Photographing a Comet: C/2023 E3

 

In early 2023, comet C/2023 E3 became a celebrity in the sky.   It was a green jewel above us with a tail that changed throughout its journey around the sun.   The comet made it closest approach to the Sun on January 12, 2023 and then reached its closest point to Earth on February 1, 2023.   In early March, I tried to snap a photo of this comet before it left our view for generations to come.  

This first photo is only 4 minutes of exposure time.   Essentially it is just one shot of the comet so we can see the comet with the stars in background.  You can see how green this comet is!  

I wanted to try and get the tail of this comet with a bit more clarity, so the next picture is a stack of  50 two minute exposures.  Since the comet is moving so fast through space, when I stack these 50 photos into one final shot, the stars turn into lines.   In this photo you can see a second tail extending from the comet as well as a hint of the star trails during the 1 hour and 40 minutes of exposure to obtain the shot.

The equipment and software that I used to process this photo are below

Until the next comet graces our sky, this was a fun one to capture. 

Astrophotography: The Outer Limits Galaxy (NGC 891)

Have you ever wondered what our Milky Way galaxy would look like if you saw it edge on?   Well look no farther than NGC 891 also sometimes called the Outer Limits Galaxy 

I had taken these pictures last winter, but had been working to process them into the final picture seen below.  I was using a Celestron Edge 8 telescope and I did not get the most round stars in this outing, however I think the galaxy is just so cool.   The picture below is almost 4 hours worth of exposure.

A couple other fun facts about this galaxy are:

• It is a spiral galaxy 
• It is 30 million light years away from us!
• It was discovered in Oct 6, 1784 by William Herschel
• The galaxy appeared in the end credits of The Outer Limits TV show and thus how it got its nickname.

Here are the acquisition details that I used to get this final image the can also be found on Astrobin.

Link:  My Astrobin account with the Outer Limit Galaxy

Astrophotography: Horsehead and Flame Nebula

It's 2020 and a new decade!  While I look forward to all the new changes a new year will bring, our night sky mostly looks the same for most of our lifetimes.  It is always nice to take some time and see some of the hidden beauty that is above us every night.    I always look forward to the last few weeks of December since this is usually a time I can try my hand at a few pictures while on Christmas break.   One of the most common targets in our night sky that I have never tried to shoot is the Horsehead nebula (IC 434) and so I took the opportunity to try to get a shot.

This was my second imaging session with the ASIair and since I last used it they added a polar align feature.   I tried messing with it a bit, but I still found it pretty clunky.    I needed to do a new plate solve and wait for the software after each polar adjustment of my scope.   The polar align feature  was cumbersome compared to using Sharpcap that can help you polar align in real time.  So in the end I hooked up my camera up to Sharpcap for polar align and for focusing.  However after that, the ASIair really did a great job controlling my mount and taking the pictures.  If you are interested in how to use the ASIair check out my last astrophotography blog entry:  M81 and M82 with the ASIair

Here is the final pictures of the Horsehead Nebula I was able to acquire.  While the Horsehead is predominant in the picture, there is a lot of other stuff to see in this active region in our sky.

The Horsehead nebula is located in the Orion constellation.   In fact the super bright star that lights up the picture is the star Alnitak.   It is the brightest O-type star in the entire night sky and makes up one of three stars on Orion's belt.   To the right of Alnitak is the Horsehead nebula which is a dark cloud of dust and gas that is making the "horsehead" shape.   This area is a place where star formation is happening.   The horse head sits in front of a beautiful red background of ionized hydrogen that is common in this entire area.  To the left of the star Alnitak is the Flame nebula (NGC 2024).  The ultraviolet rays from the star Alnitak are knocking electrons form the ionized hydrogen gas that resides in this area.  As the ionized hydrogen gas and the electrons recombine, there is a beautiful nebula for us to admire.  This nebula is also where many new stars are forming.  Right in between the Flame nebula and the Horsehead nebula and below the star Alnitak is a reflection nebula named NGC 2023.   There is just so much going on this picture.  This area of the sky is ripe with activity on a scale that is hard to comprehend, but beautiful to reflect on.

Here are the acquisition details of the picture.  There is a lot more ionized hydrogen gas in this area that I did not pick up with my camera.  Eventually I will try out some filters that can help show even more of the red color that dominates this area in our sky.

Space is Big Christmas Tree with many Ornaments - A Look at Comet 46P/Wirtanen

I always love the Holidays at the end of the year - Christmas, New Years and everything that goes with it.  One of my favorite times during this season is decorating our Christmas Tree.  So often I think of space as a big Christmas tree decorated with the heavenly bodies.   The stars are the lights and then there are all kinds of fancy ornaments like nebula, planets, galaxies and comets.  The planets come in all kinds of colors and patterns:  Mars is red, Earth is Blue, Saturn has rings and Pluto even has a big heart on it.  The galaxies are majestic ornaments of differnet sizes and shapes scattered everywhere.  And then there are the comets in billion year old orbits showing their own brillance and shedding tails like tinsel.

Right now Comet 46P/Wiranen has been lighting up the sky although you need a telescope or binoculars to get a good look.   This comet is not really showing a great tail, but it has a huge green coma surronding it's nucleus which is amazing for something that is only 1.4 km wide.  The comet was closest to the Earth in mid-December, but I did not get out to photgraph it until December 22nd when I had a night of clear skies.   This was taken in a light polluted suburb and with a full moon, so the data is not the greatest.  I also struggled a little processing this one and will try to put that tuturial in a new post later.

For now, I just wanted to share this green ornament making its appearance near Earth and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. 

Photo details:
Scope:  SV90
Camera: Nikon D5300
Mount:  Celestron AVX
Exposure:  110 x 30 seconds
Processing Software:  PixInsight

More Comet 42P/Wiranen Details

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/46P/Wirtanen

The Beauty of the Moon: The Tycho Crater

This post is purely to share the beauty that is around us.  I can spend hours just looking at the moon in a scope and it never gets old.  This is an HDR picture of the moon I took recently which is 3 pictures of the moon stacked together.   I broke out my bigger telescope to get more detail of that beautiful lunar surface.  

Scope:  Celestron Edge 8 HD 

Camera:  Nikon 5300

Mount:  Celeston AVX

Processing Software:  Affinity Photo

It was still a little light in the sky when I took the image and that is why the background is still blue instead of black.  

If you look towards the bottom right of the moon there is one crater that stands out.  It is one of the brightest craters we see This is Tycho Crater.  It is 85 km in diameters and 4.8 km deep.   The crater is 108 million years old, making it a fairly young crate relatively speaking.  In the center of the crater is a peak complex that itself stands 1.6 km above the crater floor.   You can just make out the speck of

Here is a zoomed in image of the Tycho Crater.  You can just make out the raised peak in the center of the crater.

Water on Mars!!

Lat week, NASA had an announcement and most of you probably heard it.  So even though this is not breaking news anymore, it is still an exciting discovery.   We have been studying Mars for years and it has seen like a desert planet.  There is evidence that there was water on Mars in the past and even that water could be hiding on Mars under the surface.  So who would have ever thought that a planet only 9 months away with current technology could harbor water.

The new evidence shows dark streaks on the planet's surface that come and go depending on the season.  The evidence suggests this is water on the surface.   Many of the headline may make you think water is flowing on Mars, but the truth is that there are probably still not any oceans or even ponds on the surface of Mars.  The water that is showing in these recent pictures is more of a seeping to surface and only when the temperature reaches a balmy negative 10 degrees Celsius.  The water is not flowing like you might imagine a stream, but just getting enough of the surface wet enough to darken it.  The water also appears to be a little salty.

Even though we are probably not going to go to Mars and drink water from a spring, I honestly never thought there was any liquid water near the surface of Mars.  The pictures we see looks like a barren desert of rocks.  Where there is water there could be life even if only microbial life.  The discoveries we are now seeing in space keep coming.   If we are just starting to uncover mysteries from one of the closest celestial objects to Earth, just imagine what else is out there!

Add captionhttps://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-confirms-evidence-that-liquid-water-flows-on-today-s-mars

https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia19918/recurring-lineae-on-slopes-at-horowitz-crater

Pluto again!

In this case the pictures say everything.  Take a minute and go to NASA's website and see the new pictures coming in on Pluto.  The crazy part is that it will take a year to get all the data back on Pluto.  The New Horizons spacecraft is transmitting data back at almost old dial up modem speeds and then it takes 4 hours for the data to go 3 billion miles.  So it may be October of 2016 before we see everything, but that doesn't mean the new pictures that are here aren't dazzling.

Who would have ever though a "dwarf" planet could be so interesting. The pictures below show the beautiful dwarf planet and an even closer up picture shows 11,000 feet mountains beside flat plains.  I find it amazing that there is still so much we don't know about our own solar system.  And yet there are thousands if not millions of other solar systems out there.

We tend to think we are pretty smart, and as a race we are, but just think about the things we don't know.  Pluto puts it into perspective in a beautiful way!

http://www.nasa.gov/feature/perplexing-pluto-new-snakeskin-image-and-more-from-new-horizons

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/the-rich-color-variations-of-pluto

http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/closer-look-majestic-mountains-and-frozen-plains

PLUTO!!

I'm going to keep this one short and sweet as a shout out to NASA.

When I was growing up this is what we all learned:  My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pies.  It was a way to remember (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto).  That's right Pluto was a planet and the science books have since been rewritten to classify Pluto as a dwarf planet.  I still have a hard time trying to re-write these new facts in my brain when my kids tell me there are only 8 planets.

But that doesn't mean Pluto still doesn't get some love.  As technology advanced as we have become, we still have so many thing left to explore in our solar system including Pluto.  And it is so far away.  The Hubble telescope was a game changer in terms of seeing in deep space and even it had a tough time seeing the tiny Pluto as seen in this image:

https://briankoberlein.com/2015/07/02/pluto-rising/   The best Hubble picture of Pluto

And then 9 and half years ago the New Horizons spacecraft was launched.  It took pictures of Pluto as it got closer and it also had a tough time resolving Pluto.

But then after a long journey New Horizons got close enough to really see Pluto for the first time in all its glory.

Pluto   www.nasa.gov

So congratulations NASA !!  You have boldly gone where no one has gone before.