Super Blue Lunar Eclipse

Living here in the USA, things have been a bit surreal over the past year.  As the Great Orange One (GOO) that occupies the office reserved for President has done his best to divide our citizenry and alienate us from the rest of the conscious world, it is sometimes difficult to remain optimistic about our future.  Fortunately, there are events that remind us of our place in the universe; and despite the deep divisions that are being cultivated by the GOO, there are greater forces at work that serve to unite us here on Earth.  There is something about seeing the solar system in motion in a way that we do not witness frequently, that seems to recharge my desire to make the world a better place.

Early this morning we were treated to a widely publicized total Lunar Eclipse.  This eclipse occurred on the second full moon within a calendar month (a "Blue" moon), and also at the time of perigee, when the moon is at the closest point in its elliptical orbit around the Earth (the "Super" moon).  The occurrence of a "Super Blue Lunar Eclipse" is indeed rare, with the last one occurring in 1866, one hundred and fifty two years ago! I observed the eclipse from work, (The Mount Lemmon SkyCenter) where we were providing a live stream of the eclipse for NASA.

The image at left was taken with my Canon 6D and a 70-200mm lens set to 100mm, just before sunrise.  You can see the eclipsed moon hanging in the dawn sky with Picacho peak in the distance at lower right (along with I-10 traffic just in front of it).



Below is a collage of some of the images I captured during the eclipse, using my Canon 6D and my Stellarvue 90mm refractor.  Remember to click to enlarge (perhaps twice if your browser automatically resizes images to fit the window)

So you missed the eclipse and are wondering when the next lunar eclipse is here in AZ? The next eclipse in Tucson will be on January 20, 2019 starting at 7:36 PM local time.

Finally, my friend Roger who observed and photographed the eclipse with me, had a little fun with my image above...

Having fun at work

I really do have a great job-  I always tell folks that somehow I married a great hobby with a lot of administrative experience at the University...and now I get to worry about the budget and work with telescopes at the same time!  Two weeks ago we held two first ever events at the SkyCenter- a DSLR milky way and star trail workshop and a Messier Marathon.   Here is a single shot of the summit as the milky way was rising on March 25th-

While I had to work and did not 'participate' in either event, I did manage to squeeze off a few pictures of my own during the night- First, this is a single 20 second exposure of M 13, the Hercules globular cluster, taken through the 24" Phillips telescope using my Canon 6D.  I was impressed with the image out of the camera, so I decided to try and process it a little using Photoshop...and while I know the color of the stars is a little saturated, I still like the result.

In addition, I took a 30 second exposure of the M 57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra.  The image below is a 100% crop, and my colleague (and professional photographer) Sean Parker worked the processing a bit to bring out the galaxy (IC 1296) nearby the ring...but the ring itself is very much what the Canon delivered.

Final image from the weekend, is an exposure I took inside the dome of the 32" Schulman Telescope during a break in the Messier Marathon while guests were waiting for the summer constellations to rise a little higher.  It seems bright in the dome, but consider all the lighting is coming from red led lights that illuminate the steps leading into the dome!

Hey, 2 blog posts in two weeks!

Transit of Mercury

Yesterday saw the planet Mercury transit the face of the Sun from our unique perspective here on earth.  Slightly more common than a Venus transit which will not happen again in our lifetimes (see this post and this one as well), Mercury transits the Sun 12 or 13 times each century, always in May or November.  The apparent size of Mercury is rather small against the Sun, approximately 1/5 that of Venus.

We had a few programs running simultaneously yesterday for the transit-  up at the summit of Mount Lemmon the SkyCenter hosted a special program for visitors, and we also conducted an outreach event for students at Canyon View Elementary school.  The Sky School was hosting a group of 5th graders from Canyon View at our mountain based program, where I was operating the telescopes.  I set up at the Babad Do'Ag pullout approximately 2.5 miles up the Catalina Highway where we begin our Sky School programs with an exploration of the concept of a Sky Island.  Mercury began its transit prior to local sunrise and the transit is approximately a 7 hour event. I was all set by 5:30 AM and enjoyed watching the shadow profile of the Santa Catalina Mountains slowly creep across the Tucson basin as the Sun rose.  At left is the Coronado 90mm Hydrogen Alpha telescope we used for visual observation, as well as my 90mm Stellarvue triplet, 2x barlow and Canon 6D that I used to take pictures of the transit.  (Many folks ask about utility of the pink foam...it is simply to shade my camera in the Sun!)

Here are a few of the excited 5th graders observing the transit, I enjoyed the amazement of the student in the grey and red shirt exclaiming "It's so small!!"

I took a large number of images (approximately every 10 minutes until it was over) and processing them will require some time.  I did process one from near mid-transit and it is presented below.  As always, click the image to enlarge it and if your browser automatically re-sizes images you may need to click it again.

So there you have it- a fun and science filled day sharing the wonders of our Solar System with a group of our future scientists and leaders!

More proof I am not an astrophotographer

I think I need to make a T-shirt that says "I am not an astrophotographer" mostly to poke fun at myself.  I have no desire to devote time to either data acquisition (hours per image) or learning the processing skills to create beautiful images of space (hundreds of hours learning, several hours for each image).  Yet, for some reason, every few months I go through a phase where I stick a camera into a telescope and take some pictures to try and capture something pretty.

I stretch the contrast, try and clean up the noise a little, and assuming I did a decent job with focus call it a day.  Then, I proceed to look at my pictures and realizing that I have the potential to do better I say to myself "Self, you need to learn how to this properly."  I start to play around with photoshop, read about various techniques online and quickly retreat from the notion that I will be furthering my skills in astrophotography.  Time goes by and soon it is "rinse and repeat."  I suspect the truth is that I like taking pictures through a telescope, but am not going to devote myself to it.  The lesson of course is to be satisfied with the process and results and not compare them to the many fantastic images taken by my friends and others on the internet.

Without further ado, more proof that I am not an astrophotographer.  Three more pictures from my recent time on Mount Lemmon (see the previous post).  Again, all of these images were taken with my Canon 6D through a 100mm Sky Watcher Esprit triplet refractor, and all are single exposures.

M31, M32, M110 - The Andromeda Galaxy and companions

M45 - The Pleiades

M42 - The Orion Nebula and NGC 1977 the Running Man Nebula (at top)

A shadow grows in the east

A shout out to Lady Galadriel for the reference in my post title.  Tuesday night I was up at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter (where I am the Director) assisting some folks with a filming project and took the image below at sunset. Watching the shadow of Mount Lemmon move across the San Pedro River Valley as the sun sets and then observing the shadow rise into the atmosphere is one of my favorite phenomenon to witness.  Not only are the views singularly beautiful and serene from the summit, but with a clear atmosphere the Belt of Venus is remarkably vivid.   The picture below was taken with my Canon 6d and 24-105mm lens at the 105mm setting.  It is a handheld shot with an exposure of 1/60 of a second, ISO 200, f/5.6

It seems that throughout the year as the azimuth of the the sunset varies, the apparent shape of the mountains shadow changes slightly due to the perspective from which it is illuminated.  I have noticed these subtle changes before, yet on Tuesday night the shadow seemed markedly pointed and picturesque.  Other times during the year the shadow seems to be more rounded.  For fun I may try and take pictures from this same spot throughout the year and see how much the shadow varies or if it is all my imagination.  (Perhaps I am attributing too much to perspective and not enough to atmospheric conditions).  One final note about this image-  If you enlarge it, you can see the LBT on Mount Graham approximately 60 miles to the East.  It is the white spot on the ridge, just above the snowy area on the right side of Mount Lemmon's shadow.

I spent a few hours observing through the Phillips 24" telescope with the guys I was helping out.  Riding atop the Phillips Telescope is a Sky Watcher 100ed f/5.5 triplet refractor that provides very nice wide-field views to our guests.  I am certainly no astrophotographer, but thought it would be fun to try and take a picture through the telescope.  Below is a single 30 second shot (ISO 6400) of the double cluster (NGC 884 and 869) taken through the telescope.  Be sure to enlarge it to its full size.

Overall it was a beautiful (and cold!!) night on the mountain, one that reignited my passion for observing.

Partial Solar Eclipse

Last Thursday we witnessed a partial solar eclipse of the Sun- and for some reason this particular eclipse did not grab the attention of the media the way that the past few have.  It seemed that there were far more stories in the popular media for the lunar eclipse a couple weeks ago than for this event, despite the lunar eclipse happening in the middle of the night and the solar eclipse happening in mid-afternoon.  I was up at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter with my colleagues (we streamed the eclipse live) and took the opportunity to take some images of the eclipse of my own.

I was using my Stellarvue 90mm triplet refractor with a Lunt Solar Systems Herschel Prism and my Canon T2i.  All the images were taken at 1/4000 of a second, ISO 100 and were shot in raw format.  I was shooting at a very high shutter speed in order to try and minimize the effects of atmospheric turbulence in my images.  I later used photoshop to increase the exposure value and stretch the contrast of the images.  Overall, the seeing conditions ranged from good to spectacular during the first part of the eclipse, but as mid-eclipse approached the conditions deteriorated slightly.  Below are a few of the best images that I captured, and as always, click to enlarge.

Start of Eclipse

Sharpest of my images, quite happy with this one!

Near greatest eclipse

A nice view after maximum eclipse, atmosphere not as stable

EDIT: The large sunspot region on the face of the Sun during the eclipse, Active Region 12192, has produced (as of yesterday) 9 X-class flares and is obviously quite large.  "How large" you are wondering?...well the blog of the SDO mission has published an interesting post comparing AR 12192 to previous spots.  If you look at the graph they provide you will see that this is the largest spot region (by area) in the past two solar cycles!  They report that it is the 33rd largest on record, and within the top .01% of all spots.  Pretty impressive stuff!

We were rather lucky to have this spot during the eclipse, and even luckier that it was in the Sun's southern hemisphere and not eclipsed by the moon, making for some pretty pictures.  Looking forward to the August 2017 Total Eclipse!

School is back in session

The Sky School that is.  This weekend is our annual training workshop for the graduate student fellows who serve as science instructors at our immersive, residential UA Sky School.  This year we have an outstanding group of 8 graduate fellows who will spend the academic year leading programs at the beautiful campus of the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter.  Below is an image of the group at Windy Point on the Catalina Highway.

As we hiked through the Lemmon Rock and Meadow Loop trails in the afternoon we were treated to some spectacular views of isolated thunderstorms moving across the Tucson valley.  Below is an image of one of these downdrafts.

Final image from the day is a Red Tailed Hawk that spent a few minutes checking us out during our tree identification lessons.  In case you are curious, he is sitting in a Ponderosa Pine, about 20 feet off the ground.  Click the image (or any of the others) to enlarge.

Passages of time

Let's just put it out there up front:  Today, is my 45th birthday.  This week I am at the summit of Mount Lemmon as we host students from Altar Valley middle school at our UA Sky School.  I posted awhile back about the development of the Sky School here and I can not emphasize enough how rewarding this aspect of my job is.  Last week I was honored to accompany Sky School co-founder Ben Blonder as we traveled to the White House where he was honored as a White House Champion of Change in Environmental Conservation Leadership for his vision and work at developing the Sky School.  Above left is an image of one of the students taking a tree ring sample this morning as part of her groups inquiry project to explore the possible relationship between tree growth rates and density.

So while I celebrate the passage of 45 years (gulp) of my life and marvel at how quickly time seems to pass as I grow older, I am fortunate to be spending this time at the Sky School, with incredible colleagues, public school students, friends, and even my dearest Beth and Ian who drove up to celebrate.  As is my custom, I like to mark significant events with astronomical observations, and I took a couple minutes early this morning to set up a solar telescope and take an image.  I was using a 90mm Coronado Hydrogen Alpha Telescope at the summit of Mount Lemmon, and despite steady breezes and an encroaching cold front managed a decent picture.

And with that, time for some cake!

Photo opportunities

One of the benefits of working at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, is the opportunity to see many things that one would not normally witness down in the city, or even at lower elevations.  Yesterday I was at the Mount Lemmon summit all day and took a few pictures of some of the sights-  I'll present them here in chronological order.  First up is a picture of what I believe is a Blackhawk helicopter that made several passes and landings at our site during the early afternoon.  We have a helipad on site (think wildfire fighting, mountain rescue, etc) and it is likely that the pilot and crew thought our mountaintop site would make for a nice training location.

As the Sun was beginning to head toward the horizon, I took the image below looking east toward the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT).  While at least a 4 hour drive from the summit of Mount Lemmon, it is likely only 75-80 miles away as the crow flies. In addition to revealing beautiful colors on the intervening landscape, the low angle of the Sun illuminated the dome nicely and you can see it as the little white rectangle at the center of the image.

This is a full resolution crop of the center, and you can make out the slit in the center which opens to reveal the telescope.

Finally, we are often treated to fantastic sunsets and last night was no exception.  Quite often we can see the green rim of the Sun and I am always trying to take a picture of it.  I managed to capture one of my better ones last night, mostly due to the fact that it was one of the strongest I have seen in some time.  While viewing this phenomenon typically requires some magnification, last nights green rim was exceptionally vivid.

UA Science: Sky School!

Having recently changed career paths into the Department of Astronomy at the University of Arizona, I am often asked by friends and relatives how it is working out.  Sometimes the question is straightforward, other times the question comes from a skeptical place and may be a projection of the other persons own fears of change (much more frequent from long time UA colleagues).  I generally give a short answer to the effect that I could not be happier with my new co-workers and that in particular, the projects I am working on are quite challenging and engaging.

One of these projects is now among the most rewarding things I have ever done- establishing the UA Science: Sky School.  I never would have had the opportunity if not for the ideas, hard work and dedication of my colleague and friend, Ben Blonder.  Ben envisioned a residential science school operated by the University, and together we have launched this new program.  In addition to Ben, I am very fortunate to be working with Pacifica Sommers and Rebecca Lipson who also maintain the vision and dedication to the project.  Pacifica , a PhD candidate in ecology and evolutionary biology and a NASA graduate Space Grant Fellow, and Rebecca, a highly regarded middle school science teacher have helped us to create a truly world-class educational experience.  I could go on and on, but this video explains things nicely.

Sunsets from the summit of Mt. Lemmon

Working as I do at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, I am often treated to sunset from the 9157 foot summit of Mt. Lemmon.  Whether it is with our guests looking for the Sun's Green Rim or simply at the end of a day doing other work it remains a special place and special time.  Here are a few of the various sunset images that I have taken over the past year.  Remember you can click each image to enlarge it.

Guests enjoying the late season snow while preparing to view the Green Rim

Beautiful Sunset portending a very stable evening of observation

Sun setting into a layer of dust in the valley

Sun having dipped below the dust layer

The shadow of Mount Lemmon rising in the east (Sun is behind me)

A view of Kitt Peak National Observatory

Shafts of light through a late summer monsoon

And of course, my favorite sunset image of the past year is the image below, taken during the June 2012 Transit of Venus.  It was taken through my TEC 140 with a Herschel Prism and shows quite a bit of atmospheric distortion...Obviously, Venus is the blob at lower left, just touching the horizon.  This is my favorite as not only had I purchased my first DSLR the week ahead of the transit, but this event will not repeated for anyone alive today.

2012 Transit of Venus Sunset

Youth Programs at the SkyCenter

Final post in my run of work related posts...but at least now when someone in my family asks "what is it exactly that you do?" I can point them to the blog...

Over the past two months I have been very fortunate to be working alongside NASA Space Grant Graduate Fellow, Pacifica Sommers, as she has developed broad based overnight science trips up Mt. Lemmon.  These trips have culminated in an overnight stay at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter where the students have learned how to operate the 20 inch Jamieson Telescope at the mountains summit. 

While our public observing programs continue to flourish and grow, these educational trips are a new facet of our programming, and already one of the most rewarding.  Feedback from students and teachers that have come on these trips has been excellent and we have already learned many lessons as to what works and what does not work with a bunch of middle school students.

While I am posting a few images below, I encourage you to read the UA News article that goes into some depth about these trips.

Discovery story of Comet P/2012 T7 (Vorobjov)

This is the second of three posts that relate to my work at the University of Arizona's Mount Lemmon SkyCenter.  In an earlier post I mentioned that a comet had been discovered using the 32-inch Schulman telescope at the SkyCenter and now UA News has written a piece that details the partnerships and circumstances that led to the discovery.  It was gratifying to have this comet discovered at the SkyCenter as this demonstrates exactly the type of public access that was envisioned when funds for the telescope were generously provided to the University by the Schulman's Foundation.

Read the UA News Story by following this link.

Next up...coverage of our pilot youth programs...

Adam Block and the Cosmic Canvas

Lots of exciting news coming out of the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter this week-  so prepare for a small run of blog posts regrading my day job.  First off, Adam Block who manages our public observing programs received a distinguished award this past weekend for his significant contributions in astrophotography and astronomical outreach.  The Hubble Award is presented annually at the Advanced Imaging Conference and everyone that knows Adam understands how deserving he is of this achievement award.  You can read a nice story about the award and Adam on the University of Arizona News Website by clicking the link below.

Adam Block and the Cosmic Canvas | UANews:

Next up tomorrow, a detailed story regarding the partnership that led to the discovery of Comet  P/2012 T7 (Vorobjov) at the SkyCenter last week (original post on this comet here).

Comet Discovered at SkyCenter!

Most of you know that I work with the Mount Lemmon Skycenter at the University of Arizona, and this week we had a significant first!  A comet was discovered by an observer using our 32 inch Schulman telescope remotely.  Mr. Tomas Vorobjov discovered what is now known as Comet Vorobjov last Sunday night while acquiring data searching for Near Earth Objects. Mr. Vorobjov directs the Data Reduction Team of the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC) project, and discovered the comet in data he acquired through work with IASC.   The comet was officially recognized, designated, and named Thursday afternoon through the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, as P/2012 T7 (Vorobjov).

At left is the sequence of discovery images acquired remotely, in partnership with the Sierra Stars Observing Network (SSON).  Ignoring the blue and green circled objects, the comet can be seen moving near the center of the image and a faint tail can be seen moving along with the comet on its right side.  As I mentioned, this is significant for us as we work in partnership with SSON to make the .8 meter (32 inch) Schulman Telescope available for remote use to astronomers, educators and citizen scientists world-wide.  This level of public access to the Schulman Telescope is central to our mission of education and public outreach.  This is the first comet discovered by Mr. Vorobjov, as well as the first comet discovered by observers using the Schulman Telescope.  Yippee!

Live from Mount Lemmon...

...It's Saturday night!  I have not written much lately at all about my job as Director of the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, however, we are embarking on an exciting project this Saturday night.  We are fortunate to have a graduate NASA Space Grant Fellow with us this year, who has partnered with the Tucson chapter of Inner City Outings (ICO) to pilot overnight youth trips up Mount Lemmon.  These trips are designed to take advantage of the unique Sky Island environment and expose youth to science curriculum in the natural world.  ICO works primarily with under-served and refugee youth, and is a very impressive volunteer run organization. The Mount Lemmon SkyCenter is at its heart an astronomical facility and these trips will culminate with the students making astronomical observations.  Many folks within Steward Observatory have been working to assist us as we prepare for this endeavor.  Staff been hard at work updating technology as well as fine tuning the 20 inch Jamieson Telescope for use with school groups.  I will likely post a report following the weekend, but here are some pictures of the facilities that I took last night with my Canon T2i.  What 8th grader would not want to play with us?!?  Click the images to enlarge them.

Jamieson dome

Jamieson cooling down

Sunset!

 60-inch preparing for work with Catalina SkySurvey