Day 137 Wednesday 6th August Location of 67P as Rosetta arrives. Also autoguiding success with the new camera add on to SkyX with resulting images.

Rosetta arrival day at the comet.

I  imaged the field of the comet but it is very faint - this faint dot is in exactly the right spot(2 dimensionally speaking) but the dot is in fact a star brighter than the comet itself. The comet was low in the sky with an Air Mass of 2.78 (20 degrees altitude) The predicted magnitude is 18.72.!

This deeper image from the Deep Sky Survey (not taken at 20 degrees altitude) shows the same star arrowed with even fainter stars around it. However the comet should brighten as it approaches the sun to bring it within my range.

This is the comet from Rosetta

Here are the Rosetta images in this animation. 

This video explains it.

I managed to get the autoguiding working in the camera add on to the SkyX - assisted a little by Tom Bisque - by setting the camera to ST9XE and the autoguider to built in autoguider. This video shows the initial calibration process for the add on.

 The process could not be more straightforward. Once calibrated all I had to do was slew to the object to be imaged - take a 4 second image as advised in the video using the autoguider chip and select a star and then click autoguide. It worked flawlessly every time. 

Also I used the closed loop slew to ensure the object was centred. I did not even check! I simply slewed to the target,hit closed loop slew and it showed me before and after centreing images. Worked every time. 

The advantage is that I can carry on tomorrow night without having to recalibrate - excellent!

This was my first guided image - a 2 minute exposure of M27

then a 5 minute exposure of NGC 6946

 Other images followed - NGC 6888 - 2 minutes guided

NGC 6771 5 minutes guided.

NGC 6951 Guided 5 minutes

 NGC 6830 Guided 30 seconds

 NGC 6979 Guided 2 minutes

 NGC 7635 Guided 10 minutes - bright star causing excessive blooming.

NGC 7217 Guided 2 minutes (Spiral galaxy)

 NGC 7741 Guided 2 Minutes

Day 136 Tuesday 5th August 2014 No observing - and a Curiosity update.

A humid evening  so no observing - an early night.... In reality I am finding it difficult to go to bed before 3 a.m. now - with almost every night clear I have got into a different routine. I did manage to go to sleep before 2am though! There is always something to do. 

I noticed this video on twitter  - quite an interesting report on Curiosity on Mars.

Monday 4th August 2014 53 galaxies at 90 second exposure for SN Patrol. - 20 images in the blog.

SN Patrol: 53 galaxies were imaged as part of my Supernova Patrol

Another clear night -I decided to image a number of galaxies with 90 second exposures instead of the usual 30 second exposures. I only imaged 53 galaxies with the longer exposures. Here are 20 of those galaxies.

This is NGC 6951 - the stars are pretty round even at 90 seconds unguided and a 12 minute square field.

and again with NGC 6946

Day 134 Sunday 3rd August 2014 212 galaxies and some Minor Planets

Although I imaged 212 galaxies tonight, seeing was poor and the quality of images suffered. 

I also imaged a few minor planets and produced animations of their movement.

This is the minor planet Lanzia

and this is Artemis

 

Day 133 Saturday 2nd August 2014 201 galaxies imaged - Closed loop slew to centre objects worked well.

Another clear night but only 201 galaxies imaged for 30 seconds each  tonight. They numbered from 1784 to 1984. I used the previous reduction data as I have not changed anything and the dust spots are probably in the same place!

I am overlapping quite a bit with other nights to try and build up a library of good images.

I am still finding out features of the new SkyX and Camera Add On. An extremely useful feature is the fact that there now is a second "Slew" option If you slew to an object and it is not quite centred on the chip then you can do a"closed loop slew" What this means is that when you press this button the Camera Add On takes an image of the object, solves the plate and then automatically centres the object. It works very well indeed. This will be extremely useful for building a T Point model although you can automate the whole process - I have yet to try that - I will do that if I lose the current good pointing but the "if it ain't broke don'e fix it " adage applies here!

Day 132 Friday 1st August 2014 New reduction set and 243 galaxies imaged. Siding Spring images.

A clear night - I took 20 Flat, 20 Dark and 20 Bias Frames - I used my Flat Frame Technical Interface for the Flat frames (a white T-Shirt!)

I took 30 second images of 243 galaxies in one hour blocks of increasing RA with decreasing Declination in each block and applied the reduction frames to each of these. Image numbers were 1572 to 1751.

 

Earlier in the week I took some images using the telescopes at Siding Spring in Australia. Here they are:

IC 5152

The above image is a jpeg image, I opened the original FITS file in SkyX for the Siding Spring location.

The SkyX has an option to use the data in the FITS data file to adjust the SkyX chart to the date and time of the photograph.

The advantage of this is that if there were any solar system objects around when the photo was taken - such as Minor Planets or Comets -  then they will show up on the chart in the position they were in when the image was taken.

 

I set the chart to the time of the photo and then used image link to solve the plate.

and linked the image to the chart

Here is the data on this object from SkyX. 

Object Name: IC 5152

Altitude: +69° 24' 47" 

Object Type: Irregular Galaxy

RA (2000.0): 22h 02m 42s 

Dec (2000.0): -51° 17' 46" 

Dec (Topocentric): -51° 13' 14" 

RA (Topocentric): 22h 03m 40s 

Azimuth: 192° 00' 43" 

Major Axis: 5.0

Minor Axis: 3.2

Axis Position Angle: 100° 00' 

Magnitude: 10.50

Rise Time: 16:10

Transit Time: 01:35

Set Time: 10:56

Hour Angle: 00h 26m 50s 

Air Mass: 1.07

Source Catalog: Revised IC

Blue mag: 11.1

Constellation: IND

Surface brightness: 13.4

Date: 31/07/2014

Time: 02:01:39 STD

Constellation: Indus

Constellation (Abbrev.): Ind

Screen X: 508.50

Screen Y: 282.50

Sidereal Time: 22:31

Julian Date: 2456869.16781250

Click Distance: 0.0000

Frame Size (arcmins): 5.0000

Angular Separation (Prior Object):   0° 01' 11"  from Tycho 8444:1617

Position Angle (Prior Object): 134.1°  from Tycho 8444:1617

Catalog Number: 5152

Celestial Type: 9

NGC/IC: 0

Catalog: 2

Constellation Number: 43

Object Name: IC 5152Altitude: +69° 24' 47" Object Type: Irregular GalaxyRA (2000.0): 22h 02m 42s Dec (2000.0): -51° 17' 46" Dec (Topocentric): -51° 13' 14" RA (Topocentric): 22h 03m 40s Azimuth: 192° 00' 43" Major Axis: 5.0Minor Axis: 3.2Axis Position Angle: 100° 00' Magnitude: 10.50Rise Time: 16:10Transit Time: 01:35Set Time: 10:56Hour Angle: 00h 26m 50s Air Mass: 1.07Source Catalog: Revised ICBlue mag: 11.1Constellation: INDSurface brightness: 13.4Date: 31/07/2014Time: 02:01:39 STDConstellation: IndusConstellation (Abbrev.): IndScreen X: 508.50Screen Y: 282.50Sidereal Time: 22:31Julian Date: 2456869.16781250Click Distance: 0.0000Frame Size (arcmins): 5.0000Angular Separation (Prior Object):   0° 01' 11"  from Tycho 8444:1617Position Angle (Prior Object): 134.1°  from Tycho 8444:1617Catalog Number: 5152Celestial Type: 9NGC/IC: 0Catalog: 2Constellation Number: 43

 The next image was NGC 300

Day 131 Thursday 31st July 2014 Moon arrives to hide the light of thousands of galaxies.

No imaging today. The Moon has made its appearance again and was at a Phase of about 20% (waxing)  in the constellation of Virgo - getting in the way of all those galaxies.

Day 130 Wednesday 30th July 2014 - 340 galaxies imaged and very high humidity.

A very long imaging run tonight of  340 galaxies. (My days are taken up with blinking these images).

A very humid night and image quality was very poor indeed but I thought I would let it run. It took until about 3 a.m. I aim to try out an all - nighter if humidity permits. Here are some of the better images.

This is PGC 63861

This is NGC 6930

This is its location in Delphinus

and NGC 7640 in Andromeda

Day 129 Tuesday 29th July 2014 Some galaxies from the Index Catalogue - IC 1344, IC 1345, IC 1347 and IC 1348

On Monday's run the galaxy IC1344 was selected for imaging

By solving the plate I was able to identify the other galaxies on the image

 IC 1344 is a spiral galaxy

IC 1345 is an Elliptical Galaxy

IC 1347 is a Spiral Galaxy

IC 1348 is a Spiral Galaxy

201 galaxies imaged and an interesting trio in Cygnus with similar Radial Velocities.

A run of 201 galaxies tonight. 

This is an interesting group of galaxies in Cygnus. I have solved the plate from tonight's image and added labels. These galaxies are approximately 15th magnitude.

 This is the same image but showing their Radial Velocity in km/s

 As Radial Velocity is linked to distance I have chosen galaxies with  radial velocities that would not make a potential supernova too faint for my telescope to detect.