With the moon out of the way, I’ll work on improving my pictures through the Celestron C8, a 2032mm f/10 scope. The last two nights I took some quick pictures through it that were out of focus. Tonight went a little better. Here is a low exposure shot to bring out Saturn’s rings:
And here is a longer exposure to bring out the moons better. In order from top left, we have Titan to Saturn’s right, and then Callisto and Io to the left of Jupiter, and Ganymede and Europa to the right. I’d love to get Phoebe, another moon of Saturn that’s directly above Jupiter, but it’s 17 magnitude. Maybe I’ll do a really long exposure in the coming days.
Keep in mind Saturn is about twice as far from us as Jupiter, about 90 light minutes vs. 50 light minutes, and the sun is only 8 light minutes from us. So while it’s pretty neat to see them together, they are not close to each other.
NSF released some great footage of the collapse of the 900 ton instrument platform of the Arecibo radio observatory. Of course it’s really sad, but it’s also a fascinating study in engineering, failure, and the costs of poor design and maintenance.
Looking at the paint peeling off the cables at the 1 minute mark makes me want to go add more primer to the fascia of my roof.
When I think of Arecibo, I remember reading in my astronomy textbook (long ago, before Wikipedia) about the bitmap we sent to the star cluster in Hercules (M13). Transmitted in 1974, it’s about .2% of the way to its destination, by my figuring.
Kimra and I traveled to a really good dark sky site only an hour away to see the Perseids this year. We saw some good meteors, and I took the opportunity to get a better picture of our neighbor M31.
Some of you may have read about the (relatively) close supernova that was observed last week. Timing was good for me, as the moon is waning and rising later, and I was considering my next target. So without further ado, here’s the Cigar Galaxy lit up by its exploding star SN 2014J, taken last night. ISO1600/80s/2032mm/f10
Here’s the Crab Nebula. Not a breathtaking pic of what’s normally a pretty dramatic supernova remnant, but it’s a single 60 second exposure. The other nine exposures I took and hoped to combine had too much movement. I think I have a periodic glitch in my drive of about a minute. I have to throw out about half my 30s exposures, and almost all of my 1 minute exposures. So I gMuess I’ll be taking my drive apart again on the next full moon, and sticking to 30s exposures in the meantime.
The good news is the star haziness was mostly gone last night, so it was the sky, not the optics, that had the problem a few nights ago. Also, my lighted reticle eyepiece worked like a charm for drift aligning. Finally, the altitude adjuster that I jury-rigged worked well. I’ll post a picture of that soon. Crab Nebula in Taurus, 60 sec, ISO 1600, 1000mm f/10, cropped.
Scott's Sky Shots 