Incredible images of Saturn's Rings from Cassini

As the Cassini spacecraft continues it's death spiral into Saturn it is returning some fantastic new views of that planet's ring system.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Head on over to Universe Today for some stunning images and descriptive story.

Get Your Iridium Fix Before It’s Too Late!

Ever seen an Iridium flare?  Don't know what they are?  Iridium flares are the sudden increase in intensity of sunlight bouncing off the highly reflective surfaces of the Iridium communications satellites, and they are awesome to see.  But, the window of opportunity to see them is closing as the replacement Iridiums are already being sent up (SpaceX’s Falcon 9 delivered the first 10 of a new generation of Iridium NEXT satellites to low-Earth orbit back on January 14th)  and these will not produce the famous flares.

Complete story and guide to how to locate and view the flares can be found at Sky And Telescope.

Metallic Hydrogen? Really!!

Silvera et al., Science

We all learned in school that hydrogen, the simplest of all elements (one proton, one electron), is a gas - lighter than air, and abundant in the universe.  In fact the early universe was only hydrogen, but that's another story.  But years ago scientists speculated and theorized that under the proper conditions (very cold temperatures and high pressure) hydrogen could become a metal - yes, a metal.

Well, more than 80 years after it was first predicted, physicists have actually created metallic hydrogen - a mysterious form of hydrogen that could be capable of superconducting electricity without resistance at room temperature.  Really amazing stuff considering that this is something that has never existed before!

Read the complete story over at Science Alert.

In the quantum vacuum, no one can hear you scream.

Physicists say they've manipulated 'pure nothingness' and observed the fallout

ktsdesign/Shutterstock.com

According to quantum mechanics, a vacuum isn't empty at all. It's actually filled with quantum energy and particles that blink in and out of existence for a fleeting moment - strange signals that are known as quantum fluctuations.

For decades, there had only ever been indirect evidence of these fluctuations, but back in 2015, researchers claimed to have detected the theoretical fluctuations directly. And now the same team says they've gone a step further, having manipulated the vacuum itself, and detecting the changes in these strange signals in the void.

Full story at:  Science Alert

SpaceX Does it Again

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — SpaceX launched 10 satellites to orbit today (Jan. 14) in a rousing return-to-flight mission that also included a rocket landing on a ship at sea.

SpaceX - First stage of Falcon-9 on drone ship after today's launch

Complete story and fantastic video footage of the launch and spot-on landing of the Falcon-9 first stage can be seen at:  Space.com

Star Explosion Predicted in 2022!

Luminous Red Nova:  a stellar explosion thought to be caused by the merging of two stars. They are characterized by a distinct red color, and a light curve that lingers with resurgent brightness in the infrared. Luminous red novae are not to be confused with standard novae, explosions that occur on the surface of white dwarf stars.

WikiPedia

This is Larry Molnar and team’s model of the double star system KIC 9832227. The 2 stars are so close, they’re touching. They are an eclipsing binary as seen from Earth, meaning we see one star pass in front of the other with each spin of the system. Image via Calvin.edu.

Wouldn't it be great to be able to see a nova occur in our lifetime.  They occur fairly often in galaxies throughout the universe, but for stars in our galaxy, the chances are much smaller.  The last one was in 1987, which actually occurred in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a sister galaxy of our own Milky Way. 

Novae that occur close (within the galaxy) would appear very bright;  and supernovae would shine bright enough to be visible in broad daylight and would appear much brighter than the moon at night.  Luminous Red Novae would be dimmer but would still create a easy to see 'new star' in the night sky, outshining many of our existing constellation stars.

Well maybe we will get to see such an explosion.  Astronomer Larry Molnar and his colleagues and students have made an unprecedented prediction of a star explosion – due in the year 2022, or thereabouts, they say – that’ll become visible from Earth, even to those without telescopes. The star system is an eclipsing binary system (one star passes in front of the other as seen from Earth) called known as KIC 9832227. New evidence suggests that these two very close stars are getting closer and will merge explosively, soon. Molnar is presenting his findings today (January 6, 2017) at the 229th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Texas. 

The full story can be read at EarthSky.org

Astrophotography by Mikey - The Best of 2016

Another year, another collection of astrophotos.

Head on over to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUQ2FUAy6gg for the latest from Mikey.

New Telescope and First Light on the Pleiades

I trust everyone had a Merry Christmas and looking toward the new year.  After 2016's horrible weather conditions I'm praying for some better sky conditions this year.

Wifey got me a new 4" APO for Christmas.  For those of you who have no idea what an APO is, here are the basics:

APO = Apochromat, which means a lens that has better correction of chromatic and spherical aberration than the much more common achromat lenses.  OK, still a bit too scientific.  It boils down to a lens that produces sharp, crisp images with very little color aberrations. In telescope jargon, when someone talks about an APO they are referring to a refractor telecope that contains an APO lens combination. These are quality instruments and typically cost a lot more than the simple achromat versions.

William Optics GT102 f/6.9 APO

So my new addition is a William Optics GT102, a 102mm (4") APO scope.  I added the iOptron telescope mount to make this a complete, portable astrophotography-ready telescopic. 

iOptron iEQ30

Unlike a reflector telescope which reflects light off a large mirror (like my EdgeHD11) a refractor focuses light much like a very large telephoto lens does on a camera.  There are many pros and cons between a reflector and refractor, but typically, the refractor produces much cleaner, sharper images, with a bit more contrast than the SCT like my Edge since it doesn't have any obstruction in the light path like the SCT does due to the secondary mirror.

Now this new scope has a 4" objective lens. My EdgeHD-11 has an 11" mirror. The Edge will collect about 7.5x more light, but is also huge and bulky. It will outperform the APO on planets, the moon and small deep space objects like galaxies and small nebulae, as it's long focal length, combined with the extra light gathering, allows some high magnification factors. The APO is much smaller, light weight, and portable. It's shorter focal length and clear optical path produces nice wide angle views of the night sky.

It took a few days to get everything working correctly, and I still do not have all my software working with the new mount yet, but I was able to take a couple of images to test out the capabilities of the new scope and the mount. 

The following image show the Pleiades star cluster taken with my Canon50D attached to the GT102 with telecompressor and field flattener. This reduces the focal ratio to a fast f/5.5.  The image is a combination of ten, 1 minute exposures, stacked and processed in PixInsight.  Not bad for a quick test run. And the really big deal is that this image was taken without active guiding - just the mount running the RA axis!  The star images do show some trailing in RA, which may be due to periodic error (which I can correct for once I get the system shaken out).

Pleiades star cluster (Dec 29, 2016)
William Optics GT102; Canon50D
10x60sec ISO1600

I haven't imaged with my QHY10 astro camera yet.  I've also ordered some additional equipment to allow me to mount the GT102 on my CGEM mount, that holds the Edge. 

I've had some people asking about why you stack multiple images in astrophotography.  Well, that is a complicated discussion, so I'll save that one for a later blog.  But to demonstrate in a simple way why this technique is critically important in capturing deep space objects, I have uploaded the following additional images of the Pleiades as a demonstration.

The first image is a single frame from my camera; a 60sec exposure at ISO 1600. Since it is captured via my astro software, it is not yet debayered (the color is not present yet).

Single 60sec exposure - no debayer

 The second image is the debayered version.

Debayered version

The third image shows the result of post-processing with PixInsight to remove background sky light (light pollution effects) and to stretch the image, essentially pulling out the weak signal contained in the image. The stretch is the real magic in the post-processing.

Single 60sec exposure - post processed

This image is actually pretty good, but it has a lot of image noise caused by the camera's heat, the sensor electronic noise, etc. So the technique of stacking multiple images is used to reduce this 'noise'. Again, a discussion of how this works is left to a future blog. But, you can see that the stacking of just ten images really reduces the noise in the image, which allows me to stretch the image even more, bringing out more of the faint details. I usually stack 30-40 images minimum, but this was just a quick test of the new equipment.

The WO GT102 produces excellent images, and I am excited about what I should be able to produce with this new scope in the future.

Amateur Astronomers Discover a Binary Pulsar

Amateur astronomers discover a binary pulsar system on crowdsourced technology.
Astronomers have confirmed a rare pulsar system using Einstein@home and the power of personal computers. Einstein@Home is one of a slew of science projects for idle home computers. I haven't signed up yet, but it is an intriguing idea. 

Full article at Astronomy.com

'Pearls' on Jupiter - from the Juno spacecraft

Astro-imager Damian Peach reprocessed one of the latest images taken by Juno’s JunoCam during its 3rd close flyby of the planet on Dec. 11. The photo highlights one of the large ‘pearls’ (right) that forms a string of  storms in Jupiter’s atmosphere. A smaller isolated storm is seen at left. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS

The latest image of Jupiter, from the Juno spacecraft, showing the prominent white pearl as processed by Damian Peach, an amateur astronomer specializing in imaging the planets.  Damian Peach, an electronic engineer from Selsey, West Sussex, has spent the last ten years documenting the changing face of our solar system. An article about him can be read at Daily Mail.

The photos were taken during Sunday’s close flyby. At the time of closest approach — called perijove — Juno streaked about 2,580 miles above the gas giant’s roiling, psychedelic cloud tops traveling about 129,000 mph relative to the planet. Seven of Juno’s eight science instruments collected data during the flyby. At the time the photos were taken, the spacecraft was about 15,300 miles from the planet.

Details at Universe Today.

Light Speed a constant? - maybe not!

Festa/Shutterstock.com

The speed of light in a vacuum, or c, is pretty much the most fundamental constant in physics – and according to the general theory of relativity, gravity travels at the same rate.

But a new study suggests that the speed of light might not have always been this speed. In fact, in the early Universe, light might have outpaced gravity, and this new hypothesis could solve one of the biggest problems in physics.

Complete story at Science Alert.