed at 1623 UT (9:23 AM local time) under very steady skies.

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Below are images in Hydrogen Alpha from the Big Bear Solar Observatory (taken at 1634 UT), and the Solar Dynamics Observatory (taken at 1514 UT). I particularly enjoy the Big Bear image at left, as it is monochrome and more closely resembles the eyepiece view.

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Solar Sketches 9-29

2011-09-29T15:15:00.001-07:00

Today is the first day of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year- To everyone reading, I wish you a happy and healthy year! Being that I am off work, I set up the solar scopes today and made some afternoon sketches of the sun. I am quite pleased that the weather has changed enough to allow for 2 PM sketching. Only a couple weeks ago, I would have been overcooked by the time I placed pencil to paper. Not so today. While the temps are in the mid 90's, it actually feels nice out. Maybe I am truly turning into a desert rat?

The sketches below were made at the times reflected in the captions, and the images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory also have the time of capture below them. It is worth mentioning that neither my white light sketch, or the SDO white light image contain the detail and number of spots that were visible in AR 11302. I would estimate that that region alone contains in the neighborhood of 50 spots. It is interesting that while there are a half-dozen numbered active regions on the face of the sun, all of them are in the northern hemisphere.

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2100 UT

2045 UT

2138 UT

2000 UT

Finally, the Mount Wilson Observatory in California has a 150 ft. Solar Tower from which they create a daily sunspot drawing. Not too many professional observatories create sketches, and below is today's sketch:

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Chiracauhua Astronomy Complex Grand Opening

2011-09-25T14:27:00.001-07:00

Price Ranch and Perseus intersection

"Eat more chicken"

This past Saturday night, the Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association (TAAA) held the grand opening to show off the completed "phase 2a" construction of the new Chiracauhua Astronomy Complex (CAC). I had wanted to take my telescopes to some dark skies this weekend, so on Friday afternoon I packed up and headed to the site one night early. I had checked the weather forecast and while there was a slight chance of thundershowers each night, Friday looked to be most promising. As I approached the CAC, I was met by the official bovine sentries, who upon seeing all the gear I was hauling, decided to let me pass unharmed. Here are a few quick images of what has taken shape under the dark skies of Cochise County. In hindsight I should have taken pictures of the amphitheater, the 18 inch dobsonian, and the inside of the observatory, but perhaps I can add some images to this post if any of the TAAA folks in attendance would like to share (Keith...are you listening?)

At left, you can see my scope cooling down on Friday night when I was alone at the site. The sky was incredible and if I had a decent camera (and knew how to use it), I could have taken some amazing images. Below left, is a picture of the roll off roof observatory that houses the new C14 and AP1200 mount donated by Wally Rogers. The picture is taken from the amphitheater looking southwest. In the background you can see some of the new member observing pads. In the picture at right, you can see that there are ten of these pads, each measuring 12 x 12 with electricity. This is a great size for a pad as there is ample room for a large telescope, a table and two or three chairs. At one point, I had two telescopes set up on my pad, and still had room for all my gear. The pads are spaced several feet apart, with just enough room to navigate but close enough that you can still chat with your neighbors without having to shout. As you can see in the picture, we filled up all 10 pads on Saturday night for the grand opening.

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In terms of observing, Friday night was excellent, with transparency around 9/10. Using my 12 inch SCT I observed many objects, and made a sketch of comet 2009 P1 Garradd. I have observed and sketched this comet several times over the past month, and this was the first time that I was able to detect streams in the tail. The sketch at right was completed at 0320 UT on September 24th.

Overall, despite getting clouded out early on Saturday, it was a fun weekend at a great astronomy complex. Kudos to everyone in the TAAA that had a hand in the development of the CAC. Not only are the skies excellent, but having access to an observatory housed 14 inch telescope, restrooms, showers, and observing pads with power make for an amateur astronomers dream.

Update...below is an image of the attendees preparing for "first light" of the clubs new 18 inch Obsession Telescope...Thanks to Bill Lofquist for this image.

Hydrogen Alpha sketch of the Sun

2011-09-18T10:03:00.002-07:00

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Now this is why amateur astronomers love Southern Arizona...dry climate, crystal clear skies, steady air...just last week we received the most significant rainfall of the year with several inches falling over several days, and now there is little trace. The air is dry, no clouds from horizon to horizon, and observing conditions that are the envy of many.

Having spent the last two days observing the sun in white light, I had more time today to observe and sketch the sun using my Hydrogen Alpha telescope. There are many active regions on the face of the sun, and it is now looking like the solar cycle (24) is truly in an upswing, albeit several years late. As the Sun exhibits increasing levels of activity, it naturally takes an increasing amount of time to make a sketch. Thank goodness for the weekend!

My sketch was completed at 1609 UT and during the time of my sketch, Active Region (AR) 11298 was exhibiting some weak flaring. This region is quite dynamic with several dark filaments and bright plage throughout. The flaring was occurring just to the north of the obvious spot in this region. All of the regions on the sun today were moderately bright, with the exception of 11294 which appeared fairly weak. The long filament in the northwest quadrant is impressive, and should it persist until on the limb may provide for some awesome prominences. The images below are for comparison, with the black and white image from the Big Bear Solar Observatory and the colored image being from the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Both images are from slightly after I completed my sketch.

Spotapalooza - A festival of sunspots!

2011-09-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

I am working remotely from my home office today, which provided me an opportunity to grab a quick peek at the Sun while eating some lunch. I did not have enough time to make a hydrogen alpha sketch, but the white light view of the Sun revealed as many spots as I can remember seeing in several years. It is a downright spotapalooza! A festival of sunspots! As it is mid-day, the atmospheric seeing conditions are a bit unsteady and it is difficult to tell how many small spots are in the larger regions. Regardless, there are too many to accurately sketch them all while eating a sandwich and stressing out about job related nonsense. Below is my sketch from 1840 UT, and a comparison image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory taken at 1824 UT. I completed my sketch using my TEC 140mm APO and a Lunt Solar Systems Herschel Prism.

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80 degree(!) Solar observation

2011-09-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

The last two nights have brought some remarkable thunderstorm activity to the Lost Pleiad Observatory. While I do not have a rain gauge, those in the vicinity would suggest that we received around 1.5 inches of rain last night. That may not sound like a lot to many of you, but consider that our annual rainfall total this year was less than 10 inches. There were several funnel clouds spotted last night around the Tucson valley along with unconfirmed reports of a tornado touching down. The low pressure system that is causing these storms remains in place over Los Angeles and more storms are likely tonight...which means that the atmosphere remains fairly unstable.

I made an observation of the Sun this morning, and while the atmospheric stability was only fair, it was wonderful to be sitting at the scope under my towel without a continuous stream of sweat pouring off my body. I had forgotten what 80 degrees feels like! The sketch below was completed at 8:44 AM MST (1544 UT) with my Lunt Solar Systems 60mm Hydrogen Alpha telescope. To the right is an image from Big Bear Solar Observatory captured 5 minutes after my sketch at 1549 UT.

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There are four numbered active regions visible (to me) on the face, as well as what appears to be a developing region near the east limb on the equator. The most impressive region is 11289 which sports some very large and dark spots, as well as a long snaking region of plage trailing to the east. Consider that it would take about 110 Earths lined up to cross the diameter of the Sun, and you can see that these spots are larger than our own planet!

Departing region 11283 on the west limb was also showing some bright plage this morning as well as a few associated prominences. This region was difficult to observe due to the atmospheric turbulence making the solar limb appear as if it were under water. Both regions 11287 and 11290 appear weak, although my lack of observations this past week leave me unable to determine if these regions are decaying. 11287 does appear to have a spot.

Supernova 2011fe

2011-09-05T09:37:00.004-07:00

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On Saturday night, I was fortunate to be able to make an observation of the supernova that has developed within the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101. I was leading a program at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter and showed the supernova to the guests, who were rather delighted to see something so unusual. I did not have time to complete a sketch during the program, so simply noted the locations of the galactic nucleus and nearby stars on paper. After the guests departed, I then added the glow of the galaxy to my sketch. The view suffered quite a bit from light pollution, as it was nearly first quarter moon. In addition, M101 was low in the sky, well within the glow from nearby Marana. As a result, I doubt that even with time to really study the view I would have seen any additional structure within M101.

The good news is that the supernova is extremely bright, and easy to identify. It is approximately magnitude 10 and was the brightest object in the field of view. North is at the up in my sketch, with east to the right. In observing the supernova, we were using the 32 inch Schulman telescope and a 21mm Ethos eyepiece, resulting in a magnification of approximately 271X, and a field of view of .4 degrees. The easiest way to identify this supernova is to look for the star just northeast of the nucleus. The supernova is exactly opposite this star, to the southwest, between two bright stars in the field of view. Torsten Hansen has imaged the supernova as well as analyzed it's spectrum, which is the image at right. Spectral analysis is the means by which astronomers are able to study the composition of a star. In addition, astronomers can glean information on the temperature and velocity of the object, particularly whether the object is moving toward us (blue shifted) or away (red shifted). Supernova like 2011fe are further useful to astronomers as they can help to more precisely measure the distance to the host galaxy.

For further information on supernova in general, visit this wikipedia page.This is an informative video from the astronomer who first noted the supernova:

Hot, Hot, Hot

2011-09-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

Quite the day for solar observing today, with crystal clear skies and slightly lower humidity than we have had these last several weeks. I completed a sketch of the Sun in hydrogen alpha this morning at 9:42 local time (1642 UT). Skies were quite steady and I was able to see much more detail within each active region than I could possibly capture in a sketch . Active region 11280, which is on the extreme northwest limb, was producing a spectacular prominence that was changing so rapidly that it appeared different each time I looked back to it while sketching other areas. Next to my sketch below is an image from the Big Bear Solar Observatory taken at 1650 UT, just minutes after my sketch.

Click the images to enlarge them

Update- Andy Devely in the UK maintains The Solar Explorer website which I highly recommend you visit. He posted the animation below of the spectacular prominence erupting from AR 11280 during the time I made my sketch:

Comet Garradd

2011-08-28T21:48:00.001-07:00

As a follow up to the previous post on white light observing with the 4 inch f/11 achromat, I observed and sketched Comet C/2009 P1 Garradd tonight. There was a bit of dust and smoke in the atmosphere all day and I think that the transparency was impacted tonight. Contrast in the scope is excellent, and I do believe that I was seeing a broad and faint tail extending in an easterly direction from the nucleus.

Click to enlarge

Sketch was completed at 0325 UT under average skies, using a 10mm Pentax XW (110X). The comet has an estimated magnitude of 8.1

Sunspots in white light ~ 28 August, 2011

2011-08-28T09:39:00.001-07:00

Recently I acquired a longer focal length achromat, an Astro-telescopes 102mm f/11 refractor. It is a fairly inexpensive telescope given the quality of the objective lens and I intend to write up a review of it soon. While I have not yet used it enough to complete a quality write up, I did want to evaluate it during white light observation of the Sun. To observe the Sun in white light I use a Lunt Solar Systems Herschel Prism, along with a zoom eyepiece and a polarizing filter that allows me to quickly zoom in and out on individual spots, facula and granulation as the seeing permits. Below are a couple of photographs of the telescope mounted in my observatory this morning.

While a longer review of the scope will follow soon enough (forecast for tonight is CLEAR!!), I was extremely happy with the performance of this telescope. The view of the sun is slightly off-white as compared to my TEC 140mm APO, however, the chromatic aberration (de-focused purple light) that I have noticed at night was much less obvious in this solar configuration. Perhaps it was the steady atmosphere, perhaps it has something to with the solar prism and polarizing filter- either way the view was exquisite. This scope will likely become my main instrument for white light observation of the sun. It provides almost as much detail as the TEC 140, yet it is much lighter and there is something comforting about not having the TEC pointing at the sun for extended periods of time.

Click to enlarge

The sketch at left was completed this morning at 1527 UT, under steady skies. There was a slight amount of high level cirrus that may have lent itself to the impressive image. You can see that spot region 11279 contains two very dark spots and three small spots surrounded by a large penumbra. Just outside this group to the east are 4 small spots. Region 11277 contains two large spots within an oval penumbra. Spot region 11275 near the Sun's meridian contains 4 very small spots. In addition to the numbered regions, there is a large group of spots that have rotated into view on the southeast limb. This region has extensive facula that can bee seen within the limb darkening. Similarly, there is some bright facula on the northwest limb where region 11271 is rotating out of view.

Solar Sketch August 27, 2011

2011-08-27T13:11:00.002-07:00

The predicted high temperature for today at the Lost Pleiad Observatory is 108 Degrees F, and we are well on our way with temperatures hovering at 101 at 12:45 PM. If we hit this temperature, it will be four of the last seven days that we have tied or broken the record high temperature for a given date. The nice part about this, is that we still have a monsoon moisture pattern in the vicinity and the daily heating jump starts some serious thunderstorms that bring relief...if one is lucky enough to be in the storm's path. Speaking of storm paths, a shout out to those family and friends on the east coast who are getting hit by hurricane Irene. Take cover, and bring your scopes indoors!

This morning I observed the sun and made a sketch of several of the numbered active regions facing the earth. The atmosphere was not great as I had to make the sketch early (7:30-7:55 MST) and the image at the eyepiece was not as steady as I would have liked. Typically, the best window to observe the sun is right around 2 to 3 hours after sunrise. In addition, the transparency was average due, I think, to high levels of humidity.

Below left is my sketch of the sun at 1455 UT, and Below right is an image from the solar observatory at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, part of the National Solar Observatory. The Mauna Loa image is from about 4 hours following my observation.

The Desert Speaks (not the TV show!)

2011-08-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

Work has been all too stressful these last couple weeks, and with the monsoon weather pattern retaining its death grip on Tucson I am really feeling the need for an astronomical observing fix. Observational astronomy feeds my soul and sitting under the stars always offers me time for reflection and rejuvenation. I had planned on heading down to the dark skies of Portal, AZ for the coming new moon weekend, but there is too much rain in the forecast to make the trip worth the gas money.

Tonight I ended up driving home from work just before sunset and through a drenching monsoon rain. There were numerous showers throughout the Tucson valley and the sky lighting had a very unique color to it. Being that I live on the far east side of town the sun was at my back and I was treated to a beautiful rainbow. As soon as I pulled into my driveway I ran inside and grabbed my point and shoot camera to capture this image of the rainbows and the interesting yellow-grey sky color. Of course the picture does not capture how beautiful it was.

Between the fresh smell of rain and creosote (if you have lived in the desert during a rain storm you know exactly the smell I am describing), the cool breeze blowing across my face, the sound of rolling thunder, and the sight of the rainbow(s), my work stress was quickly put in perspective and at least for a night, I am again in touch with the natural wonders of the sky .

Cool stuff

2011-08-22T08:42:00.001-07:00

In preparing to lead a program tonight at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, my colleague Adam Block shared this video with me. It is an animated rendering of ALL the asteroids discovered from 1980 to 2011...it is really quite amazing and beautiful. I'd highly recommend enlarging it to full screen and making sure your volume is on as the music is fitting as well.

Summer flowers

2011-07-30T17:25:00.005-07:00

While Ian and I were traveling through Colorado this summer, we saw an incredible number of wildflowers- many more than on our previous trips. I am no photographer, and only have a simple pocket sized point and shoot camera, but I think that the photos in the slide show below will give you an idea of just how beautiful summertime in the Colorado Rockies can be. Mouse over the slideshow for controls, and clicking on the show will take you to the album.

Summer adventures

2011-07-21T19:35:00.001-07:00

I've been thinking about the blog a bit lately, but have not really had a chance to post. Currently I am in the midst of a 2.5 week camping vacation in the Colorado Rockies with my son Ian. We have done some amazing things, and have had a wonderful time just hanging out together. Pictures and a full report will follow in the next week or so when I am back in Tucson.

Ian at summitt of Mt. Elbert, highest point in the Rockies!

Thanks to my good friend and Tucsonan at heart, Cindy Sanchez who has shared her home, shower and washing machine with Ian and I for the past 36 hours...we head off first thing in the morning to meet some great friends south of Telluride for a final 4 days of camping at high elevation and then back to the Old Pueblo.

Fun in the sun

2011-06-25T09:00:00.000-07:00

Fried egg on sidewalk

Summer is here in Tucson....last night I was in my observatory at 10:00 PM and the temperature (albeit on my phone!) read 96 degrees F. I was actually sweating while observing globular clusters...how many of you can claim that feat?!?

Today it is predicted to be around 100 degrees by lunch and approaching 108 in the mid-afternoon..."but it's a dry heat"...Yeah...Right. Whoever originated that comment was either severely arthritic or delirious from heat stroke. I've been to Houston and spent over a dozen summer vacations in North Carolina. Humidity is oppressive no doubt, but 110 in the shade is more than an expression, it's HOT!

Regardless, I decided that my solar observing itch needed to be scratched this morning, so I dutifully got out of bed at 0600 local time and set up the telescope. Two hours later, I was out observing El Sol and feeling somewhat closer to her than usual as I worked to keep the dripping sweat from landing in the eyepiece or on my sketching clipboard. Despite the inferno, the seeing conditions were actually quite steady as the high pressure system that has settled over Arizona has created a bubble of steady air over much of the southern portion of the state. I completed the sketch below at 1507 UT (8:07 AM MST) using my Lunt 60mm dedicated Hydrogen Alpha Telescope. The image is from the Solar Dynamics Observatory's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly at 1259 UT, about 2 hours prior to my sketch. Click on either to enlarge them.

As you can see, there are five active regions on that face of the sun, however, none of them are as impressive visually as what the SDO image would imply. Region 11236 which is rotating off the west limb is certainly the brightest region and contains a couple spots visible in HA. AR 11242 was also interesting in that it appears to be dividing and each side contains a small spot. The most exciting features of the day were the very bright prominences on the northeast and southwest limbs. The large on on the northeast was growing rapidly during the time of my sketch, and it will be interesting to watch this throughout the morning.

Solar storm

2011-06-08T07:17:00.000-07:00

If you follow this blog at all, you know that I am an avid solar observer - and yesterday the Solar Dynamics Observatory captured a massive eruption on the sun. According to the mission blog "The Sun unleashed an M-2 (medium-sized) solar flare with a spectacular coronal mass ejection (CME) on June 7. The large cloud of particles mushroomed up and fell back down looking as if it covered an area of almost half the solar surface.

SDO observed the flare's peak at 1:41 AM ET. SDO recorded these images in extreme ultraviolet light and they show a very large explosion of cool gas. It is somewhat unique because at many places in the eruption there seems to be even cooler material -- at temperatures less than 80,000K.

When viewed in SOHO's coronagraphs, the event shows bright plasma and high-energy particles roaring from the Sun. This Earth-directed CME is moving at 1400 km/s according to NASA models. Due to its angle, however, effects on Earth should be fairly small. Nevertheless, it may generate space weather effects here on Earth in a few days." This video is unlike any that has previously been recorded:

On dark skies, family, friends, and telescopes...Life is good

2011-06-06T21:42:00.001-07:00

The title says it all...dark skies, my lovely family, good friends and great telescopes. Life my faithful readers, is good. Despite my total slacking off from maintaining the blog, I have continued to have some excellent astronomical adventures, including a trip this past weekend to a site in northern Arizona that is frequently referred to as Frederickson Meadow. The meadow was named in memory of longtime Saguaro Astronomy Club member Dave Frederickson, and it is a well deserved name. The meadow is quite beautiful and provides expansive views of the sky. In addition to my family, I travelled to the meadow with my friend Jerry Farrar to spend the weekend observing. As luck would have it, there was a group of about a dozen astronomers from the Phoenix area who quickly welcomed us to their star party.

The meadow is situated roughly between Flagstaff and Payson and is approximately a 4.5 hour drive from Tucson, with only the last 5 miles on a well maintained dirt road. As soon as one sees the Discovery Channel Telescope situated on the next ridge, one knows that the sight is likely very good for astronomy.

Most folks camp in the trees on the north side of the meadow, and the Forest Service has requested that we not drive into the meadow itself. This makes great sense as it preserves the meadow and allows many grasses and wildflowers to flourish. For our night time observations, I had taken along my TEC 140 refractor and Jerry brought along his 12 inch SCT as these scopes are quite complimentary when parked alongside each other. Below, you can see Jerry observing the sun through his dedicated hydrogen alpha telescope which he also brought on the trip.

Each day brought very stiff breezes, which I would estimate between 10 and 20 mph, with occasional gusts closer to 30 mph. As if on cue, these winds would vanish at sunset and start up at sunrise...(perhaps the late Mr. Fredrickson was taking care of us). These breezes kept the daytime temps comfortable in the low 80's, however, the nights were much colder with Thursday night in mid-20's and Friday and Saturday nights in the mid-30's! Certainly a reprieve from the June desert heat.

One of the nice things about the meadow, is that one can choose to spend time in cool shade of the pines reading, napping, snacking, planning your nights observing run, or whatever strikes your fancy. If one is after a bit more activity, it is a great area for an easy walk around, a more strenuous hike, or a game of nerf football. Nearby, about 30 minutes back up the road, there is even an RV resort where one can grab a bite to eat or take a shower ($5). Of course, we were there to observe and I am sure that at this point you are wondering when I will get to the point, and tell you about the observations we made...but before I get to that, take a look at the "Great Comet of Frederickson meadow" alongside the crescent moon just after sunset.

Click the image to see the supernova!

Those of you who are amateur astronomers know that on Friday it was widely reported that a supernova had erupted in one of the arms of the whirlpool galaxy, M51. French Observer Stephan Lamotte Bailey, created the image at left...Click on it and you will then see the animation which blinks the supernova in and out. This was the talk of the group as the sun was setting Friday evening, and nearly every scope and camera in the meadow was targeting the grand galaxy. I first attempted to spot it in my TEC 140mm APO, and with a bit of patience it was clearly there with averted vision, reminiscent of observing a challenging central star in a planetary nebula. Jerry took a look and was also seeing the same star. Naturally, we then went over to his 12 inch SCT and the supernova was clearly visible with direct vision, as an approximately 13th to 14th magnitude star. What is so neat about this, is the fact that we were observing an extragalactic star....which is not something one does every day!

The main reason I brought along the refractor on this trip was that I had limited space, and this was the first chance that I had this year to spend extended time sweeping through the milky way...and the high contrast wide field TEC 140 is a world class instrument practically made for this purpose. The scope garnered high praise from all who looked through it; which in this case was a group of very experienced amateurs who appreciated the nearly 3 dimensional views that the scope provides. Whether it was Saturn at 300X, Omega Centauri and globular star clusters in Ophiuchus and Sagittarius, planetary nebula, or dark nebula, everyone commented on that sharpness and contrast of the TEC 140. In addition to having my fun with the bright Messier objects and generally sweeping around the milky way, I also observed some galaxies- mostly in Canes Venatici and Coma Berenices. This may seem crazy with only 5.5 inches of aperture, but being able to see them in a wide field setting adds a context that is missing when observing them in my 12 inch SCT. This post is getting long, so I will only share some of my favorites from these constellations below:

Hickson 68, a galaxy group composed of NGC's 5353, 5354, 5350, 5355, and 5358 (in order of magnitude from brightest to faintest...a to e in the image at left). All five of these galaxies were visible in the refractor, despite the presence of a magnitude 6.5 star only 3 arc minutes away. It is a very pretty grouping of galaxies with the brightest members shining at magnitude 11.5 and the faintest, tiny little NGC 5358 at magnitude 13.6. I would highly recommend this target if you are interested in galaxy groups as each of the members is distinct.

NGC 4244 is a popular target due being large and bright, and is also known as Caldwell 26. It is an edge on galaxy, and at high power, the TEC revealed some of the galaxies mottling as well as a distinctly bright nucleus. The galaxy is nicely pinned down by stars off each end.

NGC 4217 is a another elongated galaxy but is much more difficult to see, requiring averted vision. While listed at magnitude 11.2, it has a surface brightness of around magnitude 13 and it shares the field with three 9th or 10th magnitude stars whose light interferes with seeing the galaxy. Most interesting is that this galaxy is often overlooked as it is overwhelmed by its neighbor and possible companion M106. At 75x, both of these galaxies were visible in the eyepiece. 4217 is the edge on galaxy in the lower right of the image.

NGC 4298 and 4302 make a beautiful, ghostly pair in the TEC. 4298 is a diffuse glow with no discernible nucleus, and 4302 is a thin edge on galaxy, also without detail. These galaxies sit quite close to each other in the eyepiece, perhaps only 2 or 3 arcminutes apart. It is easier to hold 4298 with direct vision, even though it is only .3 magnitudes brighter at 11.3 versus 11.6

I did observe some other areas of the sky, including NGC 5128, the Centauraus A galaxy. This has long been a favorite target of mine for the wealth of detail visible in the hamburger like galaxy. Unfortunately, this galaxy was sitting in the Phoenix light dome (yes, there is a light dome despite being 100 miles+ away) and the amount of detail was not as great as I have seen at other locations. If you are interested, the phoenix light dome is about 15 degrees high on the southern horizon and spans about 15 degrees in azimuth. Even though this area is not free from the light dome, it is overall the second best site I have been to in Arizona for observing, with Portal being the first. Overhead, 7th magnitude stars are visible and the setting is is delightful. I'll be heading back next new moon, weather permitting!

Still Reading?

2011-05-15T15:49:00.000-07:00

For those of you still reading these posts, thanks!! I have been quite slack these last few weeks in writing up my observations. I am working on a long post that details my observations on the night of May 3rd-4th when I spent the entire night from sunset until sunrise observing with the 32 inch Schulman Telescope at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center. During the night, I observed around 40 objects that I had never before seen, including many Arp galaxies and Abell planetary nebulas. What I should probably do is publish the post in segments so that it gets done rather than trying to get it all written up and posted at one time.

In addition to that wonderful night, I recently obtained a 102mm f/11 achromatic refractor that I plan to evaluate and write up a review of. It arrived damaged and I am awaiting a new focuser before I can really put it through its paces. I have used it a couple times, including observing the Sun in white light the past two mornings. The sketches are below and you can see how dramatically the two main spot groups have evolved in approximately 24 hours. More posts to follow in the next few days...

15 May 2011

14 May 2011

Solar Dynamics Observatory celebrates one year

2011-04-24T09:18:00.000-07:00

Followers of my astro adventures know that I am an avid Solar observer. As much fun as it is to spend clear nights in search of faint objects, it is equally fascinating to spend mornings studying our closest star, the Sun. Peppered throughout my blog over the past year and a half are many solar observations of my own as well as those of observers around the world. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory has released the video below to celebrate one year of Solar observation...turn your speakers on for the full effect!

Spectacular Saturn!

2011-04-20T09:05:00.001-07:00

Last night I returned home from Ian's little league game at 9:40, ate some dinner, and at 10:15 PM took a look outside. I noticed that things appeared very steady so despite the rising, nearly full moon decided to take a look at Saturn. This is the great thing about a home observatory...no set up! Simply head outside, roll back the roof and start observing.

When astronomers refer to "seeing" conditions, they are referring to the steadiness of the atmosphere. A steady atmosphere allows for higher power critical observation of fine detail, especially when splitting double stars or observing planets. Last night, I estimate that the seeing was as close to 10/10 as it gets at my house. Using the 12 inch LX-200 SCT, I started with a 13mm eyepiece and only looked for a second before inserting the 8mm Ethos into the scope (about 381x)...the image was rock steady! The planet displayed excellent contrast, with the rings shadow looking like a razor sharp inky black line. Cloud banding was evident and the polar shading was a nice blue/gray. The Cassini division was a sharply defined gap and even the elusive C ring was easily visible inside both ends of the rings...After about 15 minutes I thought I should try and use "stupid high power" (another technical astronomy term) so I inserted a 5mm Pentax XW (yes, that is 610x!!) and while the image was a bit softer, I was still able to detect the same level of detail every few seconds. Call me crazy, but Saturn's largest moon Titan looked to be a distinct disc. It was so amazing I actually dragged Beth out of bed to take a look and even she was impressed. While I am not a good enough sketch artist to represent Saturn, the simulated image at left is very similar to what was in the eyepiece.

Speechless

2011-04-12T10:22:00.002-07:00

Every now and then I see something that defies words (it happens!)...the video below of the Sun in hydrogen alpha was captured by Amateur Astronomer Michael Buxton of Ocean Beach Calilfornia (visit his website). It takes a minute to load, so be patient and give it time....it represents a time lapse from 2108 - 2242 UT on April 11th, and is made from images taken at one minute intervals.

Observing the Jet in M87

2011-04-04T22:40:00.000-07:00

Working part time at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter (MLSC) has been a tremendous experience for me over the past several months. Not only do I have regular opportunities to introduce folks to astronomy and the night sky, but I have access to a world class instrument; the Schulman 32 inch RCOS telescope. Last night I administered our SkyNights program, and after the guests departed I spent some time with my very good friend, mentor, and SkyCenter volunteer Jerry Farrar observing galaxies in the constellations of Sextans and Virgo. The night was very dark with no moon, and even the light dome from nearby Tucson was diminished on this Sunday Night. For those of you not familiar with the mountain or the observatory, the MLSC sits at the summit of Mount Lemmon, just north of Tucson at an elevation of 9500 feet.

Temperatures last night were in the mid 30's around 11:00 PM MST when on a whim I decided to point the telescope at M87 to see if we could observe the jet that emanates from the super massive black hole at the center of this galaxy. Lobes from this jet extend out to 250,000 light years from the nucleus, and can be seen in the Hubble space telescope image of the galaxy at left. Below is an image of this galaxy taken at the SkyCenter which was featured in the March issue of Astronomy magazine. Click on the image and you will see the small jet shooting out from the core. Utilizing a 21mm Televue Ethos eyepiece and a 2x Barlow (542 power, .2 degree field of view), both Jerry and I observed the galaxy as well as the jet! It took a few minutes to spot, but we were able to independently locate the jet as well as see a star like bright spot on the jet itself. To the right of the image is the sketch I completed at approximately 0600 UT on April 4th.

Until 1990, there had been only one recorded visual observation of this jet...an observation made by Otto Struve using the 100 inch Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson. It is the kind of observation that very few individuals are lucky enough to make. This was a difficult observation, but one that makes my personal list of all time favorites, right up there with the whirlpool galaxy through the 40 inch telescope belonging to the late Dave Fredrickson.

Solar sizzle

2011-04-02T15:08:00.001-07:00

Yesterday temperatures here in the Old Pueblo took a high climb to the mid-90's...now that is sizzling, for this time of year, even for a native naked Puebloan like myself. Today is slightly cooler but hot nonetheless. I did manage to get a sketch of the sun in early this morning, all the while trying to keep the sweat from dripping into the eyepiece or onto my clipboard. There are many active regions, however, none are that bright with the exception of 11183 near the meridian in the north. My sketch was completed at 1652 UT (9:52 MST) this morning. In addition to my sketch, I present you an image of the sun taken today from Cloudy Nights Solar Forum contributer, Olivier...visit his website to see some great stuff. I have taken the liberty of reversing his image to match my sketch. His image was taken several hours earlier than my drawing and you can see how the filament in the southwest (lower left) changed between our observations. Also not how many more this filaments developed in the northern hemisphere.

Solar sketches March 27th

2011-03-27T09:58:00.000-07:00

Hydrogen Alpha 1550 UT

For those of you that follow the sun regularly, you know that it is ramping up in activity. With the increasing activity, it is beginning to take longer and longer for me to make solar sketches...this means that I am sacrificing some of the fine detail available at the eyepiece in an effort to capture all the varying regions and features. I was able to make two sketches this morning under very steady and transparent skies.

There are 8 active regions (AR's) on the face of the sun right now, as detailed in the sketch at left. Of the regions, AR 11176 is the largest and most dynamic. It sports a plethora fine detail as well as several dark filaments that wind throughout. There are several spots visible in hydrogen alpha, along with some moderately bright plage. AR 11178 in the SE is small, yet also reveals a couple spots. Of the regions in the southern hemisphere, 11181 is the brightest, and it too shows a single dark spot. In the northern hemisphere, both 11177 and 1180 are moderately bright, with 11180 being more complex. This region contains some very dark filaments as well as a single spot. 11179 is unremarkable. Finally, there is an AR that has rotated into view in the northeast near the equator that is fairly bright with a leading spot.

White Light 1625 UT

White light views of the sun provide the most detailed views of sunspots, and the sketch to the right reveals many spots in all of the active regions on the east half of the sun's disc. While AR 11176 is the most complex as it was in hydrogen alpha, the as of yet unnumbered region in the northeast contains at least a half dozen spots. As this region is still very close to the limb, it is a bit difficult to ascertain it's true extent. The white light sketch was made with my TEC 140 refractor and a Lunt Solar Systems Herschel Wedge.

March 19th Perigee Full Moon

2011-03-16T18:04:00.001-07:00

It's true and not an internet hoax...the full Moon of March 19th will be the biggest since 1983! Approximately 14% larger and 30% brighter! Check out the explanation video from NASA.

Solar report March 13th

2011-03-13T10:42:00.001-07:00

Time to get back to posting! I've been terribly busy between my day job, working at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, the start of little league season, and a torn MCL in my left knee! That last bit was the result of a ski accident on Valentines day in Brighton, Utah...nothing that a bit of physical therapy and time shouldn't fix...

I was finally able to set up my telescopes on the sun this morning and take a look at what is undoubtedly the most activity I have observed since I started observing the sun with my own scopes. The past two weekends have presented terrible sky conditions, and even yesterday I was clouded out. Whatever this solar cycle turns out to be, it is fun to see El Sol ramping up in activity. I made two sketches this morning, first one in white light and about an hour later I made one in Hydrogen Alpha. The white light sketch below was completed at 1550 UT (8:50 AM MST) using my TEC 140 APO and a Lunt Solar Systems Herschel Wedge, under nearly perfect seeing conditions. No atmospheric turbulence was noted, and I was able to utilize magnifications approaching 200X. There are numerous spots in both active regions (AR) 11166 and 11169. In addition to these regions which are approaching the western limb, there are 5 spots noted in AR 11172, and three spots noted in the northern hemisphere right on the central meridian. These three spots correspond to plage noted in my hydrogen alpha observation further down. To the right of my sketch, is an image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory taken at 1600 UT, just 10 minutes after my sketch. Note that it is reversed east-west from my sketch.

I then grabbed a second cup of coffee and started in on an observation and sketch of the sun in hydrogen alpha. The seeing was beginning to get back to average, but the sun was still a sight for sore eyes that had not observed the Sun since February 24th. The sketch was completed at 1657 UT (9:57 AM MST) using my Lunt Solar Systems 60mm pressure tuned hydrogen alpha telescope. As mentioned there is a bit of plage on the central meridian that corresponds in location to the three spots noted above. This area is not yet designated an active region but will no doubt be AR 11173 shortly. AR's 11166 and 11169 are quite bright and contain several spots as well as many fibrils. 11171 is quite large in the southern hemisphere with a long dark filament snaking through. This region was not noted in white light, yet appears as the largest region in hydrogen alpha. Near the east limb AR 11172 displays weak plage and some short dark filaments within. To the right of my sketch is another image from the Solar Dynamics Observatory taken at 1654 UT, during the time I was drawing. Again, the image is reversed east-west from my sketch.

The Great Orion Nebula

2011-02-24T20:30:00.001-07:00

Without a doubt almost any observer will tell you that the Great Orion Nebula is the finest deep sky object in the northern hemisphere. Riding high in the winter and spring, I take a glance at this showpiece just about every time I am in the observatory. It is so detailed and rich that I have been hesitant to attempt to sketch it...however, I finally decided to give it a try.

While I have done most of my sketching with HB graphite pencils on plain white paper, I have been experimenting utilizing Strathmore Black Artagain paper with Generals White Charcoal Pencils (558)...at left is the sketch that I completed this evening with my LX-200 12 inch SCT and 28mm UWAN eyepiece (108X). It does not do justice to the nebula, but it certainly is good practice with these new materials.

What does this nebula look like in color? Below is an image taken from the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter through our new Televue NP127is. The image gives a significantly wider, lower power field of view...and it represents 3 hours of exposure time.

Making solar sketches

2011-01-30T12:06:00.001-07:00

January 30th, 2011

I have received a few emails and messages from folks over the past year asking about how I make my sketches of the sun, so I thought I would write up a small post showing my (lack of) technique. First, I must provide credit to my good friend, observing partner, and mentor in all things astronomical Jerry Farrar. Jerry is truly a master at sketching and he is the one that taught me the method that I will overview below.

My goal in sketching is twofold. First and foremost sketching makes me a better observer. Whether at night or during the day, I spend more time observing faint and fine details when I am trying to re-create them on paper. Second, and less important to me, is to keep a record of my solar observations. As a result of my priorities, I do not fret over the exact positioning of details although I do try and maintain the size and perspective as they appear in the eyepiece.

I begin by printing out a blank solar observing form that has been made publicly available by sketch artist Jeremy Perez, who maintains the Belt of Venus website. I then use a graphite HB pencil to shade in the entire disc. Do not worry at this point about uneven shading, as the rest of the process will even out the Chromospheric network that I try to represent. Below are the first two steps in the process:

The next step takes awhile, and I have actually gotten in the habit of preparing these solar discs ahead of time. By doing these ahead of time, I can get right to observing and sketching the Sun when my schedule and the weather cooperate. I sharpen my pencil and then add a layer of random squiggly (technical term) lines over the entire solar disc. I am careful not to draw circles or straight lines, as inevitably these show through in the final product...and what I am after is a randomness to the look of the disc. Once I have filled the entire disc with squiggles, I take a blending stump and using small circles, rub the drawing to blend both layers of graphite that I have applied. I do try and blend the disc to a somewhat even appearance so that I do not end up with areas that are markedly darker or lighter than others. The idea is that when I am done, the squiggly lines still show through a bit and the disc resembles the hydrogen alpha view of the sun without any features.

At this point I am done, if preparing ahead of time, as this discs are ready for use in making a solar sketch. Prior to drawing in any details such as active regions, filaments and prominences, I spend about 10-20 minutes observing the sun to get the overall picture of the disc, noting what details are present and where they are. I also adjust the tuning of the etalon filter in my scope to bring out some of the features that are best observed on the blue and red wings of the hydrogen alpha band. Once I have seen what I believe can be seen that day, I use an eraser to mark the locations of plage and active regions. I erase an area that is slightly larger than the actual region, so that I can then fill in the edges, creating a more realistic look and shape. Once I have these regions erased into the sketch, I use them as markers to locate filaments and prominences around the disc. After I have drawn in these these other features, I return to the plage areas and spend some time filling in spots, filaments, fibrils, whatever I can. Typically I see much more detail than I can record, however, I try to finish my sketch feeling like I captured the significant details. I will often use a mechanical pencil to draw some of the faint magnet field field lines that surround the plage areas.

There you have it, the secrets of a solar sketching hack revealed! Feel free to drop me a note with any questions...

Happy Birthday Son Sun observation

2011-01-29T13:01:00.001-07:00

Invitation to 1st Birthday!

Busy day today, but nothing compared to 12 years ago...on January 29th 1999, Ian finally arrived! I say finally as he had been trying to come for almost 6 weeks and it was all Beth could do to keep his restless little behind in the womb while she remained on bed rest at Tucson Medical Center. It has been a fun filled 12 years and each year seems to get better and better. We started our day today with player evaluations for little league Majors division, and Ian did great in both fielding and pitching evaluations. While I'll help out coaching soon enough, I spent the 3 hours this morning leaning over the outfield fence, sipping my coffee and appreciating how lucky I am to have such a wonderful son. We already have memories to last a lifetime and I am increasingly proud of the young man he is becoming. Ian woke early this morning and quickly reminded us that it is only 4 years until he receives his drivers license. Wow...I am sure it will feel like tomorrow.

As we get ready to have the family over to celebrate, I slipped outside to make an observation of the Sun on my son's birthday. overall, it remains fairly quiet, with a few small active regions (AR) and small prominences. You can see below in my sketch that AR 11150 in the southeast is the largest and brightest of the regions. It appears to have at least one small spot and contains many magnetic field lines. AR 11151 near the west limb is fairly small and appears to be deteriorating. In the northeast, there is an extremely bright prominence accompanied by a bright plage region that may be heralding an AR coming around the limb. My sketch was completed at 1921 UT (12:21 MST) using my Lunt 60mm Hydrogen Alpha Solar Telescope.

Eruptive prominence!

2011-01-22T10:17:00.001-07:00

This morning's observation of the sun was quite a treat. Not only are there two attractive Active Regions (AR) near the center of the Sun's face, but there was a massive eruptive prominence on the northwestern limb. My sketch below does not do justice to the brightness and detail of the prominence, but it does give you an idea of the size. For reference, the prominence is likely at least 10-12 earth diameters high! ( It would take about 110 earths lined up to cross the diameter of the Sun).

The sketch was completed at 1625 UT (9:25 MST) under very steady skies. During the time of the sketch, the prominence was changing rapidly- every time I would look at it after drawing in one of the active region details it had evolved. I drew the prominence first and by the time I finished the drawing, the prominence looked entirely different. Below are images (reversed left to right from my drawing) from the Solar Dynamics Observatory in hydrogen alpha and white light. The white light image shows the sunspots associated with the two AR's. Due to some delay in data, the images are from several hours prior to my sketch.

Solar report ~ Jan. 17th

2011-01-17T12:43:00.001-07:00

Being off work today I had a chance to get out mid day and observe and sketch the Sun. While not extremely active, there are several interesting features of note. The sketch below was completed at 1910 UT (12:10 MST) using my Lunt 60mm Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) scope with 12mm blocking filter, under mostly clear skies.

You can see that the largest Active Region (AR), #11147 has recently come around the NE limb. It is fairly bright with dark filaments within the plage area. There is a spot visible in Ha that seems to have grown larger and darker since my observation yesterday. There are multiple filaments scattered around the disc, with the ones in the NW hinting at some fantastic prominences in the days to come. Speaking of prominences, there is a very large yet faint complex of them in the SW.

Most interesting today, were the three ephemeral regions that are apparent in the sketch. Ephemeral regions are bright plage areas that can last from hours to a few days...sometimes these develop into active regions, but most often they do not. One of these is visible just west of AR 11147 and seems to contain some dark filament structure. There is another small ephemeral region just to the NE of the center of the disc, and the third is is the SW. This ephemeral region was noted in my observation yesterday, however, you can see that it seems to have developed in both size and brightness and now contains some dark filaments as well...this may signal further development into an active region...we can only hope!

The Sun still shines in Tucson

2011-01-15T11:12:00.001-07:00

It seems that over the past week time has slowed to a crawl, here in Tucson. Finally this morning, I was able to enjoy my coffee and observe the Sun as I have done so many Saturday mornings in the past. Tucson has been at the center of an international media storm over the past week, and without a doubt everyone here has been affected by last Saturday's tragedy. (For some great perspective see this post). My position and responsibilities at the University of Arizona afforded me a close-in seat to Wednesday's memorial service and it was quite moving to be able honor the victims as well as all those in our community who are working every day to return a sense a civility and pride to Tucson. A picture from my mobile phone's poor camera is at right. President Obama's words resonated with me on many fronts, particularly that we must all work harder to create a country that reflects the vision and ideals held by 9 year old Christina Taylor Green, and the other victims.

Today was the first observation of any kind conducted at the Lost Pleiad Observatory since last weekends tragedy. As you can see from my sketch of the Sun, there is very little activity right now that is visible on the face. Active regions 11145 and 11146 are both weak, with only 11145 showing moderately bright plage and an "S" shaped filament within the plage. There are several bright prominences in the northwest and in the northeast. Seeing conditions were quite poor making it difficult to focus on these features even at low power. My sketch was completed at 1715 UT (10:15 MST) using my Lunt 60mm Ha pressure tuned telescope with 12mm blocking filter. I had to keep the magnification down around 30X otherwise the image would begin to deteriorate. The sun was approximately 27 degrees above the horizon at the time of the sketch.

As Tucson moves forward, last weekends shooting will forever be a part of us. I hope that soon the rest of the world will no longer associate Tucson solely with the terrible acts of hate and violence, but rather with our people, our rich history, our landscapes, foods, and most importantly astronomy and the Sun!

Sweet Home Arizona - NYTimes.com

2011-01-12T09:25:00.001-07:00

Sweet Home Arizona - NYTimes.com

I try not to get political on my blog, but the events this past week have certainly been painful for everyone in Tucson. So many people were affected by the irrational, violent, and hateful acts of one individual-

I grew up in Tucson, and this week, after nearly 42 years here, have been telling my friends that "this is not my Tucson anymore." As I prepare to spend today assisting with logistics of the community memorial the University is hosting, including President Obama, I was struggling with my own feelings of sadness, frustration, and longing for a more civil community. I read the above piece over a cup of coffee and now feel that I am ready to provide whatever I can throughout the day in honor of the victims and families, as well as my city as a whole.

Thanks so much to Aurelie Sheehan, director of the creative writing program here at the University of Arizona for publishing her op-ed piece in the NY Times; it has put words to my feelings; it has helped me to move forward.

Anniversary time

2011-01-08T08:43:00.002-07:00

Finally, the long awaited anniversary post and trip report! Not only did the New Year mark 15 years of marriage between Beth and I, but it also marked the one year anniversary of this blog. For those of you that follow it, thanks! It has been fun to maintain, although I wish I had more time to write up my astronomical adventures. Regardless, on to the main topic...

To celebrate the best 15 years of our lives, Beth and I decided to take a trip to Kauai, Hawaii for our anniversary- and it lived up to all of our expectations. The only other Hawaiian Island we had visited was Maui, and as it turned out, Kauai was in a league of it's own. It is referred to as the 'garden island' and that moniker is well deserved. Many movies and TV shows with tropical settings have been filmed there from Jurassic Park, to the remake of King Kong, and the television series Lost. There is simply no way in writing or even in pictures to capture the remarkable beauty of the island. We arrived on Kauai on Dec. 21st which was the Winter Solstice- I had been up all night prior to our trip as it was a total lunar eclipse- the picture at left is looking west from our balcony just prior to sunrise on Dec. 22.

One of the reasons that I did not get this post up sooner was feeling somewhat overwhelmed with all that I wanted to write about. I have decided that I will actually write very little, the trip was after all about sharing our love for each other- if you want to details, email me or take me out for a drink! At the bottom of the post, is a slideshow of some of our photos and if you click on it, it will take you to the album itself where you can look more closely at the images. One of the things you will notice throughout the pictures is the lack of people. Christmas and New Years are two of the busiest weeks in Hawaii, and despite that we often had large swaths of beaches and trails entirely to ourselves. At right is a picture of my beautiful wife hiking along a cliff top as we explored a series of beaches in the Maha'ulepu area. This was a stunning area, accessible by dirt road, that was composed of three distinct beaches with fascinating cliffs separating them.

I had a good time seeking out the numerous blow holes in the cliffs that would expel air and/or water as the waves and currents surged below. The image at left gives you an idea of the power behind these, as Beth is perched over a dry blow hole on a cliff that is easily 40 feet above the ocean...that is not a trendy Hawaiian hairstyle, it is the air being expelled from the hole in the cliff top.

The week we spent in Kauai was amazing- probably like most folks that visit we decided that we are going to move to Hawaii and maybe we can make it happen. As wonderful as the island was, the time we spent together was a strong reminder of why we decided to get married 15 years ago. For a trip that was about celebrating love and commitment, Kauai was the perfect background.

Finally, as promised, here is the slideshow. Again, click on it and it will take you to the album itself...enjoy!

Care to dance?

2010-12-19T14:04:00.003-07:00

In just about 36 hours, we will be treated to a rare spectacle when the full moon is totally eclipsed from the Sun, by the Earth's shadow. These events are quite spectacular and I will be observing this celestial dance from the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter where we will be hosting approximately 30 guests for a special lunar eclipse program. For information on this and other eclipses, I highly recommend NASA's Eclipse Web site. I took the picture to the left with a handheld point and shoot camera near maximum of the October 27th 2004 Lunar eclipse. The color and darkness of the moon varies from eclipse to eclipse and is affected by the amount and types of dust, volcanic ash and other pollutants in the atmosphere. The diagram below can be found on Fred Espinak's 2010 lunar eclipse page and shows the path of travel the moon will take through Earth's shadow, as well as the various timings of the event.

Penumbral Eclipse Begins: 05:29:17 UT

Partial Eclipse Begins: 06:32:37 UT

Total Eclipse Begins: 07:40:47 UT

Greatest Eclipse: 08:16:57 UT

Total Eclipse Ends: 08:53:08 UT

Partial Eclipse Ends: 10:01:20 UT

Penumbral Eclipse Ends: 11:04:31 UT

While all the talk is of the moon this week, I did manage to get out this morning and observe the Sun through my Hydrogen Alpha Solar Telescope. There is not a tremendous amount of activity, with only one active region (AR 11135) near the central meridian in the northern hemisphere. There are some small plage areas in the east, yet none are remarkable. Perhaps the most interesting features were the striking dark filaments along the northeastern limb, as well as the broad filament dominating the southern polar region. The sketch was completed at 1658 UT (9:58 AM MST) under slightly hazy skies.

Celestial Poetry

2010-12-15T21:31:00.002-07:00

In addition to astronomy, I have always enjoyed poetry- it is a little known fact that back in the late 20th century, I studied English literature on the way to my bachelors degree...to be specific, I studied Shakespeare extensively, as well as a few other Renaissance era poets. Shakespeare's plays and poems are filled with celestial imagery and metaphor, and perhaps in future posts I will share some.

Today, my good friend Laura sent me a poem that resonated with me instantly. She found it on the website of American Public Media's The Writers Almanac with Garrison Keillor. If you enjoy it, google the author and buy his books!

Flying at Night

By Ted Kooser

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.

Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies

like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,

some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,

snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn

back into the little system of his care.

All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,

tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

It's time for a revival!

2010-12-10T18:11:00.001-07:00

On Jupiter that is! Typically, the king of planets sports two distinct cloud belts, creatively referred to as the north and south equatorial bands (NEB and SEB respectively). This year has been an interesting one on Jupiter as the SEB had disappeared! To the left is an image from Mr. Anthony Wesley in Australia that provides a comparison of Jupiter's appearance from 2010 to 2009. North is up in these images and you can clearly see the missing SEB, leaving the Great Red Spot (GRS) all alone.

In mid November, observers around the world began to take note of what has been termed the SEB Revival. There is an interesting article on NASA's webpage that details much of what has taken place since the SEB's disappearance in the spring, including many spectacular infrared images. Two nights ago I opened up the Lost Pleiad Observatory just at sundown to begin to let the telescope acclimate to ambient temperature. There was a bit of high level cirrus hanging around and I noticed that Jupiter was blazing through the thin cloud layer. Visual observers know that often a slight bit of haze can actually improve views of Jupiter by cutting down on the brilliance and allowing for greater contrast- so I decided to put dinner on hold and take a peek at the king...and I was not disappointed! I was treated to a steady view of the SEB revival. While the sketch to the right does not do the eyepiece view justice, you can see that there was a distinct dark band in the south, that included a bright knot on the central meridian. The band appeared to curve up toward the equator on the proceeding limb (left in the sketch). Utilizing my TEC 140 refractor at 196x, the sketch was completed at 0043 UT on December 9th (5:43 PM local time on December 8th).

Mount Lemmon SkyCenter

2010-12-06T19:54:00.001-07:00

Just a quick post to encourage you to check out the new blog for the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter (MLSC). It may look a bit familiar in design, if you read this blog with any frequency...but you get what you pay for! Please visit the blog, send me your feedback if you are inclined, and once you are there click on the link to be a follower!

It will be a great blog to follow as we will post news and happenings from the MLSC, as well as recent images taken with the 32 inch Schulman telescope, and occasional content from guest writers.

The image to the left is NGC 2359, known commonly as Thor's Helmet. Image is Copyright Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona.

Sunrise spectacular

2010-12-03T16:22:00.001-07:00

Here in the "Naked Pueblo" we are somewhat famous for our beautiful sunsets...head pretty much anywhere with a view of the western horizon, on pretty much any day of the year, and chances are you will be treated to picture postcard view. This morning as I headed out to work I was treated to an absolutely fantastic sunrise. A heavy dose of cirrus clouds were illuminated beautifully, along with an old waning crescent moon.

Click on and look carefully at the picture below, you will notice Venus above the moon- it is labelled in the second picture in case you missed it...

Carbon Stars, cold weather and other notes...

2010-11-26T11:13:00.003-07:00

Thanksgiving has brought very cold temperatures to the Lost Pleiad Observatory. Thanksgiving day saw a high temperature of 56 degrees, the lowest high temperature since the mid 1970's! Last night was quite cold with temperatures dropping below freezing for the first time this winter. Overall, this low pressure system has created fairly poor seeing conditions...however, holidays mean lots of free time to observe as well as markedly reduced light pollution from Tucson.

Last night, I decided to do some observing with my TEC 140 prior to moon rise. I was rewarded with some of the darkest skies I have seen in the observatory in a long, long time. Not only were businesses around town closed, but there must have been no one on the roads as the light dome over Tucson was perhaps 25% of its usual brightness, maybe less. Two observations from last night are worth reporting here. First, I wanted to find a nice Carbon Star that I could use while leading programs at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center. Carbon stars are late-type giant stars whose atmospheres contain more carbon than oxygen. The chemical reactions that take place in the upper layers of the star result in increasing production of carbon compounds, surrounding the star with a "shell" of carbon dust. This leads to a ruby red like appearance at the eyepiece. While there are hundreds of these stars known, some of the more famous ones are Mu Cephei, R Leporis, and T Lyrae. I have been showing T Lyrae during programs, and R Leporis is not quite high enough in the sky yet to utilize. Mu Cephei is too bright and most observers see it as simply a bit more orange than Betelgeuse in Orion.

If you are interested in observing some of these stellar gems, I'd suggest you visit this webpage which contains a list of carbon stars brighter than visual magnitude 8.5. The image to the left is of a carbon star in the constellation Canes Venatici and was created by Greg Parker and Noel Carboni of the New Forest Observatory. I decided to have a go at S Cephei, a long period Mira type variable star. It's listed as magnitude 7.5 - 12.9 and has a period of 487 days. Mira type variables are characterized (among other things) by very red colors and are in very late stages of stellar evolution. These stars will eventually shed their outer layers and become planetary nebula. S Cephei is currently around magnitude 9 - 9.5 and fading. It appeared as a brilliant gemstone like red in the eyepiece and will be a very useful example of a carbon star in my programs.

The second Thanksgiving observation I'd like to share is that of NGC 253, the Sculptor Galaxy. I have observed this object many times in just about every telescope I have owned. It is a very large spiral galaxy in an intense star birth phase. It is remarkable in the eyepiece as it reveals extremely complex dust lanes throughout. Recently I observed it through the 32" Schulman telescope at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center, and was treated to more detail than I could ever capture with pencil and paper. I wondered how it would look in my 140mm refractor, and last night was perfect for this as the constellation rides low in the south, where typically the light pollution is at its greatest from my location. I made the sketch below at 75x with a 13mm eyepiece. To the right of my sketch is an image of this galaxy, taken from the Mount Lemmon Sky Center (south is up in the image, down in my sketch).

Finally, speaking of the Mount Lemmon Sky Center, todays Astronomy Picture of the Day features NGC 2024, the Flame Nebula as imaged by my colleague Adam Block at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center. This is the first MLSC image chosen by the APOD folks since the installation of the 32" Schulman telescope...check it out!

Fall observing

2010-11-14T20:01:00.002-07:00

Been awhile since the last post! Mid-October through mid-Novermber was a busy month on the astronomy front for me- I attended the All Arizona Star Party, made a quick trip to Portal, AZ and also led about a half-dozen programs at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter...all since the last post!

Rather than try and write a long post to capture it all, I'll just provide some brief details and some photos and hope that your imagination is as great as the real events were! The All Arizona Star Party (AASP) is an annual event, that was held this year at what is referred to as the Antenna site...basically about 2 miles south of Interstate 10, and about 80 miles west of Phoenix, AZ. I attended with my friend Jerry Farrar, and we camped next to Kevin and Brian from Lunt Solar Systems. This was quite a treat as they brought the entire Lunt arsenal of scopes and filters. I had a chance to double stack the new 60 front mounted etalon on my scope (to the left) and it was awesome! Not only were the views of surface features rich with contrast and detail, but we observed an M 5.4 class solar flare on Saturday morning. Below is my sketch of the sun, including the flare in region 11121.

Naturally I observed many nighttime objects as well, including many galaxies in the constellation of Aquarius. Using my 12" LX-200 SCT, I observed NGC 7171, NGC 7184, NGC 7218, NGC 7392, NGC 7723, and the pair NGC 7724 & 7727 that shared the field of view at 152 power. I also observed NGC 7492 which is a very faint, diffuse globular cluster. This appeared almost as a mist in the eyepiece with about 6 stars resolved. I spent some time observing NGC 708, the faith group of galaxies, also known as Abell 262, located in Andromeda. I was drawn to check out this group of galaxies by a recent image created by my colleague Adam Block as part of the first light of the new 32" Schulman Telescope at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center. Below is a Digitized Sky Survey image and my sketch (reversed left to right), and underneath that is Adam's image of the galaxies.

If you have read my blog over the past many months, you know that Portal, AZ is home to Rancho del Farrar, one of my favorite places on earth to observe. Jerry invited me out for a quick trip with some of his family and friends. While the observing was pretty laid back, we had a great time and the company was excellent. Prior to leaving Portal, Beth and Ian and I went on a short hike in Cave Creek Canyon to a small cave that can be explored in about 10 minutes. Enjoy the photos of our trip!

Solar powered observing

2010-10-16T14:42:00.001-07:00

It's been far too long since I had some time on a Saturday morning to observe and sketch the sun. Lest you think that this morning was all sleeping in, drinking coffee and observing, I only had about an hour to set up the scopes, make the observations, and attempt some sketches due to Ian's little league game. (Incidentally, he was 2 for 3 at the plate and perfect in 5 chances in the infield- whose kid is that?!?!)

The seeing this morning was nearly perfect. There was only occasional slight atmospheric turbulence, but well over 90% of the time the image was steady as a rock even at high power. This sketch was completed at 1625 UT (9:25 MST) using my Lunt Solar Systems 60mm HA scope with 12mm blocking filter.

Active region (AR) 11112 is the feature du jour, sporting some bright plage as well as a large and beautiful snakelike filament. AR's 11113 and 11115 contain much weaker plage, yet there are obvious dark spots associated with these regions...this inspired me to set up my TEC 140 and Lunt solar prism to examine the spots in white light. Finally, there is a bright ephemeral region on the central meridian in the northern hemisphere.

Below is my sketch of todays sunspots. While nothing was noted in the ephemeral region, each of the aforementioned AR's contain spots. AR 11113 contains a single spot, as does AR 11115 although it's umbra seemed like it may be splitting in two. AR 11112 contains multiple small spots and is quite disorganized. This sketch was completed (quickly) at 1638 UT (9:38 MST).

New Moon Madness

2010-10-13T20:52:00.001-07:00

This past weekend I went down to Portal, AZ to do some new moon observing with my good friend Jerry. If you have read my previous posts regarding visiting and observing in this area, you already know that the skies are some of, if not THE, darkest and transparent skies in the United States. We were joined this trip by our friends Bill Gates, Jerry and Debbie Hyman, and Christian Weiss. In estimating the quality of the skies, we looked to stars of known magnitudes, and each of us was able to detect stars as faint as magnitude 7. Before I share some of my observing highlights, I do want to mention what a great group we had.

Bill, is the master observer of "things that are not really there" objects. He is a remarkably skilled observer who spent a fair bit of time hunting down some of the faintest nebulosity you can imagine...these areas are so faint that many of them do not even have catalog designations. Bill finds them by downloading images from the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS) and enhancing them on his computer to the point that he can see these faint clouds of gas. He then hunts them down in the eyepiece. Bill is observing objects that in all likelihood have never been observed visually by others...Both because they are virtually unknown, and also due to his incredible eyesight. It is safe to say that while we use the expression "eagle eyes," eagles refer to themselves as having "Gates eyes." Bill was able to identify stars as faint as magnitude 7.4 naked eye! 7.2 was the best I could muster...Of course, I was distracted by the bright zodiacal light and the Gegenschein, a phenomenon I had heard of but never seen...

Jerry and Debbie are friends that we have come to know through various "all Arizona" star party events. They are quite passionate about amateur astronomy and spending time observing with them is always a treat. I learn a lot from them, and the crisp wide-field views through their binoculars were simply stunning (not to mention the new 8 inch Celestron Edge HD they brought!).

Christian has been visiting Tucson while completing the research for his Masters Thesis in optics. He is modeling the optics for Giant Magellan Telescope (I hope I have that right Christian!) and soon will return to Switzerland where he will graduate. Christian is the type of observer who inspires each of us with both his passion and skill. I know we will all miss him. It is so refreshing to spend time with a group like this who appreciate observing all types of objects and sharing the experiences with each other.

I am only going to post a few of the highlights from my two nights in Portal, beginning with Comet 103P/Hartley. You can read about this comet that I have been observing over the past month in some of my earlier posts. What was amazing was that the comet was visible to the naked eye as a fuzzy spot in the constellation of Cassiopeia. It has brightened considerably and while still diffuse, sports a bright nucleus and extensive coma. The comet is now appearing to move swiftly, approximately 5.8 arceseconds per minute during the time I was making the sketch...that translates to about 2.5 degrees of sky per day! The sketch was made on the night of 10-10-2010 through my LX200 12 inch SCT and a 13mm Ethos eyepiece, yielding a magnification of 234X and a field of view of.4 degrees. The comet's distance from the earth was approximately .142 AU, and its distance from the sun was 1.093 AU (one AU = 93 million miles).

With Christian leading the way, I observed several planetary nebulas over the weekend. One of the benefits of having a telescope with 12 inches of aperture is that I can now begin to see subtle detail in these nebula that was not available to me with lesser aperture. The sketch to the right is of NGC 7009, commonly known as the Saturn nebula, due to the extensions on either side the nebula that resemble Saturn's ring structure. This nebula is obvious in most scopes at magnitude 8.3 as a small disc of uniform brightness. Magnifying this cluster with a power of 305 reveals the outer halo and extensions. Careful observation also revealed some subtle darkening toward the center. This nebula is approximately 2900 light years away in the constellation of Aquarius.

To the left is another large but faint planetary that flies through the sky low in the south in the constellation of Grus (the crane). IC 5148 is large, approximately 2 arc minutes in diameter, yet faint at magnitude 11. Using a 20mm eyepiece (152X) and an Ultra High Contrast Filter (UHC) the nebula appeared to have a rift running through it, alomst separating it into two distinct objects. The east half was marginally brighter than the west half, and the entire rim was brighter than the center. I also observed this object through Christian's 16 inch Dobsonian, and he tells me that this object is actually designated twice in the IC, as object 5148 and 5150. Either way, this is a very unique planetary and one well worth observing if you can see it from your location. In Portal, it was perhaps 18 degrees above the horizon.

Finally, I'll share with you a sketch I made of NGC 246, commonly referred to as the Skull Nebula, haunting the constellation of Cetus. This object was simply stunning from the dark site as it revealed several bright arcs along the perimeter, as well as dark cavities within the nebula itself. the 12th magnitude central star was easily seen as well as a few other stars superimposed on the nebula. NGC 246 is large, twice the apparent size of IC 5148 at 4.1 arcminutes in diameter. It resides approximately 1300 light years away, and is estimated to be about 15,000 years old.

Of course, none of this would be possible without Jerry- From sharing his property to sharing his food, no one hosts a better star party. I have been to star parties in Colorado, California, Arizona, and even the vaunted Texas Star Party and can honestly say that there is no better place, and no better host than Jerry. I have mentioned before that he is my mentor in observing and all the sketches above are due in part to observing and learning from him. Thanks my friend.

Stormy sunset

2010-10-05T19:41:00.001-07:00

One of the things that I enjoy about working at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center are the incredible experiences that only happen on a mountaintop. We had a small cadre of guests earlier this week who decided to come up despite stormy weather that would preclude use of the new 32" Schulman Telescope. As part of our "cloudy night" program, we headed over to the west ridge of the mountaintop to see what view, if any, we may have of sunset. I think that these pictures speak for themselves....(and one thing they tell me that while the point and shoot camera is convenient, I may have to invest in a DSLR camera)

Mount Lemmon Sky Center update

2010-09-26T16:41:00.002-07:00

I have had a hard time posting this month, due to being incredibly busy as well as being limited in my observing time. One of the things that has taken up more of my time has been volunteering up at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center (MLSC). Previously I have posted about my efforts up there, and the week of September 13th, the 24" RCOS scope went offline as the new 32" RCOS Schulman Telescope was installed! I spent a bit of time up on the mountain during the installation of the scope and thought that these pictures may be of interest.

Above you can see the telescope assembled with the west fork arm opened up. This fork arm contains the optical encoders that communicate the telescopes position in declination to the computer. The east fork arm (not shown) contains the declination motor and brake. One of the neat things about this telescope is that it operates with friction drives and is therefore very quiet and has none of the periodic error that is inherent to geared drive systems.

Above left is the secondary cage and the approximately 12 inch secondary mirror. In the mirror you can see reflected the primary mirror covers. These are opened and shut electronically and the scope was not yet operational when I took these images, so no picture of the primary mirror yet. Above right, is the brains of this telescope...this box contains a computer, drivers, and all the electronics necessary to communicate with the mount and telescope.

Finally, this pictures was taken several nights later when we went up to do some adjusting of the polar alignment of the mount. You can see how massive the scope is in relation to the computer desk to the right. This scope is the largest scope in the State of Arizona dedicated solely to public outreach and education. One of the reasons I have been spending so much time at the MLSC of late, is that in addition to the typical volunteer duties assisting with outreach programs, I am now training to begin conducting the SkyNights programs! It is very exciting and quite a bit of work. While the telescope is impressive, it is simply a tool that we use to provide guests with an opportunity to learn and experience the night sky in ways that they never have before. Mount Lemmon is a fantastic location for this program. Just as satisfying as hearing a guest exclaim "WOW!!" when seeing a globular cluster for the first time, is the contemplative silence of guests as they appreciate that their own shadow being cast on the ground is actually blue and not grey or black. I can say that I learn as much as the guests each time I am there. As evidence, take a look at the picture below. This picture was taken just prior to sunset looking opposite the sun in the sky, to the east. In it, you will see a mountain range in the distance, as well as what at first glance appears to be a second, higher mountain in the background. Look closely and you will see that it is not in fact a high mountain in the distance; Rather, it is the shadow of Mount Lemmon being cast on the atmosphere. This is just one example of something that can be experienced at the MLSC, something that most people have never seen before.

103P/Harltey Update!

2010-09-11T08:51:00.000-07:00

Cometary update! I had a chance to get out last night and take a look at this comet again (see the previous post). It seems to be slightly brighter than my previous observation, as I was able to hold it in direct (as opposed to averted) vision. The coma appears to be a bit brighter to the north, however, there is no central condensation to the comets nucleus that I could see. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory maintains a website where one can generate orbital diagrams for this comet, and they indicate that the comet is currently .317 AU from Earth, and 1.244 AU from the sun (and getting closer!). The comet is moving approximately 1.67 arc seconds per minute across the sky, so it does not yet appear to move that far from night to night. I estimated the comet to be between magnitude 10 and 10.5 and it is in the constellation Andromeda. The sketch was completed at 0508 UT on 9-11-2010, which was 10:08 PM MST on 9-10.

Comet 103/P Hartley

2010-09-05T09:36:00.001-07:00

In November of this year, the EPOXI mission spacecraft will make a close flyby of comet Hartley 2, also known as 103/P Hartley. The EPOXI name is a combination of EPOCH (Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization) and DIXI (Deep Impact eXtended Investigation). The goal of this flyby is to gather data that will help us understand the structure, formation and composition history of cometary nuclei. This information is important as it relates directly to our increasing understanding of the origin of our solar system.

This comet is predicted to reach naked eye brightness in late October, perhaps as bright as magnitude 5. Last night night I decided to see if I could spot the comet in the LX200 12" SCT as it is currently well placed in the constellation Lacerta. I had downloaded ephemerides for this comet from the IAU (International Astronomical Union) Minor Planet Center which indicated that the comet may currently be as bright as magnitude 8.5. I was a bit skeptical as I had "googled" this comet and there are not many amateur images out there, suggesting that it is not exactly an interesting target...yet. Gary Kronk maintains an excellent site called Cometography and there is information on this comet as well as a couple of images if you are interested.

Despite my skepticism (unusual, I know) I slewed the scope over the comets location and saw...nothing. I decided to completely shut off the dim red lights that were on in the observatory and increase the magnification to 234x to darken the sky background in the eyepiece. Sure enough, there in the center of the eyepiece was the faint glow of the comet. My sketch of this comet is at left, and you will probably need to click on it so you can see the full size image. It was hard to sketch such a faint glow, one that was essentially seen using averted vision. It was also difficult to ascertain the size of the comet as it was extremely diffuse with no central condensation visible. I would estimate that this comet is closer to magnitude 10-11, as it has a very low surface brightness...but again, I do not know the extent of the comet, so any estimate of it's magnitude is more of a guess than anything. I completed this sketch at 0346 UT on 9/5/2010 (which was 8:46 PM MST on 9/4). I should mention that the sky conditions were excellent with seeing that was estimated at 4/5 and a level of transparency that was as good as it gets from my location on the city's perimeter. The milky way was visible from Sagittarius through Cygnus and beyond.

After spending some time on the comet I decided to have a look at NGC 40, a planetary nebula in Cepheus, also known as Caldwell 2. Since I installed the 12" SCT I have been having fun observing planetary nebulas looking for features that were not visible to me with my previously smaller telescopes. NGC 40 is a wonderful target, one that deserves more popularity. The 11.6 magnitude central star is visible in most telescopes, and it is surrounded with a large circular shell of nebulosity. As you know from previous posts, planetary nebula often hold up to greater magnifications without breaking down as other targets do, and NGC 40 was no exception. I observed NGC 40 using an 8mm Ethos eyepiece, which in the 12" results in a magnification of 381x and a field of view of .3 degrees.

You can see in the sketch that at high power the nebula is no longer a neat circular haze, rather it has bright arcs on both the east and west sides. The arc on the west is the brighter of the two, and it seems to arc away from the nebula to the south in a manner reminiscent of a galactic spiral arm. This planetary nebula is approximately 3500 light years away and spans a diameter of 38 arcseconds. If you have never observed this target, it is highly recommended.

The Meade LX200 12 inch SCT!

2010-09-02T18:40:00.000-07:00

The rumors are true... Introducing the Lost Pleiad Observatory's new Meade LX-200 12 inch Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope. This telescope is well traveled, having started its career several years ago as a research instrument at the Arkansas Sky Observatories. When it was retired from research it was sold to a private individual who used it for a few years before deciding to pass it along. I had been looking for a larger SCT for some time and when I saw this scope advertised, decided to take the plunge. It has been optimized through several modifications, such as the two cooling fans which have been installed to circulate filtered air behind the mirror. This aids the mirror in reaching ambient temperature. The stock focuser bearings have been upgraded to provide very smooth focus with minimal image shift, and the interior of the optical tube has been flocked to eliminate internal reflections and scattering of light.

Above left is the business end of the scope where you can see the the focal length is 3048mm resulting in an F/10 instrument. The center image shows the cooling fans and on the right you can see the internal flocking. I have had an opportunity to test the scope out over the past three nights, and without hesitation I can say that it is the best SCT I have owned. Both my original 8 inch and the 9.25 inch that I have been using were fine performers, yet this scope is in another league. Certainly the aperture increase is significant, however, planetary images in this scope are sharper than either of my previous SCT's. In addition, contrast is excellent and the fine detail that I have been able to observe from my backyard has been rewarding. While splitting double stars is the realm of my TEC 140 refractor, this big blue monster has impressed me.

So far I have sketched two objects observing through this instrument. For my first light sketch (to the right) I decided to attempt M27, the Dumbbell Nebula. This was the first planetary nebula discovered by Messier and is one of the showpiece objects of the summer sky. This nebula is approximately 20,000 years old, a baby in astronomical time. I observed this nebula with and without my Baader UHC-S filter to bring out some of the nebular extensions. The magnitude 13.9 central star illuminating the nebula was easily visible as were about 10 other stars within the nebulosity.

Planetary nebula are fuzzy objects, and typically hold up well to higher levels of magnification than other targets. I was observing NGC 6818, the "Little Gem" nebula in Sagittarius and decided to pump up the magnification and see if what was a small, circular, light blue fuzz-ball at 234x may reveal structure at 609x! Typically one would not use magnification that high, but decent seeing combined with excellent optics transformed the nebula from a featureless disc into a nebula reminiscent of M57, the Ring nebula. To the left is an image of this nebula, while below are my sketches of this "Little Gem" at 234x and at 609x. For reference in the high power sketch, the stars to the NW and SW of the nebula are magnitude 12.5, while the star to the east of the nebula is magnitude 13.5.

Solar report August 28th, 2010

2010-08-28T10:16:00.001-07:00

The monsoon weather pattern remains intact here in the Old Pueblo, which means that there is no nighttime observing. This year we are actually ahead of the average annual rainfall, and for that, even the amateur astronomers are grateful. Personally I can't wait for a good clear night so that I can try out the new to me 12" LX200 SCT that I recently purchased...tune in next month for a review of this scope. And, if you are interested in buying a nice 9.25" SCT, by all means send me an email!

A quick shameless self-promotion...Lunt Solar Systems, the manufacturer of my solar telescope, maintains a blog on the company website. Yesterday, yours truly was the subject of the blog...check it out here: Sky to Paper

This morning I set up my solar telescope and was treated to nearly perfect seeing. The atmosphere was unbelievably stable and even at the highest powers, details on the sun remained sharp. It may have been the most stable solar observing session I have had, since purchasing the scope. Transparency was not quite as good as there was a bit of haze in the eastern sky, but this is typical this time of year with such high humidity in the desert. I completed the sketch below at 1530 UT (8:30 AM MST).

There is only one officially numbered active region on the face right now, AR 11101 in the northeast. This region contains a very dark spot, that at high magnification appears to be splitting in two. It will be interesting to watch this spot over the next 24 hours. To the northwest of the spot, there are three small areas of plage. The southern two of these areas are separated by what appears to be some bi-polar filamentary structure. Again, this could be a sign of increasing activity in this region, and it may develop into a distinct active region over the next day. There is also an area of plage in the southern hemisphere, although this area did not display any signs of activity and may be what is termed an ephemeral region.

Cai-Uso Wohler, a solar observer and imager in Denmark, captured the photo below about 5 hours before my observation, and posted it on the Cloudy Nights Solar Observing forum. You can see that the sunspot in AR11101 was not yet showing any signs of dividing.

Weekend Sun

2010-08-23T20:11:00.001-07:00

I had a pretty busy weekend as I spent Friday night and all day Saturday working at the Mount Lemmon Sky Center. Friday night we had a SkyNights program and Saturday saw the Discovery Days event. To the left is a picture of the current 24" RCOS telescope. Excitement among staff at the Sky Center is increasing as in mid-September, this telescope will be taken offline and a new 32" will be installed! If the quality of the mirror is as good as the 24", visitors to the observatory will be in for quite a treat. I am told that this telescope will be the largest telescope in Arizona that is solely dedicated to public observing, education and outreach. Pretty neat if you ask me. Below is a picture I took outside the dome (about a week ago) and you can see the moon as well as Venus.

Anyway, Sunday morning I was fairly tired from the events, but the sky was as clear as it had been in two days and I decided to pull out my solar scope and make a sketch of the sun. My sketch was completed at 1535 UT (8:35 AM MST). While there is a mildly active region in the southwest (AR 11100) that includes two dark filaments, I was rather impressed with the large prominence in the northeast. Of course, my sketch to the right does not do justice to the ethereal nature of this prominence. Fortunately, a solar observer named Michael Buxton in California made a time lapse video of the prominence and posted it on you tube. Check it out!

SkyNights volunteering and observing report

2010-08-13T16:46:00.002-07:00

In an earlier post I mentioned that I have recently been volunteering at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, assisting with the SkyNights public observing program on the 24 inch RC Optical Systems Ritchey-Chrétien telescope seen at right (Photo credit to Adam Block/Mount Lemmon SkyCenter/University of Arizona (Board of Regents)). Last night the sky center hosted an extended version of the SkyNights program where in addition to the standard educational and viewing program, guests brought lawn chairs and loungers to relax and stretch out under the stars to observe the annual Perseid Meteor shower. We were very fortunate in that the weather pattern has been holding steady this week, and we were treated to a sky devoid of clouds, with better than average seeing conditions. The shower certainly displayed several long and colorful meteors for the guests, however, in my opinion the shower was better on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning. Regardless, all the visitors had a good time.

Another benefit of this extended program was that there was less of a rush to see objects at the telescope for the visitors. We had more time, and folks were occupied looking for Perseids when not at the eyepiece. The summer milky way dominates the view right now and guests were treated to most of the showpiece objects of the summer sky. They observed the Lagoon Nebula, the Swan Nebula, globular clusters M22 and M13 (the great Hercules Cluster), the Dumbbell, Veil and Ring nebula, as well as open clusters such as the Wild Duck and the Butterfly. Of course, everyone was awed by the king of planets, Jupiter. As the night wore on, most of the guests departed and a few very interested folks remained. These folks were interested in seeing some of what the 24 inch RCOS could do, so we took a look at some advanced observing targets.

We aimed the scope at the ring nebula and using a 17mm Nagler eyepiece (297x) we attempted see the magnitude 15.7 central star. Sure enough, with careful observation, 3 of the 4 of us spotted the star with averted vision! This was quite exciting as I had never seen this star before. Given the patience and ultimate success demonstrated by these guests, I then slewed the scope to M33, the Triangulum galaxy (image at left). This galaxy is a very large face on spiral galaxy, but has a very low surface brightness. Using a 31mm Nagler eyepiece (153x) the galaxy filled the field of view. Looking through the eyepiece I was able to detect the spiral structure of the galaxy as well as 5 of the brighter star forming regions in the arms. If I had been alone and had time to study the galaxy I am sure I could have seen much more, but I was mostly looking for features quickly so that I could assist the visitors in observing the galaxy. All 3 guests were able to enjoy the detailed view. Since they were appreciating this more advanced look through the telescope we spent some time looking at other deep space targets. I can not remember all of them, but we were treated to fantastically detailed views of NGC 6888, the Crescent nebula; a picturesque view of NGC 7331 and the 4 accompanying galaxies that comprise the "deerlick" group; dust lanes in the Andromeda galaxy, and amazingly, structure in NGC 7662 the "Blue Snowball" nebula!

When the last guests departed I went back to NGC 7662 to make a sketch of what I was seeing. This is a fine example of a planetary nebula and at 297x displayed a striking aquamarine color. It is very large, about the same apparent size as Jupiter. Most shocking to me was that there was a bright arc within the nebula itself as well as a bright knot in the southern portion of the outer halo. This nebula is about 5000 light years away in the constellation Andromeda. Here is my sketch as well as an image of the nebula:

My colleague Mike Terenzoni who was leading the program suggested we look at NGC 891, an edge on galaxy in Andromeda. I had observed this galaxy before in my 9.25 inch SCT and it was always an attractive but faint target. We slewed the scope over, inserted the 31mm Nagler, and the view about knocked my socks off. What was always a faint smudge to me, was a bright and beautiful edge-on galaxy with a dust lane that bisected its entire length. Most often when observing dust lanes one sees subtle differences in contrast that take experience, patience and averted vision to see. Not so tonight! This dust lane was dark and readily visible with direct vision. The galaxy is brighter toward the core, and below is my sketch as well as an image.

We had a few minutes left and decided to take a look at Jupiter one last time. Mike had a new Tiffen FL-D filter that we attached to the 31mm Nagler to improve contrast- and it worked splendidly. While the seeing conditions had dropped to about average, we were still treated to a pleasing view of Jupiter that now featured the great red spot traversing across the disc. There was no way that I could capture the details that we observed in a sketch, but I decided to give it a try. Typically, Jupiter sports two dark cloud belts, named the north and south equatorial bands. For the last couple months, the south equatorial band has vanished (this is very uncommon, happening most recently almost 20 years ago), although there are some indications that it may be reforming. There is a dark band of material immediately south of the great red spot, and the spot itself is clearly sitting in a hollow. The north equatorial band remains quite dark yet does show some disturbance toward the preceding limb of the planet. Below are my sketch (completed at 0723 UT 8/13/2010), as well as an image posted on the internet from a little while after my sketch. You can see that I need some practice in terms of getting the features into a more accurate latitude, but I am pleased with this attempt.

All in all, it was a very fun evening, and if you have read this far I hope that you will sign up for one of the SkyNights programs...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2010-08-11T18:43:00.001-07:00

I just finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larson, and can honestly say that I enjoyed the book quite a bit...coincidentally, the weather has given us a bit of a break over the new moon and the last two nights have proven to be cloud free after 9 PM. Even better, the atmosphere has been incredibly stable and transparent at the Lost Pleiad Observatory. So, with Lisbeth Salander on my mind, I put my Celestron 9.25 inch SCT onto the mount and enjoyed exploring some heavenly bodies, in the constellation Draco (the dragon). Bad joke, I know.

One of the galaxies that I have observed before from dark skies is NGC 5866, and I was curious what this edge on galaxy would look like from the suburbs. This galaxy is perhaps most well known as it may have been the galaxy that French Comet hunter Charles Messier originally identified as object number 102 in his catalog. NGC 5866 resides approximately 38 million light years away, is nearly edge-on and has a visual magnitude of 9.9. While it was not nearly as bright as I recalled, the nucleus was evident and the galaxy appeared about twice as long as it did wide. While there was no sign of the dust lane that bisects this galaxy, it did appear to bulge slightly more to the southwestern side than to the northeast. To the left is a sketch I made at 180X.

I observed a second edge-on galaxy in Draco, NGC 6503. While not having the history of NGC 5866, this galaxy is an interesting target visually. It is listed at magnitude 10.2, yet appears to me brighter...perhaps a full magnitude brighter. It was featureless in my scope showing a uniformly illuminated surface oriented roughly northwest-southeast. At 17 million light years, it is less than half the distance of NGC 5866 above. The galaxies are very close in apparent size, which indicates how much larger NGC 5866 must actually be. To the right is my sketch.

I observed several other objects, including Jupiter which is starting to be reasonably high by midnight. There has been much discussion of the south equatorial belt and it's recent disappearance, yet last night it looked as if the band may be re-forming. The red spot was transiting during my observation and preceding it, just to the south of the spot was a thin dark band stretching approximately 1/3 of the way across the face. I would have sketched it, but I was getting sleepy. Maybe tonight?

Solar Flare Report

2010-08-07T14:14:00.009-07:00

It is better to be lucky than good! Yesterday our dog Cosmo tore up a bunch of drip irrigation and the burrow of our desert tortoise trying to corner something or other...(Don't worry the tortoise is fine). So this morning I spent a few hours fixing the irrigation and renovating the burrow. By the time I set up my Hydrogen Alpha solar telescope, I was hot, sweaty and rather fatigued. I was planning on a quick look just to check out the prominences that I have been hearing about. Normally I observe around 8:00 AM local time as the atmospheric conditions are more favorable and it is not so blasted hot. Today, I set up about 11:15, and...holy smokes, a MASSIVE flare was erupting throughout active region 11093. My sketch was completed between 1820 and 1905 UT (11:20 AM - 12:05 PM local time) under average to below average seeing conditions.

There are currently four active regions (AR) on the face of the sun: 11092, 11093, 11094, and 11095. AR's 11092 and 11095 appear relatively weak, with faint plage and a small spot in each. AR 11094 is very close to the northwest limb and is moderately bright with a filament connecting with some small prominences off the limb. While the northeast prominences are quite large and beautiful and would normally be the feature du jour, 11093 was, as mentioned, in the midst of an M 1.0 class flare! The plage was very bright, much brighter than I can capture in a sketch, and the whole region was involved in the flare. There was also a very dark filament curving through the region, and a dark spot on the proceeding edge (the west). The flare lasted from 1748 UT to 1845 UT with the peak at 1824 UT (11:24 AM local time).

Thomas Ashcraft captured several images of the flare and stitched them into an 8 megabyte .gif movie that is highly recommended!

Ken Florentino of Colorado captured this HD movie and posted it on YouTube~

Below, I have inverted my sketch to match the images of the flare. (Through a refractor telescope, images are reversed east-west at the eyepiece and that is the reason that these space based images have east to the left).

My Sketch

Solar Dynamics Observatory 304

Solar Dynamics Observatory 171

Prior to flare

Astronomy Sketch of the Day

2010-08-06T20:20:00.000-07:00

There is not a lot of observing going on this week as the monsoon weather pattern does its thing...which is fill the sky with dark clouds, blow around a lot of dust, and then sprinkle just enough that your car is a mess from the blown dust. I did awake today to a nice astronomical surprise, however, in that my sketch of the sun in hydrogen alpha from July 31st was featured as the August 5th Astronomy Sketch of the Day! (Follow the link!)

The Astronomy Sketch of the Day website is in the same vein as the very famous Astronomy Picture of the Day website. Amateur astronomers from around the world submit sketches that they have made while observing and each day one is selected as the sketch of the day. Certainly in this age of astrophotography, there are many fewer individuals sketching at the eyepiece than taking photos. Nevertheless, I was quite tickled that my sketch was featured. As they say, every dog has his day!

The music is playing on this award ceremony, but before I am kicked off stage, I want to thank my good friend Jerry Farrar who is my mentor when it comes to sketching and observing the sun; truth be told, he is my mentor in quite a few aspects of visual amateur astronomy.

The William Optics 28mm UWAN

2010-08-03T17:43:00.002-07:00

I tend to get a little stir crazy during the summer monsoon as far as astronomy goes- I am spoiled living in the desert southwest with many clear dry nights. So when a few weeks go by with no opportunity for night time observing I turn to other aspects of my hobby (addiction) for entertainment. Having already cleaned the observatory a few times (you could eat off the floor) and having already installed a nice new shelf from Target to hold some of my books and stuff, I made an impulse buy and acquired a used William Optics 28mm UWAN eyepiece. I had heard good things about it from other TEC 140 users so when I saw one for sale on Astromart I asked myself "Do I need this eyepiece?" I quickly answered myself saying "Self....No. No. A thousand times, no. You already have a very nice 31mm Baader eyepiece" A few hours later I had made the deal and it would soon be shipped.

After a week of cloudy nights, the weather gods took pity on me, and the past two nights proved to be fantastically clear with very good seeing and no moonlight until after midnight. I used the opportunity to test this new eyepiece extensively in my TEC 140 and what follows are my subjective observations and experiences using this eyepiece.

I decided to compare this eyepiece to my Baader 31mm Hyperion Ashperic which is obviously similar in terms of the power it delivers in the scope. The picture to the left gives you an idea of the relative size of the monster in comparison to the Baader 31mm, and a can of Pepsi...keep in mind that these eyepieces both have 2 inch barrels, so you can see how physically massive the 28mm UWAN is. Before I provide you with my subjective impressions, I'll give you some of the objective information as taken from the respective companies, as well as some of the exit pupil, power, and field of view calculations for the scopes I own.

Eyepiece William Optics 28mm UWAN Baader Planetarium 31mm Hyperion Aspheric

Manufacturer info William Optics   Baader Planetarium
Price Retail/Used $339/$250 $189/$150
Eye Relief 18mm stated 18mm stated
Weight 1000 grams (2lbs. 3 oz.)   390 grams (13.8 oz.)
Apparent F.O.V. 82 degrees 72 degrees

Using TEC 140 (f/7)
   Exit pupil 4mm 4.5mm
   Magnification 35X 31X
   True field of view 2.3 degrees 2.3 degrees

So now that we have the objective data out of the way, how did the eyepiece perform for me? My conclusion first...Overall, I am quite satisfied with the 28mm UWAN, and will be selling the Baader 31mm. The Baader is a very, very good eyepiece for the money, however, the 28mm UWAN does most everything just a little better. You can see from the data that these eyepieces are very close in both magnification delivered, exit pupil and field of view- so the differences that I am about to describe are my subjective experiences using the eyepiece.

Prior to explaining why I preferred the views in the UWAN, there are some ergonomic issues worth noting in the event you are considering one or the other of these eyepieces. First, is the aforementioned weight. The Baader weighs less than a pound, and is remarkably light for an eyepiece with a 72 degree apparent field of view. The 28mm UWAN is over 2 pounds and will impact your telescopes balance. Second, while the stated eye relief is 18mm for both eyepieces, the experience using them is quite different. To the right is an image of the eye lenses and you can see that the UWAN eye lens is slightly smaller and you may be able to tell that it is recessed into the eyepiece top. When using the 28mm UWAN, it does not feel like one has 18mm of eye relief. In fact, to see the field stop, I have to place my eye almost all the way to the housing. This is not an issue for me as the lens itself is recessed and my eyelashes do not touch. I also find myself tilting my head slightly to get the best position to see the entire field. The UWAN has a very smooth twist up eye-cup, however, I can not use this as if it is up at all I can not see the entire field of view. The Baader 31mm is very comfortable to use and the eye relief measurement seems accurate. For public outreach the Baader 31mm would be a better choice on its ergonomic characteristics alone.

On to the views, and the reasons why I prefer the 28mm UWAN. I observed several types of objects with both eyepieces- nebula including M8, M17 and NGC 7000; planetary nebula including M57, M27, and the young, small NGC 7027 in Cygnus; Globular clusters including M22, M13, M20, M5, and NGC 7006 in Delphinus; The Veil supernova remnant NGC 6992; and the galaxy NGC 7331 in Pegasus. Observations of faint nebula were made both unfiltered and with my Baader planetarium UHC-S filter.

I'll present my findings in descending order of the perceived difference. In other words, I'll address sharpness first as I felt this was the greatest difference in the views...sky background will be second as I felt this was the second greatest difference. Last will be color as I felt there was no difference in eyepieces.

First, the Baader 31mm is very sharp on axis, however, stars in the outer 25% of the field of view increasingly look like little flares as they approach the edge. The 28mm UWAN on the other hand was sharp all they way past 90% of the field of view. Even the outer 10% of the field was not nearly as distorted as in the Baader. In terms of sharpness, the 28mm UWAN clearly had the edge (pun intended).

The second thing I noticed when using these eyepieces was that the 28mm UWAN revealed a darker sky background. I was surprised by this given that the eyepieces are so close in focal length. This was an obvious and marked difference between the eyepieces. Had I not perhaps been unconsciously biased to look at sharpness first, the sky background may have struck me immediately.

Third, and I hate to use such a subjective construct, was faint detail. When observing star clusters, there were not any stars that I noticed in one eyepiece that I could not see in the other. That being said, there were faint stars that were easier to see in the 28mm UWAN...easier than the magnification difference alone would dictate. I do not know if it is related to sky background, coating differences, or anything for that matter. Contrast is a touchy subject when discussing eyepieces and I am trying to avoid using that term...but faint detail was easier to see in the 28mm UWAN. Nebula in particular were brighter and faint extensions were more readily seen in the 28mm UWAN. This was most noticeable when observing NGC 6992, the eastern portion of the veil. Also, the lagoon nebula (M8) revealed more structure in the UWAN. To the left is a sketch I made of M8 using the UWAN 28mm and the Baader UHC-S filter.

Finally, I looked for differences in how the eyepieces rendered star colors. With fainter stars within clusters I could not tell a difference between eyepieces. I did point at the bright and colorful double Albireo and could not detect a color difference between eyepieces on this bright pair either.

In conclusion, the William Optics 28mm UWAN is an excellent eyepiece for use in an f/7 refractor. It is significantly more money than the Baader 31mm, but in my opinion, the views are worth the difference. The Baader is more comfortable to use for a beginner or a member of the public at an outreach event, however, for the experienced amateur, the UWAN does manage to quickly get out of the way and let one observe. Unless something is radically different in my f/10 SCT, look for the Baader Hyperion on the used market soon.

Monsoon madness

2010-07-31T13:11:00.001-07:00

Fifteen hours ago we were in the midst of the best rainstorm we've had all year. We received about 2.25 inches of rain over two hours. This morning I was out observing the sun and it was so hot and humid I had to shower when finished. Now, we are about to get drenched with another very heavy downpour. For those of you who appreciate the desert (or Tucson...and I know you are out there somewhere), the normally dry Tanque Verde creek was flowing at 12 feet over night, and the Santa Cruz was at 15 feet and rising still this morning!

As mentioned, I was out observing during a brief window of sun this morning. I completed the sketch at 1628 UT (9:28 MST) using my Lunt Solar systems 60mm Hydrogen Alpha (Ha) telescope. The sun was a bit more active than yesterday with the sunspot in Active Region 11092 continuing to grow and darken. There is also a small bit of plage associated with a thin filament to the east of the spot. I assume it is part of the same active region, as it has persisted for a few days. Many limb prominences are present, as well as the two dark, snaking filaments slithering their way across the northern hemisphere. When I made the sketch, the sun was approximately 45 degrees above the eastern horizon and many high cirrus clouds were passing through the area. With the relative humidity around 60%, the seeing was rather mushy and it was hard to note fine details in the prominences.

I regularly share my observations on the Cloudy Nights Solar Observing Forum where many other observers from around the world also share their observations, sketches and images. P-M Hedén is a Swedish observer and photographer who maintains an excellent blog (for those of you fluent in Swedish!). He posted the image to the right on Cloudy Nights this morning. In his image east is to the left (my sketch has east to the right). Be sure and click on the image for the high resolution version. The images below are from the SolarMonitor.org website, and the Solar Dynamics Observatory and are both Ha images from today as well.

SolarMonitor.org

Solar Dynamics Observatory

Finally, for those of you who know the story behind the Lost Pleiad Observatory, today would have been our Lost Pleiad, Laura's 39th birthday. We miss you.

Solar observations

2010-07-29T13:06:00.006-07:00

Having a few days between returning from vacation (see the previous posts) and my return to work, I have had a chance to get back to some regular solar observing. The days are quite humid right now and the window to observe is quite brief. The overnight cloud cover seems to disappear about 8:00 AM and by 10:00 the atmosphere is already revving up for some afternoon showers. Or so we hope...

I observed the sun in hydrogen alpha both yesterday and today and was able to make sketches both days. You will see that the activity is very similar from yesterday to today, with the features moving a bit to the west from one day to the next. (Note that my North and West compass points are estimations, and not actual measurements).

July 28, 2010 ~ 1720 UT

July 29, 2010 ~ 1540 UT

Active Region (AR) 11089 is decaying as it approaches the southwestern limb, but we are fortunate to have AR 11092 coming around in the northeast. In fact, this region was just numbered today. Within 11092, a strong sunspot has developed, although observing in hydrogen alpha does not show the spot with any detail. There are many dark fibrils within and around the region and hopefully it will develop further. While there are a few dark filaments in the northern hemisphere, there is a surprising lack of prominences on the limb. The Picture to the right is from the Solar Dynamics Observatory's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly which is now posting real time solar data. The picture is reversed est to west from my sketches. In it, you can see the active regions and some of the filament structure that I observed in hydrogen alpha.

Jim Ferreira of Livermore, CA took this impressive photo sequence of an eruptive prominence just before sunset yesterday. Click on the image for the full size! Jim is an accomplished astrophotographer and I would recommend you visit his website by clicking on his name above. He uses Stellarvue telescopes for much of his work, which is the same company that produced my 90mm triplet refractor and two of my previous scopes.

Thunder Ridge Star Party ~ Observing Report

2010-07-27T15:56:00.003-07:00

During my trip to Colorado, I once again attended the Thunder Ridge Star Party (TRSP) hosted by my friend Phil Good. The TRSP-IV was held July 9 - 11 at Phil's ranch property, at approximately 9000' overlooking Eleven Mile State Park. The location is excellent for a star party given its elevation, clear southern horizon, and weather. While storms often roll through in the summer afternoons and evenings, the skies often clear quickly after sunset. Some of us who attended TRSP-III last year, are also aware of the kindred native spirits that frequent the ridge...

Which of these Bison is different?

...The area was a fruitful hunting ground for our ancestors, and evidence remains today on Thunder Ridge. A walk around the ridge will reveal signs of circles where ancient fires burned within teepees. Careful hunting will reward one with fragments of worked stone and an occasional arrowhead. During TRSP-III, several of us had left our tripods and/or scopes set up from one night to the next. During the intervening afternoon, a very strong, rogue gust of wind lifted every piece of equipment and threw them several feet. Miraculously, nothing was damaged...not a mount, not a scope, not even Phil's brand new TEC 180mm Flourite refractor, "Uncle Milt," sitting atop its mount. Clearly, the ancients were amateur astronomers and made sure to protect our gear.

This year, the skies were quite good on Friday night. By dark, I would estimate the seeing at 4/5 with occasional moments of 4.5/5. The transparency was near perfect, and while just a guess, I would estimate that the NELM at zenith was approximately 7. Frank Nadell (I think) had a sky quality meter and perhaps he can chime in with a more accurate figure. I had brought along my TEC-140 APO on my DM-6, as well as many charts and a lengthy observing list. I observed many objects over two nights, and below I'll overview the highlights.

First up was Pluto. I had observed all the planets except Pluto, when the International Astronomical Union (IAU) stepped in and demoted Pluto to the status of "Dwarf Planet." How this happened and why makes for interesting reading, and Universe Today sums it up nicely. Despite the arrogance of the IAU, I was still intent on seeing the little guy. To be honest, I was not sure that I would be able to pull it in with the 140mm of aperture, but I was bound and determined to give it the old college try. Circumstances during the TRSP were just right for a serious run at this faint speck, not only due to the dark skies but also due to the fact that Pluto was passing Barnard 92, a dark nebula. This would make its identification much simpler in that there were no stars to confuse it with, even though it is passing through the heart of the milky way in Sagittarius. To the left is the star chart from the July Sky and Telescope that I used to locate the star field and hunt for the object Pluto, formerly known as a planet. I inserted a 5mm Pentax XW (196X) and began to look for Pluto. After about 10 minutes I glimpsed a faint speck with averted vision. I looked away and looked back and there it was again. It was very difficult to hold in my sight, and I realized that the best way to confirm what I was seeing was to get a look through Franks 12 inch Dob. A few minutes later (and after getting my brain over the up-down reversal of the image in the dob) and I had confirmed that the tiny speck was indeed there! Back at the TEC 140 and little Pluto was still extremely difficult to hold in view. At a visual magnitude of 14, this was quite a catch in the TEC 140! Pluto was approximately 30.88 AU distant, which equates to about 257 light minutes!

After the hard work observing Pluto, I was ready for some easier targets. I inserted a 20mm Nagler (49X) and headed over to NGC 6514, the Trifid Nebula, M20. The view was dramatic. Not only were the dust lanes obvious, but the definition on the edges of the lanes was jaw dropping. There was a definite structure to the lanes...I had never seen the nebula as well. Indeed, even the blue reflection nebulosity alongside the Trifid (to the right in the image) was clearly visible in the eyepiece. This was quite a treat and a testament to the skies.

At this point, I had not even considered my observing list, so I spent the rest of the first evening observing many of the other famous Messier objects in the summer sky such as globular clusters M13 and M22, The Swan Nebula (M17), and the great Andromeda Galaxy, M31. I observed at least a dozen other globular clusters in and around the Sagittarius teapot that I found simply by panning the scope around. The wide-field views were so breathtaking that I was not concerned with getting out the atlas to identify the objects.

I was beginning to get sleepy but decided that since I had visited Pluto earlier (and Saturn before it set), I should finish up the other outer planets that were now in the sky...namely Uranus, Neptune and Jupiter. The seeing was deteriorating and Jupiter was difficult at high power. We were treated to a view of a moon transit, although I do not recall which moon it was. At about 2:30 AM it was time to hit the sack.

Day two dawned bright and clear and after a good brunch in nearby Hartsel, we (Ian, my niece Cierra, and I) joined Frank and his son Henry on a day trip to find some good bouldering near the 11 mile reservoir. We had fun scrambling around, eating ice cream, and taking in the views before heading back to Phil's famous "surf-n-turf" BBQ and a second night of observing.

The weather was not shaping up to be as good as the previous night with heavy cloud cover blanketing the area throughout dinner...yet, as often happens at Thunder Ridge, the skies completely cleared within an hour after sunset. Despite seeing conditions that were just average, I still had an observing list of deep sky objects that I wanted to make some headway on. Fortunately, deep sky targets do not suffer from atmospheric turbulence at the level of planets or close double stars. Faint fuzzy objects, remain faint fuzzy objects in most conditions. I had compiled a list of objects from Sue French's columns in the June and July issues of Sky and Telescope magazine. She is an excellent observer and her columns are chock full of information and observing ideas. In fact, they are my favorite feature of the magazine. Following are highlights from my notes from night two:

NGC 6210 - The Turtle Nebula in Hercules. At 3600 light years this planetary nebula is a smooth elliptical shaped nebula with an extremely faint halo.

NGC 6400 - Open cluster in Scorpius. An approximately 9th magnitude cluster with many faint stars ranging from magnitude 10 to 12. A little lost in the background. Distance of 3100 light years.

NGC 6441 - Globular cluster in Scorpius. This one looks familiar as I visited it last night! It sits alongside the golden star G Scorpii. It is small and difficult to resolve but makes an attractive pairing with 'G'. Interestingly, this is one of only four known globular clusters that houses a planetary nebula...and no, I did not see the planetary!

NGC 6302 - The Bug Nebula in Scorpius. Sometimes called the butterfly nebula. This is a small planetary nebula sporting a fairly bright core with extensions that are faint yet quite long. Distance is 2000 light years.

NGC 6281 - Open cluster in Scorpius. Best at low power, this is a run of the mill open cluster. Better looking in the finder scope!

NGC 6569 & NGC 6558- Globular Clusters in Sagittarius. At 49X (20mm Nagler), these clusters fit in the same field of view in the TEC 140. Surrounded by many stars, these clusters appear to float in the froth of the ~~milk shake~~, I mean milky way...just seeing if you are still paying attention! Both of these clusters can be partially resolved at high power.

NGC 6624 - Globular Cluster in Sagittarius. Very nice at both low and high power. At low power there is a long chain of about 12 magnitude 10 stars that form a line running right into the clusters northern side. At high power the cluster displays a bright condensed nucleus and is partially resolved.

NGC 6652 - Globular Cluster in Sagittarius. This cluster is parked about 1 degree from M69 and shares the low power field of view. It is a nice paring and a fitting way to end the second night!

Darren and Burton

All in all, this was the best TRSP I have attended- not only was the observing first rate, but the company was as well! I got to see some old friends like Jim and Jeannette, Frank and Henry, and Benton, but I made some new ones like Scott, Rebekah and Aaron; Patricia; and Darren and and his dad Burton who drove from Canada. For those of you who don't know, my trip to Colorado each year is a father-son trip that I do with Ian, and it was great to see Darren and his dad on a father-son trip. I hope that when Ian is in his 40's he still wants to travel with me. As always, Phil is the ultimate host...it would not happen without him...who knows maybe I'll have a report on TRSP-V next July...

Scott, Benton, Darren

Phil, Patricia, and...Darren!

Back in the Old Pueblo ~ Summer 2010

2010-07-26T13:57:00.001-07:00

As July winds down, Ian and I have returned from our annual summer camping trip to Colorado. This year we we were fortunate to have Cierra, my niece and Ian's cousin, along on our adventure. There is a slideshow at the bottom of this post that takes you through about a hundred photos from our two week trip.

We began the trip by attending the Thunder Ridge Star Party, near Eleven Mile State Park, in Park County, Colorado. This is a small star party attended by a group of astronomers that met through the Yahoo Stellarvue Users Group. While there were many Stellarvue scopes present, I had brought along my TEC 140 as well as my Lunt Solar Systems 60mm Hydrogen Alpha scope. I will detail my observations from the star party in the next post. The pictures below are of the kids at 11 mile reservoir, as well as some Bison in the area (and see if you can tell which Bison is different from the others!)

Following the star party, we headed a bit south to Cutty's RV Resort. Ian really likes Cutty's as it is a very pretty camp spot on Hayden Creek in Coaldale, CO. I like it as it gives me a chance to re-charge the pop-up tent trailer battery and do some laundry! This location also served as our jumping off point for a very pretty afternoon trail ride along the base of Mt. Princeton. With Ian riding Toy, Cierra riding Echo, and me chilling on Dan, we experienced phenomenal views of Mt. Princeton and the chalk cliffs.

Mt. Lincoln Summit!

Mt. Cameron Summit!

Next stop was the Pine Cove Campground on Lake Dillon near Frisco, CO. This campsite served as base camp for canoeing, motor boating and hiking two 14,000+ foot peaks! Last year Ian and I hiked Mount Democrat (14,148 ft) and this year we returned to the Mosquito Range to attempt both Mount Cameron (14,238 ft) and Mount Lincoln (14,286 ft). Climbing 14'ers is serious business and the kids were really impressive as we summited both peaks! These peaks are reached from the Kite Lake trailhead near the town of Alma, CO, and Mount Lincoln is the 8th highest peak in CO. Next year we are going to return to this area and attempt the "Decalibron" which is a loop trail that takes one to the summits of Mount Democrat, Mount Cameron, Mount Lincoln and Mount Bross...not for the faint of heart!

Of course, while the assault on the 14'ers was fun, the kids really liked being on the water. We went canoeing around some of the islands in the Dillon Reservoir and saw an osprey nest. We also went motor boating one day and the kids really enjoyed bouncing around the waves which were being whipped up by afternoon winds. There are worse ways to spend one's days...

Following these activities, we drove over to Utah and camped with my best friend from childhood Blake, and his daughter Samantha on the west fork of Huntington Creek in the Manti-La Sal National Forest of Utah. This area was quite beautiful with towering spruce trees and the creek just outside the tent. It was great to catch up with Blake and watch the kids play in the water. After a couple days camping we headed north to Salt Lake to get 'citified' and spend more time with Blake, Samantha, and his spouse Holly. Despite the many things to be done in SLC, Ian and Cierra really enjoyed just hanging out at the house and feeding the chickens! All in all we had a great visit with them...unfortunately we had to head back to Tucson as work and school are rapidly approaching!

Where am I?

2010-07-19T14:38:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note for the few of you that read the blog....I am still around and still doing some astronomy! I have been travelling the country since late June visiting family in North Carolina (see previous post), camping and attending the Thunder Ridge Star party in Colorado, as well as camping and visiting a childhood friend in Utah. I have my scopes with me, and upon my return to Tucson at the end of July I will post a full report of the trip and astronomical observations...and I will get back to the Lost Pleiad Observatory Blog's regularly scheduled programming. Until then- Stay thirsty my friends!