The UA Science: Sky School

One of the most satisfying parts of my job as Director of the Mount Lemmon Sky Center has been working to develop the UA Science: Sky School, housed at the SkyCenter campus.  It has been transformational for me, having the opportunity to work alongside some amazing graduate students as we create a truly unique and immersive science school.  Each time we have a public school visit I am reminded why I work in higher education, at a public university.

This week, Arizona Public Media produced a piece for the TV show 'Arizona Illustrated Science', which I have embedded below.  The spot does a nice job capturing the experience from the perspective of the students, their science teacher, and our graduate student staff.  I have been receiving a lot of personal accolades since this aired, and the truth is that our success results primarily from the remarkable core team of individuals who are giving of their time, energy and hearts to our program.  Ben Blonder, Rebecca Lipson, Pacifica Sommers...all are amazing, creative and visionary.

Clicking on Pacifica or Ben's names above will take you to their blogs, which are well worth a visit.  On her blog, Pacifica provided some insight into her role in the Arizona Illustrated piece, stating "I find it easy to talk about the UA Sky School with the media because it is important and powerful. That power comes from reality and rigor. This is not nature camp or space camp. The instructors are prepared with knowledge about unique opportunities to emphasize important scientific standards and the resources to investigate them, but our activities are not simulated and our lessons are not canned. Students on the four day stays especially interact with actual scientists, using actual mountains and plants and telescopes, to do actual original research. The potential to have an epic experience in scientific discovery or outdoor adventure is tangible."

Watch the video- it speaks for itself.  (You can read the accompanying web story here.)

Lifting Prominence

If you have been following the weather here in Tucson, or perhaps watched the roasted Duck that the Arizona Wildcats football team served up yesterday afternoon (Bear Down!), you know that we have had record November rainfall here in the naked pueblo.  As the low pressure system loses its local organization and begins to move out we are left with partly cloudy and fairly unstable skies.  Still, I set up my 60mm HA solar telescope to take a look at the Sun between clouds this afternoon and was delighted to see some nice limb activity.  As active region 11899 departs, it is putting on a farewell show- and the prominence activity on the limb is the result.  After a few minutes observing and allowing the telescope to reach thermal equilibrium, I attached the ASI camera and took a 30 second avi of the Sun.  Given the lack of stability, I only used 300 frames (out of about 1000) and stacked them to get the image below.  It is at the full resolution of the camera and slightly reduced in size for aesthetics.  In addition, I took the liberty again of brightening up the prominences in order to show the one that is lifting off.  It is slightly over-sharpened, I think, but given the low quality of the original data, no complaints.

And just for fun, here is the same image inverted:

Here is a similar image, binned 2X2, with less attention to the prominences:

Solar improvements

This weekend is the 2nd annual Arizona Science and Astronomy Expo at the TCC.  This event which features speakers and vendors from around the world is essentially a playground for amateur astronomers. The Mount Lemmon SkyCenter has a booth and after spending the morning publicizing our activities I spent the afternoon networking with vendors and visiting with old friends.  At left is my colleague Dr. Maria Perreira and I in our booth preparing for the expo opening.


While a boy can dream (see the beautiful TEC 180 on an Italian Mount at right), one of the accessories that I have had my eye on for some time was a side-by-side dovetail system which would allow me to use two telescopes at once.  This is very useful in solar outreach as I can set up both my hydrogen alpha and white light telescopes at the same time.  In addition, it would allow me to mount both my 12 inch SCT and small 90mm refractor at the same time for night use.  I spoke with Anthony Davoli from ADM Accessories, who had been set up next to us last year and after some deliberation took the plunge on a very nice system.  Not only does it allow for side-by-side mounting, but one of the saddles is adjustable in altitude and azimuth allowing for precise alignment between instruments.  I spent some time figuring out how to balance this set up and was able to successfully utilize both solar telescopes this morning.

Of course, I also spent some time taking some pictures of the Sun through both telescopes.  Seeing conditions were about average and the Sun is putting on quite a show right now.  One of the next items I would like to find is a reducer of some sort that would allow me to fit the entire solar disc on the chip of the ASI120MC camera.

First up, the white light...click the images to enlarge them to full size.

The image below was taken at the camera's full resolution (the one above was binned 2x2) and you can see that it suffered a bit from the atmosphere.  However, it does show the very large spot quite well, including some detail within the umbra.

Next, the Hydrogen Alpha...The image is binned 2x2 and I played around with brightness and contrast of the prominences to try and bring them out a little.  These are features that are much fainter than the Solar disc and I am impressed that the camera is capturing them at all with the settings I am using to capture the hydrogen alpha detail in the chromosphere.  Again, click the image for full size.

Veterans Day Solar Images

The image below was captured at 8:54 AM local time (1554 UT) this morning.  Seeing conditions were slightly below average with the limb of the Sun in constant motion.  At about 30 frames per second I am able to negate the seeing conditions somewhat, however, compared to the images I captured on November 8th when the seeing was quite good, I am able to appreciate the difference on a day like today.  This is a stack of 250 frames out off 1000, binned 2x2, processed in Registax.  Using Photoshop I also increased the exposure setting for the prominences on the upper limb of the Sun...it resulted in a cool look although the process did introduce some brightening artifacts on the limb.

The image below was taken at the full resolution of the little ZWO camera, 1280x960.  Whenever I try this it seems that the resulting image has a grid pattern that is difficult to remove in processing.  In addition, stacking a good number of frames results in artifacts that make the image appear as if it were a completed jigsaw puzzle.  Focus was a little off, and it was taken a few minutes earlier than the above image, so perhaps the atmosphere steadied a bit for the later capture.  In any event, here you have it-

November 10th Sun

Clouds are coming fast this morning at the Lost Pleiad Observatory.  Fortunately one of the benefits of having things set up semi-permanently is that mount, telescope, and camera are ready to go at a moments notice...just like I used to be.  After last nights marathon observing session which lasted until nearly 3 AM I had a bit late of a start for solar observing, however, seeing conditions still seemed slightly above average.  Generally, I find that the best atmospheric conditions for observing the Sun are between 90 and 120 minutes after Sunrise.  Some days the window lasts a bit longer, but it rarely starts earlier due to the low Sun angle.

The two images below were taken through my 90mm Stellarvue f/6.3 triplet with  Lunt Solar Systems Herschel Prism and a polarizing filter.  Naturally, the camera is the same one I have been playing with, the ASI120MC.  The images were taken without regard for the directional orientation of the Sun.  If you imagine the Sun as a clock face, South is actually at about 10 O'clock; however, I like the composition better with the spots at an angle and the large group at the upper right.  The midpoint of the exposure was at 11:05 AM MST (1805 UT).

The large spot group at upper right is NOAA Active Region (AR) 11890 which has been spewing out very strong X-class flares over the past few days.  Often individuals want to know the size of spots relative to the Earth- and in fact we could line up about 110 Earths across the approximately 1 million mile solar diameter.  So clearly the large spot within 11890 is much larger than the Earth.  In fact, AR 11893 which is the home of the second largest current spot group at lower left also contains a spot that is much larger than the Earth.  These spots (while still quite hot) are relatively cooler regions in the solar atmosphere which is why they appear darker.  They are areas of intense magnetic activity, however, and the sheer size of 11890 is an indication to keep an eye out for flaring activity.  The image below was taken with a 2x barlow lens immediately after the above image, at 11:13 MST (1813 UT).  Both of these images are stacks of approximately 500 of 1500 individual frames processed in the freeware program Registax and adjusted a little in Photoshop.  I am pretty unhappy with the processing, but that is what staying up late will do to me the next morning....

Jupiter's bland side

I am a glutton for punishment.  Not only did I watch/listen to the entire UA vs. UCLA football game last night, I stayed up until nearly 3 AM to take an image of Jupiter and also to observe Comet Lovejoy (C/2013 R1).  The comet is fantastic right now sporting a very large coma and a condensed nucleus.  It is a much better target than ISON, despite the apparent lack of a tail.  The comet is high enough over the eastern horizon by about 1 AM to start observing, although as it rises higher there is less atmospheric extinction and it appears brighter.

Jupiter on the other hand was much less forgiving than the comet last night.  Comets are inherently fuzzy objects and one does not notice the turbulent seeing conditions as readily.  Point the telescope at Jupiter and all of a sudden it looks like a living and breathing monster of a planet.  The image below is a stack of only 200 frames (out of 1800!) aligned, stacked and processed in Registax.  Left to right, the moons are Europa and Io.  According to Firecapture (freeware used for image acquisition), the ephemerides are:

Diameter=42.44"
Magnitude=-2.45
CMI=82.5° CMII=316.8° CMIII=107.5°  (during mid of capture)

The image was taken through my TEC 140 with a 2x Barlow and the ZWO ASI120MC camera.

Solar images in Hydrogen Alpha and White Light

Not a lot of time to spin words today as I am about to head off to work...but I had a bit of time this morning to capture the Sun not only in Hydrogen Alpha, but also in white light.  I am pretty happy with the images and am feeling like I make a little bit of progress each time I use the camera.  First off, some of the HA images...this first one I shot to try and show off the "filaprom" at the top...it had a 3D look visually.

This next image may be my best effort yet...processing skills limited me far more than the data.  Incidentally, the active region near the center of the Sun has been spitting X class flares, including one around 9 PM last night.

For white light, I captured the image through my Stellarvue 90mm triplet apo and a Lunt Herschel Prism, using a polarizing filter.  This is my first successful white light image:

Having fun now!