Thursday 29th May 2014 - NGC 2451 300 second exposure Telescope T13 Siding Spring

 

 

 ASTROMETRIC SOLUTION

Wednesday 28th May 2014 - SN 2012fg

In November 2012 the supernova in NGC 2857 was imaged using the Sierra Stars 24" Cassegrain telescope.

Tuesday 27th May 2014 - Patrick Moore at the Royal Institution in 2009.

 

I attended the above event (that took place on the 21st November 2009) organised by the BAA to honour Patrick Moore's 75th year as a BAA member. Patrick joined the BAA when he was 11 years old. Patrick and a range of excellent speakers made it a really worthwhile day. The meeting was in  the Royal Institution lecture theatre - home to the well known Christmas Lectures.

Morning speakers included Dr Peter Cattermole who gave the keynote presentation jointly with Patrick on the topic of  "The Craters of the Moon" which was selected as being an appropriate topic as this was Patrick's greatest interest, Martin Mobberley on the topic of  21st Planetary Imaging - an excellent and humorous presentation, Tony Morris on Digital SLR's,  Dr Richard Miles on Asteroids and Comets and Stan Waterman and Richard Stratford on searching for Exoplanets.

The afternoon session included Dr. Nick Hewitt on the Deep Sky, Dr .David Boyd on High Precision CCD Photometry , Karen Holland on the latest in sensor technology, Robin Leadbetter on Spectroscopy, Nick James on Remote and Robotic Observing  , and Professor Andy Lawrence on the Virtual Observatory and Data Mining. Unfortunately I missed the last presentation as I had to catch a train but the entire day was  really packed with information and very enjoyable.

Monday 26th May 2014 - yet another lesson on how to miss a supernova! M95 in 2012.

Below is my image of M95 taken on 15th March 2012 at 22:42 UT. This was the 72nd image taken that night out of a total set of 401 galaxies. I checked this image on 16th March and found no supernova. I suspect it is there but just too faint to show on my 30 second image! Can you see anything?

Shortly after my observation a supernova exploded in the galaxy and was detected on the evening following my image being taken at 16.849. (16th March|).

Details of the discovery are here

The actual discovery image is here

I imaged the new supernova on the 22nd March - see image below.

Here is an animation blinking between the two images above.

Sunday 25th May 2014 - Comet Garradd on Sunday Morning 19th Feb 2012 passing galaxy PGC 58581

Saturday 24th May 2014 - Minor Planet Quadea near galaxy PGC 9888.

The image below shows the galaxy PGC 9888 being passed by minor planet 1297 Quadea in January 2012.

      

Friday 23rd May 2014 - 4 Galaxy Images from a total of 330.

I imaged 330 galaxies on March 12th  2012 - here are four of them - the other 326 can come later! All images are 30 second exposures.

NGC 3344                                                                                                                   NGC 3556

NGC 4565                                                                                                                      NGC 4656

Thursday 22nd May 2014 - 20 Minutes of Comet Garradd Movement

I was doing an extended mapping run on 10th March 2012 when I came across Comet Garradd so took some images over a 20 minute period. The image below combines two images of Comet Garradd that are 20 minutes apart. I estimate a movement of about 1 minute of arc during this period. The two 12.8/12.9 magnitude comparison stars are 3 minutes of arc apart.  Garradd is moving at about 3 minutes of arc per hour from these figures. SBIG ST9XE with C14 at f/10 on Paramount ME.

Wednesday 21st May 2014 - 57 NGC Objects in Orion imaged in 25 minutes.

On 6th March 2012 the sky was hazy with thin cloud so I decided to abandon supernova searching that night.  Some objects were visible so I thought I would try and image some of these with 10 second exposures to see what I got. Using the Data Wizard in Software Bisque's "The Sky 6" software to find all of the NGC Objects in Orion returned the number 57. I set up a script to take 10 second images of all of these.  I managed to image all 57 NGC objects in Orion in 25 minutes based on the FITS data times.  M42 is there as well as the flame nebula. Some images are repeated below in this composite image.  A thicker cloudy spell in mid imaging ruined many of them. Some images show extreme vignetting when cloud intervenes. OK they are all pretty poor but an interesting attempt nevertheless. I must try this again when it is not cloudy!

I have enlarged the first 8 images below

Click here for an enlarged view of all NGC Objects in Orion

Tuesday 20th May 2014 - NGC 5272 (M3) from 2013