The snow-capped peaks were beautiful from the Foothill Freeway

It had been several months since our schedule, the weather, and the moon phase all cooperated to give us a chance to get out to our favorite astronomy spot. Jane and I, joined by Dave Hasenauer, ventured [...]]]> Click here for the full photo album with lots more pictures.

The snow-capped peaks were beautiful from the Foothill Freeway

It had been several months since our schedule, the weather, and the moon phase all cooperated to give us a chance to get out to our favorite astronomy spot. Jane and I, joined by Dave Hasenauer, ventured out to the Colorado Desert with promises of a chilly evening but mostly clear skies. The snow-capped peaks of San Jacinto and Gorgonio mountains were calling to us from almost our first moment on the road.

Twilight on Chuckwalla Bench

During our twilight setup, some fellows from Arcadia stopped to check out the equipment. Dave was all set up and ready to show Jupiter if we could find it. While hunting in the twilight glow, we all exclaimed as a flock of probably 100 geese were approaching from the west. The geese turned out to be our guide to Jupiter! They flew right in front of the planet, and gave our eyes a convenient focus target. We all enjoyed the view through Dave’s big dobsonian.

Jane had plans to attack the faint periodic comet 103P/Hartley, famous for its huge outburst of a year ago. Jane and Dave both claim to have found the glow of the incredibly diffuse comet. I tried for an image of it myself, but was convinced I didn’t have anything. This is my shot, with the comet buried deep in the winter Milky Way in Monoceros.

Can you find the comet?

Can you find the comet? Here’s a full-resolution crop of the center of that field. Look right in the middle, and try to ignore that my focus wasn’t especially good for this picture!

Look for the faint cotton ball in the center.

I was delighted that most of my hard-won imaging skills hadn’t been completely lost during the time away from it. I didn’t get a perfect focus for my first couple of shots of the evening, the comet Hartley photo above being one.

Even with a less-than-perfect focus, this one of the Rosette Nebula in Monoceros turned out pretty well. This is only 30 minutes of exposure, and it’s pretty clear this object would benefit from a couple hours of exposure time.

The Rosette Nebula, click for the full frame

The Cone nebula is another one that could benefit from a lot more exposure time, but at least by now I’d corrected the focus. I love this beautiful field, with a vast mix of Milky Way stars, emission, reflection, and dark nebulae. The “cone” that gives the nebula its name is near the center of the image. This is also two 15-minute exposures stacked.

The Cone nebula in Monoceros, click for the full resolution image.

A bright supernova was discovered just a couple weeks ago in small distant galaxy NGC 2655 in Camelopardalis, very high in the northern sky. Jane and Dave both enjoyed hunting it down, and the nova is bright and easy, itself as bright or brighter than the rest of the galaxy. Of course I had to get an image, here’s my crop of the field with the supernova marked.

Supernova in NGC 2655, click to see the whole wide field image.

Finally Jane suggested this great pairing, “The Owl and the Cigar,” she called it, M97 the Owl Nebula paired with galaxy M108 in Ursa Major. I only got one 15-minute exposure of this field, as the clouds were starting to move in, but I loved the colors in the Owl nebula, and the detail in M108. It’s fun to contemplate the difference in their distances, with the Owl being the gasping exhalation of a single star in our galaxy, and M108 being billions of stars in a very distant galaxy.

The Owl and the Cigar, M97 (top) and M108, click for full resolution

The first half of the night was interrupted several times by loud flights of two or three helicopters passing nearby. We speculate that they may have been in service to the border patrol, using infrared or intensified imaging. Our little site must have been interesting to see from their vantage point.

Pre-dawn Chuckwalla Mountain with the moon and Venus

By the time the sky show was interrupted by clouds, we all were tired and cold and felt like we’d had a full evening. Amazingly it was only 11:00 p.m.! We all tucked ourselves into warm sleeping bags to catch a few hours of sleep. Meanwhile the sky cleared again for spectacular pre-dawn show of the moon and Venus. We all got up to enjoy the old crescent moon, Saturn, and watch for Mercury to rise over Chuckwalla mountain.

With the local star finally clearing the horizon, we packed and headed off to breakfast at Chiriaco Summit. By the time Jane and I arrived back home in Monrovia, it was raining!

P.S.: In the photo album linked here, I included some detail photos of my astrophotography equipment, with captions, for the benefit of some friends who’ve wondered how these things happen.

We hadn’t expected to be able to observe during this part of the summer from Chuckwalla Bench in the High Colorado desert south of Joshua Tree, but this August night’s forecast at Desert Center [...]]]>

These cumulus clouds were nearly stationary all evening, making quite the light show with an electrical storm

Observing report, August 7, 2010

Chuckwalla, CA

We hadn’t expected to be able to observe during this part of the summer from Chuckwalla Bench in the High Colorado desert south of Joshua Tree, but this August night’s forecast at Desert Center looked very inviting. The forecast high there was 101°F with a low of 74°F. I believe our actual location is at a higher altitude; it always seems at least a couple of degrees cooler.

It was forecast to be breezy though, and that can make it uncomfortable to observe as well as blow telescopes and tripods around. We did have some periods when the wind was a nuisance, but for the most part it was pleasant t-shirt and shorts weather all night long.

I caught this great lightning bolt from the distant electrical storm, with the camera on a small tripod and the bulb left open for a while.

We had crystal clear transparent skies overhead all night, with a great sugary Cygnus Milky Way transiting high overhead mid-evening, but there was an interesting weather phenomenon happening some number of miles north-northeast of us.

As the sun was setting, we had this great view of some towering cumulus clouds catching the sunset glow to the northeast. Over dinner I thought I saw a lightning flash in the clouds. As it turned out, throughout the evening all the way to 2:00 a.m. we were entertained by a sometimes massive electrical storm that seemed to be nearly stationary. I caught this one good lightning strike off in the distance. The full-res version is a crop from the center of a very large picture.

It was also to be a fun evening to see a planet grouping in the west, following the sun to the horizon. I caught this great shot of bright Venus, with Saturn to the upper right, and Mars to the left. To the far left is the bright star Spica. Click to see the great full-resolution picture. In binoculars, Mercury was also visible, but deep in the red sunset glow well out of the field of this picture. In a few days the crescent moon will join the trio for another good picture.

Bright Venus grouped with Mars (left above) and Saturn. Click for the full 4MB experience.

I did take a couple of interesting piggyback Milky Way pictures. My focus wasn’t perfect, and the white balance doesn’t seem quite right. They are mostly untouched except for some slight darkening of the blacks. They are both five-minute exposures on my stock Canon 20D. I think if this camera were modified to remove the deep red filter, the red hydrogen-alpha glow of the North America nebula would show more.

Cygnus Milky Way, north with bright Deneb to the lower left from center.

And here is a late-night shot of Cassiopeia.

Cassiopeia reclines in the summer Milky Way. The "double cluster" is visible near bottom center.

And of course I did some exposures through the Astro-Physics Traveler as well. Here is the Swan Nebula, M17, four ten-minute exposures, ST-4000XCM one-shot color camera. Click on each for the full-resolution image.

M17 also known as the Swan Nebula or Omega Nebula.

I knew that the Ring Nebula, M57, would be an almost silly target for a telescope with this wide field of view. It would appear as a tiny donut swimming in a field of Milky Way stars, just as it often does visually in a telescope. Of course that made it irresistable. Here is the full field:

There's the Ring Nebula, M57, just right of center.

And now as you can see in a crop at full resolution, it’s not a bad image at all. This is three ten-minute sub-exposures (30 minutes total).

Full-resolution crop from the wide field above, M57 the Ring Nebula.

Finally I wanted to get one of Jane’s (and my) favorite Cassiopeia star clusters, one discovered by Caroline Herschel, and known as the Magnificent Cluster, NGC7789. This scaled down version is not terribly impressive, but the full-res image is a treat to swim around in.

The Magnificent Cluster, NGC7789, in Cassiopeia

On a techy note, for the first time I started to have some issues with haze forming on the chip. Given the presence of those nearby cumulus, I guess I can’t always count on the desert air to be completely water-free.

Besides the great deep sky and planets, of course we also had lots of meteors from the forward edge of the Perseid meteor shower. Jane did some great counts, and I enjoyed some bright meteors while the shutters were open.

‘Til next time …

It was another perfect new moon Saturday for a trip to our favorite spot in the Colorado Desert out I-10.

Yes this is a very full Grand Caravan!

Jane and I happily took out all [...]]]> Full photo album of setting up and astrophotos here at the Whiteoaks Photo Album.

Update: Here’s Jane’s version of the same evening.

It was another perfect new moon Saturday for a trip to our favorite spot in the Colorado Desert out I-10.

Yes this is a very full Grand Caravan!

Jane and I happily took out all the seats of the old Grand Caravan and filled it with telescopes and gear. We brought her 17.5-inch Litebox dob, and our AP180EDT f/9 refractor.

Jane has been indulging my dabbling in astrophotography lately. I’ve been delighted that Jane is using some of my astrophotos for the What’s Up podcast, lucky that she wants imperfect images that are closer to what one might actually see in an amateur telescope.

This 180mm f/9 refractor should be an outstanding astrograph; it’s certainly an amazing visual astronomy instrument. I dabbled with it a little last year in Anza Borrego, knowing I needed to learn a lot of operating technique to get some good results. I solved a few mechanical problems then, and ran into autoguiding calibration later. Those lessons served me well, even though it’s almost a year later.

Early in the evening was Jupiter time, and we all spent some time soaking up the gorgeous views through a binoviewer in steady seeing. 300x on Jupiter showed lots of detail in the bands, including a nice red barge in the North Equatorial Belt, and nice little disks and color on the moons.

I’m going to take a few paragraphs to talk shop, gadgets, problems, and solutions.

Setting up the AP180, all ready to take flats, except there's no known focus position!

My camera is an SBIG ST-4000XCM single-shot color CCD camera which perfectly suits my recreational needs. The big AP180 is mounted on an older 900QMD mount, a simple but stable platform without GOTO electronics or servos.

The 900QMD mount comes with digital encoders on the R.A. and Dec axes, but having spent several years using this telescope for primarily lunar and planetary observing, those encoders went unused for the life of the mount.

The R.A. axis encoder is removable so you can use a polar alignment scope, and the encoder shaft has a slip fit into a metal sleeve when it’s in place. Last year I discovered that this mechanical connection slips very easily, rendering the encoder useless.

The trick I settled on, which worked again tonight, was to cut a little piece of rubber band and push it into the fitting to serve as a tightener.

Jane aligns the Telrad on her 17.5-inch Litebox

To use the digital encoders for pointing, I acquired a BBox from JMI, connected that to a USB-Serial adapter, and used Software Bisque’s TheSky 6 to serve as my controller. I’ve learned by experience (at Fremont Peak observatory) that the alignment doesn’t need to be 100% perfect. I’ve learned the trick of syncing the software and encoders to a bright star near my target, then doing an accurate short slew to my actual target.

(One problem I haven’t quite solved yet is play in the polar scope. I haven’t figured out how to tighten the polar scope in position, in the correct orientation, so it doesn’t wiggle.)

So with a not-quite-perfect polar alignment, autoguiding becomes my essential partner. CCDSoft can be tricky software to work with when calibrating the autoguiding. The error messages and manual don’t really help solve problems like “Illegal motion in X-axis, error 352.” I thought I might even be dealing with a problem in the mount mechanics. In retrospect, I think I also hadn’t learned the correct switch settings on the QMD controller. (“Guide” and “.5″ works much better than the 16x slew mode for visual!)

On perusing the Software Bisque support forum last week, I was able to learn that their autoguiding calibration depends entirely on there being only one bright star in a large region of the guide imager. While I could see the guide motions working perfectly and orthogonal, the software doesn’t do matching of the star field, only looking for the one significant guide star.

Having discovered that, I was finally able to successfully calibrate the autoguider. And with one successful calibration (remembering to set the current declination), I could autoguide on different targets successfully for a long time.

(The Software Bisque manuals hint that there’s a way to link to TheSky so CCDSoft knows the declination of its target, but I haven’t figured that out yet.)

M74 two 15-minute exposures, SBIG ST-4000XCM, 180mm f/9, October 17, 2009

Pisces was high overhead, and I love M74, so I decided as a first target to revisit that favorite. I settled on 15-minute exposures. The first one came out “double vision” when the autoguider momentarily lost track during the exposure, but that was the only time that happened during the evening.

NGC7541 in Pisces, 15 minutes

A visit to the Night Sky Observers Guide suggested NGC7541 as a Pisces “showpiece,” and I love galaxy groups. This one was gorgeous in Jane’s 17.5-inch, too.

NGC7640, 15-minute exposure

Jane showed me NGC7640 in her 17-inch, a really lovely look, and I thought it would be a great target. We’re starting to enjoy comparing visual and imaging views.

NGC253, 2x15minute exposures

I admit I get impatient when I’m imaging, and want to collect more targets rather than more exposures on the same target. As a result, I have a little more noise in my images, but I’m having fun anyway. That said, I couldn’t resist spending some time on NGC253, the Silver Coin galaxy. I had a tantalizing glimpse of this target last year at Anza Borrego when I hadn’t yet learned how to make the autoguiding work. This time I got two lovely 15-minute exposures. Well worth it.

Pre-dawn crepuscular rays at Chuckwalla Bench

After a few hours sleep, we were greeted with lovely pre-dawn crepuscular rays, Venus, and Saturn making its return after solar conjunction. Not to worry, the telescope was capped, and about to come down into its box, anyway. (You can see the box ready to be loaded with telescope.) Jane paused to take this lovely picture.