Astronomy Log

This is for anyone who read my previous post about my friendly hedgehog who used to come and see me in the garden whilst I was using my telescope.

Well over the winter the hedgehog ended up making a nest near a fence post, made up of leaves, moss and twigs.

Today whilst out cutting the lawn I noticed there is a big hole in the winter hibernation nest and he must be now on the loose again. I hope to see him soon.

It must have been the last two days of sun that woke him up.

Last night I attended the monthly meeting at the Cambridge Astronomy Association (CAA) at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. Tonight was a special lecture called the Michael Penston lecture.

Michael Penston was based at the Institute of Astronomy. In 1990 he was due to give a talk to the CAA, but had to cancel due to illness. Sadly, Michael died soon afterwards. In March 1991 the CAA held a lecture in memory of Michael, and a collection was made for cancer research. By the next year a fund had been set up in his name, administered by the Royal Astronomical Society, to help up-and-coming astronomers establish themselves in their chosen profession. Each year since then the CAA members are asked to make a donation to the fund after the talk.

This year’s lecture was given by Sir Martin Rees, who is a Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics and Master of Trinity College. Sir Martin holds the honorary title of Astronomer Royal and also Visiting Professor at Imperial College London and at Leicester University.

After studying at Trinity college, Cambridge, Sir Robert held post-doctoral positions in the UK and the USA, before becoming a professor at Sussex University. In 1973, he became a fellow of Kings College and Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy here in Cambridge (continuing in the latter post until 1991) and served for ten years (1977-82 and 1987-91) as director of the Institute of Astronomy. In 2005 he was appointed to the House of Lords, elected President of the Royal Society and last year in 2007 was awarded the Order of Merit.

The talk itself was entitled “The Next Ten Plus Years  in Cosmology” which lasted about 45 minutes, and was very interesting.  The talk was accompanied with many varied and amazing photos.  Some of the main topics covered included the possibility of a 4th dimension and how the universe may be textured.

I did want to include the talk on this post as an audio file, as I recorded the talk via my mobile phone voice recorder, but unfortunately the recording was very quiet, perhaps the application was not made for distant recordings, I should have sat a lot closer to the front.

Just to mention, the CAA and Institute of Astronomy are running a 6 week introductory course on astronomy in April and May. Hopefully I will get to see and use some of the main telescopes on site so I am planning on attending and blogging details about it once it starts. I shall try and include photos as well.

Saturn’s moon Titan may have a deep, hidden ocean according to an article in the journal Science.

Radar images from the Cassini-Huygens mission reinforce predictions that a reservoir of liquid water exists beneath the thick crust of ice.

If confirmed then it could mean that Titan would have two of the key components for life, which are water and organic molecules.

Mars appears to be covered in salt crystals from ancient dried up lakes. A NASA probe has found signs that the southern hemisphere is dusted with chloride mineral, which could be like the common table salt.

The Mars deposits are a good place to search for traces of past life which may be preserved in the salt.

Philip’s Atlas of the Universe by Patrick Moore is now in its sixth edition. The Atlas of the Universe is quite a big book; it’s a hardcover book and is a full size type coffee table book.  The full colour photographs, images and diagrams are absolutely breath taking, with pictures from space missions and images of planets, nebulae, constellations and more.

Atlas of the Universe is divided into seven sections, these are “Exploring the Universe”, which covers the history of astronomy and space exploration and the latest results from the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes.

“The Solar System” chapter contains information on everything in our solar system including the earth and the planets, with images and maps of the planets from visiting spacecraft including the Cassini probe, the Mars Express and the Spirit and Opportunity rovers.

“The Sun” chapter covers visible phenomena, from sunspots to solar eclipses including images from the SOHO and TRACE spacecrafts.

“The Stars” chapter covers nebulae, supernovae, black holes, stellar clusters with images from the VLT or Very Large Telescope.

“Into the Universe” includes the structure of the Universe, our Galaxy, quasers.  It also discusses the possibilities of extraterrestrial life.

Towards the rear of the book there are more practical astronomy chapters, including Star Maps, a complete atlas of the constellations (northern and southern hemisphere) stretched across 22 maps.  There are also tables accompanying the maps which give co-ordinates, magnitudes and other data.

The final chapters contain beginner’s guides which teach beginners such basics as how to use a planisphere and an introduction to binoculars and telescopes.  There are sections on digital imaging with cameras and CCD cameras. The final section covers having an observatory.  Atlas of the Universe ends with a 25 page glossary which includes colour diagrams.

Overall The Atlas of the Universe is a magical book, if you don’t like reading these types of general astronomy books, and then just look at the images, they are amazing. I could imagine this book to be a brilliant gift for the avid astronomer or for any child who is studying astronomy or has a school project to complete.

Atlas of the Universe is available from Amazon

I popped out last night with just my static tripod and camera to try and get some shots of the conjunction of the moon and pleiades.  I spent about 30 minutes outside in the wind, which was making the camera move.  So I ended up taking about 50 shots in total.

Unfortunately as the moon was so bright getting the faintness of the pleiades with the brightness of the moon was very difficult. I took all the shots at ISO800 on my Canon 300mm lens with varying exposure times.

Below is the best I got, which is pretty bad, I think I would have been better taking the photos of the pleiades  and the moon separately and then just putting the scene together in a photo editor program.

The only good thing to come out of the 30 minutes was this shot of just the moon. It’s quite amazing what a 300mm lens can do, and it shows you don’t need a telescope in order to take nice images of the moon.

I went out on the 26th February to try and get the best out of Saturn, when it was at it’s largest for the year. I began imaging with my Philips SPC900 web cam straight onto my LX200 10″ telescope.

I spent the most time trying to get the best possible focus I could on the planet, and below is the best image I could get after I ran it through Registax on fully automatic processing. I took the footage in VLounge and played heavily with the webcams settings in the program before capture.

Just so you can get an idea of the original webcam video I took, this image was created from the video below:

I also took some video using my webcam together with my Meade 2x Barlow the only problem was that the magnification was too much and getting a good focus was not possible, plus Saturn filled the whole webcam chip.

If I had the chance to do it all again, I think I would add on my f6 focal reducer and then use the Meade 2x Barlow which should have given me an intermediate sized planet to image and one which I hopefully could get focus on.

It was good to hear back from ITV Anglia News that they wanted to use my lunar eclipse image in the evening news section.  It was actually used at the beginning of the weather report. I recorded the whole news program and have now trimmed the video and uploaded it to YouTube, you can watch the video clip below:

Sky News also chose to show the image of the lunar eclipse I took on its website, which can be viewed in full size by clicking on the image on the left.

I think I may submit more astronomy images in the future, certainly if it’s this easy to get them published along with everyone else’s.

I sent my eclipse photo to the BBC this morning after writing my post, and they have included it on the BBC web site. Their first question was, “Did I take it?” - classic!

The BBC web page can be viewed by clicking on the thumbnail below, or it can be viewed here, with others:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7256406.stm

I went to bed at 9pm on the 20th February and managed to get up at 2.30am in order to get some images of the lunar eclipse.  I knew it was going to be cloudy tonight, but I thought the bright moon would shine through any cloud, how wrong I was.

Luckily after setting up and letting the LX200 do it’s setup routine, I managed to somehow find focus on the moon and get a few images.  It was difficult to get focus on the moon when it was covered by cloud, but after the first 10 minutes or so the cloud came over and the moon disappeared for the rest of the night, I came in at about 4.30am.

I even had to pull my whole telescope by the leg and re-align it manually as the moon disappeared behind the ridge of my house roof, whilst I waited for a better view.

I think if I could do it all again I would have set up my telescope earlier and found perfect focus then left the telescope alone until the lunar eclipse began, rather than try and find focus when the moon was covered by cloud.

The image was taken at prime focus f/0 through the telescope using my Canon 400D with an exposure time of 5 seconds at ISO800.