The October sky: getting us warmed up for ISON

This year has seemed to be chock full of fun celestial happenings. There was comet Pan-STARRS in March (near center, and shown enlarged in the inset):

and then there was the three-planet conjunction of Mercury, Venus, and Jupiter in May:

As Venus loitered in the post-sunset sky throughout the summer, Saturn marched across the sky and joined it in September, when they ultimately passed just a few degrees from one another (much closer than shown in this picture):

With all this taking place, one could be forgiven for possibly forgetting about the final act of the year: comet ISON. This comet was forecast to be the "Comet of the Century" (never mind that the century has really only barely begun - seems fairly pessimistic if you ask me) and while it has been getting brighter as it nears the Sun, it hasn't brightened to the level that was expected. It's thought that this is the maiden voyage Sunward for this particular comet from the far reaches of our solar system, and as such the relative inexperience of this comet makes it a bit tough to prognosticate about with certainty. The bottom line at the moment is that it should still be easily visible to the naked eye, even if it isn't visible during the daytime. This still makes me excited!

It only just flew past Mars on its way toward a close encounter with the Sun and has yet another month and a half yet before it loops past our star. Nevertheless, I took an eager opportunity to catch a picture of it:

The image is admittedly not great, for several reasons. The first is the unsightly lines down the center due to a column of dead pixels in the CCD I was using. Since the comet is moving, when I aligned the three comet images I took (one for each colored filter) the columns appear offset. There is really only one dead column - it just shows up three times because this is a composite of three images. I could have moved the comet off this dead column if it wasn't for the second reason: I was racing the sunrise. ISON appears early in the morning before dawn, with Mars, so by the time it's high enough to image then the Sun is preparing to make its appearance as well. This is what caused the red hue in the image: the red filter was the last image I took, so the glow of dawn produced a gradient in the image I couldn't easily remove. But regardless, I still captured it! And it's only going to get better. That is, unless it breaks up - which some believe it may. These first-time visitors to our inner solar system sometimes end up being a bit weaker in their structural integrity. We will see.

If the comet does survive and become visible to the unaided eye, here is one resource you won't want to overlook. It is an "atlas" of where to find the comet in the sky - but be warned, you will have to wake up before sunrise to see it! If ISON survives, late November and into early 2014 should be great for viewing.

In the meantime, the Orionid meteor shower peaks on October 21, although the Moon may be a bit on the bright side. As we move into the autumn months, keep your eyes on Gemini (north of Orion). You'll see an amazingly bright point of light in that constellation of the twins: that bright spot is Jupiter! This means it's time to go grab those telescopes, because it's time to watch the Galilean moons in their orbital dance, as well as time to spot the Great Red Spot. Saturn has set behind the Sun, but we now have the King of Planets to observe instead. There's always something to see. Happy viewing!

Update:  Here is a better image I captured on 10/4/2013

Shooting the (shooting) stars

My wife and I went back to Michigan recently for my sister's wedding and during our stay we had a couple nights that were both dark and clear. Since it was right around the peak of the Delta Aquariid meteor shower, I thought I'd take my Canon Rebel T3i out and try to do some Milky Way photography with the hopes of catching a meteor.

Standing under those twinkling stars, with the great Milky Way arching overhead and no Moon in sight, I had high hopes. Almost as soon as I stepped out I saw a meteor flash through the Milky Way. Although its path told me that it wasn't a Delta Aquariid meteor, my first thought: "This is going to be a good night."

Setting up my tripod, I spent a few minutes focusing the camera. While I'm still not sure if I'm getting it perfectly focused, I'm getting better at it than I was when first using the camera. It turns out that when there's nothing bright to use for focusing, getting nice sharp stars is difficult. However, after a few minutes I was satisfied so I set up pointed at the Galactic center, just above the treeline, and began taking 20-second exposures at ISO 1600. ISO 3200 made the image too noisy. I had the aperture down to f/8, but the treeline was fairly nearby and I didn't want it completely fuzzy just so I could have an f/3 aperture. I wish I knew how the professionals got such sharp horizon features.  But I guess this isn't bad.

After some waiting and snapping, I spotted a small meteor flash through the area of the sky I was imaging! I paused to check the image to see if I had captured it. No. Huh...I guess it was too faint. I learned quickly that not every meteor that you see makes it into the picture. This means that the images from the more skilled astrophotographers show meteors that must have been really bright! I clicked on.

Another flash, this one brighter but shorter in length! I checked the image, and sure enough - I got it!

I clicked away some more, turning the camera occasionally more east and upward, then back to the Galactic center. After taking so many images of the same scene, some pretty neat things can be done with them, like stacking images together to bring out greater detail (notice how there are more stars):

and even making star trails set against a Galactic backdrop:

I finished the evening around 12:30 (though this is actually when I should have started, no doubt) and went to bed, uncertain about whether I had captured any more meteors or not. I sure saw my fair share, though.

Upon looking through the images on my computer, I learned that not only are meteors tricky to catch, but catching other things can be tricky too. For example, I came across one image with a streak that I thought was certainly a meteor. However, after looking at the next frame, I noticed a similar streak in a slightly different location. The next frame showed the same thing:
I had captured a satellite, too dim for me to have noticed it while shooting but right there in plain sight on the image. Silly. After looking through all my images, I came across one more faint meteor, though this one took some heavy image processing to bring out:

I probably spent about an hour and a half, so to get two meteor images against a nice Milky Way background is great. While I saw no fireballs, I probably could have stayed up longer if I really wanted to try for a nice image. While packing up at the end of my shoot, I noticed that my lens had fogged up with dew, so I'll have to remember that for next time.

Next time! The Perseid meteor shower is coming up in a few days - peaking overnight on Aug 11/12. Meteor activity is already ramping up, so I'm looking forward to it. That is, if Oneonta gives us clear skies. Keep your fingers crossed! If it's clear, I'll be outside once again, giving the astrophotography thing another shot. If you'd like to simply enjoy the sight, face northeast around 11 p.m. and look about halfway up (you may want a lawn chair to sit on or a blanket to lay on). Pay attention with your peripheral vision, too. The show should only get better after midnight.

Happy viewing!

Conjunction month

As we orbit around the Sun, and the other planets with us, there come instances where two planets are lined up in the solar system in such a way that, from our viewing perspective on Earth, they both appear very close to one another in our sky. Such an alignment is called a planetary conjunction, and these sights can be quite charming. In one of my posts last year, I included a couple images taken at the SUNY Oneonta Observatory of a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter.

Conjunctions of three planets are a bit more rare, and seeing them can be downright exciting. Okay, maybe it's just me! Jupiter has been gradually moving across the night sky over the past months and is now fading into the sunset with each passing night. However, seemingly all of a sudden, at the end of May Venus and Mercury popped up out of the sunset to join it. May 26th marked the date of their closest approach to one another in our sky - their closest conjunction.

On that night, my wife and I were driving along the freeway in western New York state. It was a clear night and I had our Canon Rebel T3i DSLR camera + tripod, hoping to catch a shot. We stopped at a rest stop after sunset, but the view was not great:

We continued on our way, and I was happy to have gotten a series of images, with the best one shown above, and I was pleased to have been able to see it. However, the best was yet to come. The hills and ridges that obscured the view of these three planets broke open and we were suddenly driving along a flat stretch of highway. Seeing this, Ashley quickly pulled over and I set up my tripod on the side of the freeway. In between passing cars (who were no doubt wondering what was going on), I snapped a series of shots of the conjunction once again:

This experience was thrilling! I had plenty of time to make sure the camera was focused - a nontrivial task, I'm learning - and got a nice sequence of images of these three planets at their closest approach - just three degrees apart!

While this apparition is gradually dispersing, and Jupiter is now passing out of sight, the two inferior planets are not finished with their tango just yet. Over the next few weeks, these two planets will turn back for another pass at each other as Mercury moves back toward the Sun. The pair will even be joined by a thin crescent Moon on June 10.

(Images produced with Stellarium)

If you have a clear view of the northwestern horizon (no trees, hills, mountains, etc.), keep your eyes peeled after sunset each day. From Oneonta, this is a tough thing to view unless you are fairly high up.

Happy viewing!

Astrophotography and the May sky

The whirlwind is over! I'm embarrassed to see that my last posting was back in March. The last month of this semester has been just crazy with grading, reports, meetings, and all that. But it is finally over (mostly) and now I look forward to the summer. I'm teaching an introductory course during the first summer session though, so the break won't last long.

Over the last several months we have had some exciting things happen in astronomy. The comet PAN-STARRS flew by and I was able to share with you a picture of it on the western horizon. Stash and I went back a week later to observe it again and while I took more images, they did not turn out very well - it turns out that a camera is hard to focus when it's dark outside. I'm still learning. We observed it again in the telescope, but this time it first required using the camera to find it on the sky. Stash painstakingly slewed his telescope around in the vicinity of the comet for what must have been 10 or 15 minutes until it finally popped into view. Much dimmer, but still exciting!

It has now receded off into the darkness of the northern sky, a target for astroimagers with large telescopes and/or CCD cameras. In the meantime, I've continued developing my hobby of astrophotography by taking star trail images. Here is one of some trails over the observatory:

This image was created by turning up the ISO to 1600, turning down the f-stop to 4.5, and taking a series of 15-second exposures. The nearly full moon that night illuminated the observatory setting nicely. These images were then stacked with Photoshop's "Lighten" mode, thus allowing their light to add upon each other. However, as you can see, each trail has a small gap in it where I must have stopped for a reasonable moment to check something. Grr!

So I tried again:

There was no moon that night, so I had to use a flashlight to "paint" in the foreground. This image turned out pretty well, though the foreground buildings might be a bit too bright.
One last try, this time while camping with a few buddies:

This time, I turned down the ISO setting to 800 to reduce some of the electronic noise, increased the f-stop to 8 to increase the field depth a bit, then compensated by increasing the exposure time to 20 seconds. This is a compilation of 85 consecutive images, stacked together. The star trails themselves turned out nice, and the foreground trees are illuminated by the campfire. What is that bright streak through it, you ask? During a couple of these exposures, one of my friends walked in front of the camera (he didn't know I was taking pictures at the time) while wearing a headlamp. I think it adds an interesting artistic element to the picture, so I'm not altogether unhappy with it. I couldn't throw that exposure out because it would have left a gap in the star trails. That's okay though - it looks pretty cool nonetheless. Another such streak appears at the bottom of the image.

We've moved into spring now, and Orion and the winter constellations are basically gone for the year. What is there to look at now, you ask? If you turn to the north-east, Hercules is rising which means the Hercules cluster (Messier 13) is becoming visible. That's a binocular target, so aim for the west side of his broad "chest plate" and about halfway in between the two stars on that side. Look for a fuzzy spot, which represents a globular star cluster comprised of hundreds of thousands of stars, all very old indeed.

Saturn is nice and bright and will be for almost the entire summer:

Jupiter is on its way out for the year, but if you keep an eye on the western horizon you'll begin to see Venus appear nearby. They make a close pass on May 27 just after sunset, but look carefully. It will be quite low on the horizon, so if there are any trees or hills to your west you may not see it at all. Venus will continue to rise higher as the weeks progress.

That's all for now. I will report back at the end of the month with (hopefully) more images and an update on the June sky. Happy viewing!

A comet's tale

Oneonta weather giveth and Oneonta weather taketh away.

With comet C/2011 L4 (PAN-STARRS) having crossed into the northern hemisphere skies over the last week and a half, I have been excited to not only get to see it myself but potentially have my students observe it during an outdoor lab. I even entertained the thought of a public observing night, having already been scheduled for the 20th, where visitors could view the comet through the telescope. However, nature seems to have had other plans.

Cloudy night after cloudy night passed following the comet's venture into northern skies. With each evening's observations foiled, I grew less and less hopeful that there would ever be an opportunity to see the comet with the unaided eye before it began to fade. But on the evening of March 17, the spirit of St. Patrick must have been strong enough to force the clouds apart over our fair town and my new friend Stash alerted me to clear skies that night. Since the comet was at this point still fairly low in the western sky after sunset, we headed over to the baseball fields above the SUNY Oneonta campus - unfortunately, the observatory at College Camp does not have an ideal view of any horizon.

As we waited for the evening twilight to fade, our eyes scoured the horizon looking for something comet-like. We knew that it should be visible, albeit barely, but after waiting 30-40 minutes we still didn't see it. Stash, wondering if it had set already, got out his phone and pulled up an app that showed its position...and it was evidently still above the horizon. He had brought his 12-inch Dobsonian telescope with him and began to methodically survey the horizon, looking for anything fuzzy. In the meantime, I had my Canon Rebel T3i DSLR camera pointed to the west and was snapping 5-second exposures of the sky, trying to extract any detail out of the fading twilight.

After a few minutes, Stash found it! We were able to see through his telescope the comet's bright coma and tail, reddened slightly due to its low altitude above the horizon. I ran back to the camera and refined its aim, then took an 8-second exposure...and there it was!


I had just received the camera in the mail the previous Friday, so I was (and still am) in the process of learning how to adjust the settings to make a nice image. I took a number of pictures and we spent some time viewing it through the telescope and with our eyes alone. Once we knew where it was, we could see it just above the treeline, though it was admittedly not easy. What a thrill it was to have found the elusive object after what felt like a long wait! We both agreed that this may have been one of the most exciting astronomical objects we've seen, and eventually packed it up for the night when we could no longer feel our fingers.

Unfortunately, the student lab nights and the public viewing night were all clouded out. Next week is spring break, so by the time the students return the comet will be a telescope target instead of a naked-eye object. However, it should still look pretty nice through an eyepiece so maybe we'll get some nice weather. Over the next few weeks, the comet will dim as it moves gradually into the northern sky. In early April it will pass by the Andromeda Galaxy, so that should make for an excellent photo opportunity with the zoom lens. Now I'm hoping for clear skies that night!

C/2013 A1...meet Mars.

October 19, 2014 could be a big day for Mars, and the robots that currently roam about its surface. According to preliminary observations, a newly discovered comet named C/2013 A1 may be on a crash course for our red neighbor. I came across this report from Discovery News this morning and found it to be terribly interesting! Projections right now have the comet missing the Red Planet by a mere 63,000 miles (for comparison, that's about 1/4 the distance between Earth and the Moon). Imagine a comet flying between Earth and the Moon! Picture how brightly it would light up the sky! Amazing!

At this point, it's unknown how large the comet is. Comets are smaller than planets, typically between a few hundred meters and several miles in diameter, so if it does impact the planet it won't destroy it. However, the impact would be devastating and would spur on a global event the likes of which nobody alive has ever seen. If the comet is a few miles in diameter, it would produce a crater some 10-30 miles miles in diameter and probably kick up enough debris to completely enshroud the planet. We would get a first-hand look at the awesome power of nature, and perhaps a glimpse into the potential future for our own Earth.

At this point, measurements are too few (and the interaction too far in advance) to accurately determine whether there will be an impact or not. As more observations are made, the window through which the comet will pass will become smaller as its orbit is more precisely defined. Even if the comet misses Mars, it is still bound to be an exciting event - and with any luck, some of those roaming robots will get an opportunity to turn their cameras skyward and snap an image of the passing interloper from the outer solar system.

Speaking of exciting events, comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) continues to grow in brightness. Images from several sources, including Spaceweather.com, show the comets tail growing with time as viewers in the Southern Hemisphere are already able to see it with the naked eye.

Southern Hemisphere viewers actually have two comets: PANSTARRS and Comet C/2012 F6 (Lemmon). This video created by Alex Cherney shows both comets visible. Look for one comet (PANSTARRS) on the left side of the frame, and the other (Lemmon) near top-center, displaying a nice green hue:

Comets Lemmon and PanSTARRS sweeping through the Southern Skies from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.
Two comets - C/2012 F6 (Lemmon) and C/2011 L4 (PanSTARRS) can be seen moving through the Southern Sky in this short time lapse video.

By mid-March, we in the Northern Hemisphere should get a glimpse of PANSTARRS, so hopefully my posts in the near future will contain my own images of the sight. Happy viewing!

SUNY Oneonta Astronomy, now on Facebook!

The SUNY Oneonta Astronomy program now has a presence on Facebook. This is a page where schedules can be found for upcoming events, status updates will be posted for public observing and planetarium shows, images will be posted taken at our observatory, articles will be posted of general astronomy interest, and more. Check us out and "Like" us here: www.facebook.com/SUNYOneontaAstronomy.

Our planetarium was down for repairs during the month of January, which unfortunately meant we had to cancel one of our public shows. This brought be great pain! However, it has been repaired after a marathon session working with the computers, meaning our February 27 show is still a go. For those of you who were unable to register for it before it sold out, keep up with our schedule as I will be posting dates for the late spring and summer months soon.

The weather up here has been terrible lately. I could probably count on one hand the number of clear nights I've seen since 2013 began, which means that my ASTR 271 (Stars and Galaxies) students haven't been up to the observatory at all. One student doing a research project with me has been up once to take images of the Galilean moons of Jupiter, but that has been it. It would be a travesty if we were unable to get up there as a class for lab - I know many of my students are eager to use the telescopes.

While we wait for the Comet PANSTARRS to make its appearance next month, in the news recently has been the upcoming near-miss of the asteroid 2012 DA14. This space rock is expected to approach within just 17,000 miles of Earth, meaning it will actually fly inside the orbits of some of our orbiting satellites. There is no danger, however. NASA scientists have said that this asteroid will miss us and never pose a threat. What it WILL provide is an excellent opportunity to study the object up close. As space engineers go about planning a manned landing of an asteroid in the next decade, being able to study these rocks up close should provide valuable information about their surface terrain, composition, rotation, and more. NASA has provided this diagram depicting the asteroid's trajectory as it flies by:

On this image's scale, the Moon is roughly as far away as the width of this blog entry (depending on the size of your monitor). For those on the night-time side of Earth, this asteroid will still require a telescope to view but it will be moving really fast.  For those of us here in Oneonta, we'll be in daylight and won't be able to view it during its close approach.  We'll see it as it is receding away from us by the time the Sun has set here.

For more information about the flyby, check out this article from Space.com. I'm willing to bet that the SLOOH Space Camera will be airing the flyby online in real-time too!

Comet #1 of 2013...coming soon!

There has been growing excitement in the amateur and professional astronomical communities lately as 2013 opens before us. This year holds the potential for two (TWO!) naked-eye comets. These two comets are called C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) and C/2012 S1 (ISON). Since ISON won't be showing up for awhile, I'll discuss PANSTARRS in this post.

Comet PANSTARRS "baby picture", upon initial discovery.

While ISON seems to be getting more of the media headlines, PANSTARRS is actually the one we will get to see first. Originating in a distant region of the solar system called the "Oort Cloud", this comet, like ISON, appears to be making what may be its first every inward sojourn into the inner solar system.  This is exciting news for viewers, because this means its condition is pristine and any volatile materials on the surface have not yet been melted or sublimated away.  As the comet heats up, potentially for the first time ever, all the ices that are frozen in place will gradually sublimate into space, releasing a tremendous amount of dust in the process.  This material produces the fantastic tails that characterize comets.  As a comet makes more and more trips through the inner solar system, it is believed that the surface should gradually become tarnished as the ice and loose dust is removed and firmer rock is left behind.  Thus, a veteran comet isn't expected to produce much of a show...but a rookie should look fantastic!

There is always the possibility that because this comet hasn't been tested yet, it may be a dud.  It could break up as it warms, leaving us with nothing but a debris trail.  But let's not think about that.

Instead, here is a diagram from a recent Astronomy magazine I received, predicting the brightness of the comet ("apparent magnitude") and altitude in the sky.  The first (yellow) track from January to March is the altitude from the southern hemisphere, while the second (white) track from March to May is the northern visibility.  On the magnitude scale, smaller numbers mean that it's brighter.

Visibility track for comet PANSTARS.  Copyright: Astronomy magazine.

For us northerners, we are waiting for March when it finally pops up above the horizon.  By that point, it will have made its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) and should look quite bright in the night sky.  From our friends in the south, we'll know whether it's living up to expectations or not.

Those of you who have never seen a naked-eye comet before (and that includes me), let's join together for some anticipation.  We will look for it at the observatory in the spring at our public observing nights, so even as it fades in brightness in April we should still be able to see it easily in a telescope.

I can only imagine viewing a beautiful bright comet through our 1-meter telescope!