Friday night I went up to the River Ridge Observatory to shoot some planets. I started with Venus which is about as high in the sky after sunset as it will get in this apparition. It was disappointing so I moved on. Next up was Jupiter. I’m using a monochrome camera with RGB filters so here we have the combined result with the red, green and blue images that went into it. The color image is softer than I’d like but shows Io and it’s shadow that were transiting the disk of Jupiter this evening, They were both near the meridian of Jupiter when I started and visible on the laptop. Below are the red, green, and blue filter monochrome images that went into the image above. Notice the red spot is barely visible in the first image which is the red channel and darkest in the last image which is the blue channel.
Barnard’s Star 2016-2018
Here is a short (2 frame) video of a nearby star called “Barnard’s Star” in the constellation of Ophiuchus. After the famous Alpha Centauri triple star system, this is the closest star to the Solar System at 6 light years away. By a weird coincidence, just over one hundred years ago an astronomer named E.E. Barnard discovered that this star is moving across the sky faster than any other object in the sky beyond the Solar System. This “proper motion” is measured at 10 arcseconds per year. By comparison, the planet Jupiter appears to be about 40 arcseconds across from Earth. Not a lot but easily measurable with a telescope and camera. In these two images, take 26 months apart, we can see one star move to the left just a little.
Mini-Messier Marathon March 16, 2018
It was more of a sprint if you will forgive the pun. Friday, the 16th was to be a clear mild night while Saturday cloudy and rainy. So I took Molly, the 16″ dob, to the RRO to see what I could do.
First, I spent perhaps 30 minutes getting my new Rigel QuickFinder lined up. This was very annoying and makes me wonder if I should put an emergency site tube on the base or perhaps something to hold a laser pointer.
It started slowly but I found the first object at 8:15. Two, actually, M42 and M43 then M45. M77 at 8:25, by this time I’m trying to follow the plan to give best efficiency. M33, M31, M32, M110 were low but fell to Molly. M103 and M76 were found as the clock changed to 9 PM.
About this time I started using my binoculars more and not just for studying the area. Binoculars are not just for the big bright objects but smaller open clusters too. All I need to do is see the object and be sure which it is.
M34, M35, M36, M37, M38, M41, M50, M46, M47, M48, M44, M67 all fell to my 42mm binoculars.
M79, M78, M93, M81 and M82 all were no challenge for Molly but dew fell hard right afterward so I called it a night with 27 objects. Only a couple objects – M74 and M52 – from the list up to that point were not found.
