So, what's up with Betelgeuse?

Betelgeuse and Antares are the two nearest red supergiant stars that are characterized as core-collapse Type-II supernova (SN II) progenitors. Recent photometry shows that Betelgeuse has been declining in brightness since October 2019, and has now reached a modern all-time low of +1.12 mag on December 7, 2019. Betelgeuse is a complicated variable star whose period of ~420 +/-15 days is marginal at best, and this period varies a lot throughout the years. Betelgeuse also has a longer-term (5 - 6 years) and shorter term (100 - 180 days) period of variability with smaller brightness changes. This latest observation has Betelgeuse shining the faintest in the 25+ years of continuous monitoring by astronomers and 50 years of photoelectric V-band spectroscopic observations.

Amateur astronomers around the world have been commenting on the very obvious dimming of one of the key components of the Orion constellation. Many are waiting for Betelgeuse to finally 'go off' which would produce the most fantastic event in modern time astronomy. Indeed, scientists have predicted that Betelgeuse is ripe to go supernova soon, but soon is a relative term, and ranges from 100,000 years and up. No one knows for sure and recent activity may indicate a readiness of the star to enter the pre-supernova phase. Betelgeuse has dipped deeper in brightness before in the 1940's and 50's (long term brightness curve).

Will we see Betelgeuse 'pop' in our lifetime? Probably not, but if it did, you'd certainly know it. No, it would not end life on Earth. No, it won't become a second sun. Betelgeuse is about 450 light years from us and so would appear as a very, very bright star if it exploded. A supernova would need to be less than 50 light years to really affect life on earth. however, when this does happen, Betelgeuse will brighten enormously for a few weeks or months, perhaps as bright as the full moon and visible in broad daylight. And then, Orion will look very different than it does today!

Nope! Jupiter's Red Spot is not disappearing

No, Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is not disintegrating, physicist claims

Earlier this year, several amateur astronomers spotted an unusual anomaly on the planet Jupiter: bits of the gas giant's famed Great Red Spot appeared to be flaking off, raising fears that the planet's most identifiable feature might be showing signs of disappearing. But Philip Marcus, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, begs to differ. He argues that reports of the red spot's death have been greatly exaggerated.

A dramatic view of Jupiter's Great Red Spot and its surroundings, courtesy of Voyager 1 on Feb. 25, 1979, when the spacecraft was 5.7 million miles (9.2 million kilometers) from Jupiter.
NASA/JPL/Public Domain

According to Prof. Marcus, however, his computer models demonstrate that the flaking is not a death knell for the Great Red Spot at all. Rather, it's a very natural weather phenomenon arising from the complex fluid dynamics of Jupiter's atmosphere.

Read about it at arstechnica.com

NGC 7635 - Bubble nebula

The Bubble Nebula in SHO

NGC 7635 (The Bubble Nebula)
GT102 f/5.5 APO with ASI1600mm Pro Camera
7.5 hrs total integration time

NGC 7635, also known as the Bubble Nebula, Sharpless 162, or Caldwell 11, is an H II region emission nebula in the constellation Cassiopeia. It lies close to the direction of the open cluster Messier 52. The "bubble" is created by the stellar wind from a massive hot, 8.7 magnitude young central star, SAO 20575. (Wikipedia)

The Bubble Nebula is 7 light-years across and lies at a distance of 7,100 light-years from Earth. The star forming this nebula is about 45 times more massive than our sun. Gas on the star gets so hot that it escapes away into space as a "stellar wind" moving at an incredible 4 million miles per hour. This outflow sweeps up the cold, interstellar gas in front of it, forming the outer edge of the bubble. (Hubblesite)

Taken with my 102mm APO refractor and ASI1600mm camera, this is a narrowband image processed in the Hubble palette (SHO). Additional details on the image capture can be found at Bubble Nebula

Transit of Mercury, November 11, 2019

Well the day has finally arrived - the day of Mercury's transit across the sun.

Weather forecast was for 100% high cloud on Monday, the last transit of Mercury until 2032.  Yikes, usually a forecast like that is bad news - no chance at astrophotography. But when you are imaging a small black dot crossing the face of the sun, high clouds, if thin, are not a real problem. So the gear went out and I was able to capture most of the event.

First contact was around 7:40 am but due to the topography of my property the sun was not visible at that time. It wasn't until 8:26 am before the sun climbed sufficiently to peek out behind my garage/workshop and the southeastern tree line. I had some initial problems with getting the software up and running. Actually, it is a long story - I didn't decide to use my Canon 50D as the primary still camera until that morning and it turned out that the licenses to both my software applications that I use when imaging through the 50D had expired. The last time I used them was during the total solar eclipse of 2017. By the time I downloaded the new versions and paid for the upgrades it was almost 9:00.

But I finally did get everything up and running, although for some reason (still unknown) the mount was not able to keep the sun centered in the sensor of the camera and so I had to re-adjust every 20 minutes or so which made post-processing a nightmare.

Here is a single sub from the Canon. The sunspot-bare sun makes it easy to find the planet - the small black dot just left of center.

Transit of Mercury - November 11, 2019  9:12 a.m.
GT102 f/5.5 Canon 50D 1/1000 sec ISO 200

The whole session has been captured on a YouTube video on my channel which you can view via this link: Transit

A Japanese spacecraft is coming back to Earth with samples from a nearby asteroid

As reported in CNN Space+Science ...

For a little over a year, a tiny unmanned Japanese spacecraft has been sampling the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, capturing images, blasting a little crater in it, and firing a "bullet" into its exterior to dislodge particles.

Now, after traveling about 180 million miles, Hayabusa2 has begun its yearlong journey back to Earth with valuable data and soil samples in tow.

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency hopes to use the materials to explore the origins of the planets and the source of Earth's oceans.

More details on this exciting effort can be found at CNN

Strangeness at the Boundary of Interstellar Space

Voyager 2 passes into interstellar space in this artist’s illustration.          NASA

NASA has found something weird and unexplained in the boundary between the Sun and interstellar space. On November 5, 2018, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft crossed into interstellar space, some six years after its twin, Voyager 1, made the same transition. There, it found something new and puzzling that its predecessor had missed.

“There appear to be cosmic ray boundary layers on both sides of the heliopause, with the outer one only being evident at the position of Voyager 2,” says Edward Stone, a professor of physics at Caltech and project scientist on the Voyager program since its inception in the 1970s. “This cosmic ray boundary layer on the outside of the heliopause was not evident at the place and time where Voyager 1 crossed it.”

See full article in VICE.

Two Star clusters and a Dark Nebula

I can't describe how great it is to have all my equipment operating at peak performance. And with a run of clear nights over the last 6 weeks I've finally arrived at the point where I am wishing for some cloudy nights so I can have the time to process all the images I captured!

Last time I wrote about imaging the Cygnus Wall, part of the North America Nebula. I did get about 7.5 hours of integration time in the HaOiiiSii (Hubble palette) and RGB stars, but the post-processing of the subs is giving me a whole bunch of trouble. So while I'm still trying to get this done, I took a break and decided to process some of the simpler objects taken with the standard RGB color palette.

First up is NGC 6712, a small globular cluster in the constellation of Scutum.

NGC 6712 Globular Cluster - September 26, 2019
GT102 f/5.6 - ASI1600mm Pro
20x60sec RGB 

Next, another globular cluster, M71, in the constellation of Sagitta. M71, or NGC 6838, is a star cluster at a distance of about 12,000 light years away from Earth and spans some 27 light years across.

M71 Globular Cluster  -  September 22, 2019
GT102 APO f/5.6 - ASI1600mm Pro
30x10sec RGB

Finally, my first dark nebula, is LDN 1165, in Cephus. Nebulae are giant clouds of dust and gas. Dark nebulae have a higher concentration of dust, which blocks almost all the light from the background stars, thus producing a region of the sky that is dark and featureless - what appears to be a hole in the sky.

LDN 1165  -  September 22, 2019
GT102 APO f/5.6 - ASI1600mmPro
60x60Lum, 30x60RGB

With the cloudy nights coming up, I think I'll be able to complete the processing of my other images. Stay tuned.

New Equipment Up and Running

For those of you following my blog you know of the myriad of problems I've been plagued with over the last couple of years trying to get all my telescope equipment to 'play nice' together. Well I finally decided to try an option that I've been examining for months - placing a NUC (small PC) mounted on my pier so that all cameras, focusers and mount cables can be connected directly to the USB ports without having to travel from my notebook to the mount over USB-LAN. This would also have the side benefit of improving my cable managemnet - reducing the dangling cables tht could cause snags and otherwise make it bad to image overnight unattended.

Well the decision paid off big. Not only did all my connection issues go away, but the USB3 ports made the whole system operate much faster. I've now tested the setup over three nights and not a single problem occurred - well, maybe a few, but they were human in nature not due to equipment faults.

Tonight I'm going to image the Cygnus wall - part of the North America nebula. I also have Sh2-101 (the Tulip nebula) taken last evening (and earlier) that I need to process. So, while I was waiting I took a quick single sub of the moon while the sky was still dusky. A green filter was used to help bring out the contrast.

Moon - September 7, 2019
GT102 f/5.5  ASI1600mm   0.005 seconds  Green Filter

M16, the Eagle Nebula, in Ha only

M16 - The Eagle Nebula - July 25 & 27, 2019
WO-GT102 APO (4" f/5.6) refractor and ASI1600mm Pro Camera
42x300 sec Ha subs

Summer offers some of the most interesting and colorful deep space objects in the night sky. This is because the arm of the Milky Way stretches up from the southern horizon revealing a bunch of bright nebulae. Unfortunately, my telescopes are set up in my backyard and the property is sort of "in a bowl" so to speak - trees line the horizon all the way around blocking any object lower than about 20-25 degrees in altitude. So whenever the skies are clear enough to capture some of these objects I have a limited window in which to get them.

Over the last month or two I've been attempting to capture M16, the Eagle Nebula, in SHO narrowband. As I mentioned in my last post, I ran into all kinds of problems - equipment failures, cloudy or poor sky conditions, etc. Bottom line is that never got good data in Oiii or Sii (the O and S in the SHO Hubble pallette). Not to let that bug me I decided to take the good Ha data and process a monochrome, Ha-only image of M16.

So here it is in all its B&W glory. In turns out that monochrome Ha data can be extremely interesting as it tends to show more of the finer, more tenuous detail in the outer edges of the nebula. Once I get the remaining Oiii and Sii data I can reprocess the image in color - that is, if I can get the data within the next week or so as M16 is setting earlier and earlier each night and soon will be out of my view. Forecast is for clear nights this week, so who knows - maybe I can get the remaining subs.

The Eagle Nebula is part of a diffuse emission nebula, or H II region (Ha). This region is known to contain active star formation and is about 7000 light-years distant. The cluster associated with the nebula has approximately 8100 stars and it is this group of stars that are the source of the energy that makes the nebula glow. Because this was taken with my short focal length, wide field refractor, the famous "Pillars of Creation" are a bit difficult to see. The Pillars were made famous in a 1995 Hubble telescope photo and has become the most recognizable Hubble image. Maybe next year, when I replace my defective large scope mount, I'll capture this again with much higher magnification and resolution.

NGC 6979 - Fleming's Triangular Wisp and Pickering's Triangle

NGC 6979 in HOO

Well it's been over 5 months since I've been able to image anything - lots of reasons, including the cloudy/rainy skies, busy at work, and telescope equipment failures. But over the past two weeks the skies cleared, equipment repaired (or replaced in some cases) and I was able to get back out under the night sky.

I spent a good amount of time on M16, the Eagle Nebula, but this past weekend I managed to capture part of the Veil nebula, Specifically, Fleming's Triangular Wisp and Pickering's Triangle. The entire Veil is large - it is made up of the visible portions of what is known as the Cygnus Loop, a supernova remnant. Many portions of the nebula have acquired their own individual names and catalogue identifiers, hence the long title.

The entire nebula is too large to capture in one image. The source supernova was a star 20 times more massive than the Sun, which exploded around 8,000 years ago. The remnants have since expanded to cover an area of the sky roughly 3 degrees in diameter (about 6 times the diameter, or 36 times the area, of the full Moon). The distance to the nebula is not precisely known, but is believed to be about 1,470 light-years.

NGC 6979
August 10-11, 2019   WO GT102 APO (4" Refractor)
ASI1600 mm Pro  8.3 Hours (50x300sec Ha; 50x300sec Oiii)

Here are two pieces of the nebula taken in bi-color, narrow-band imaging. Fifty exposures (or subs as we astrophotographers call them) were taken with a Hydrogen Alpha filter (Ha) and fifty with an Oxygen Filter (Oiii). These filters allow only a very, very narrow wavelength of light to get through to the camera's sensor. Since supernova remnants glow in both Ha and Oiii the use of these NB filters is ideal. The added benefit is that all the light pollution (and even the nearly full moon at the time of the image) is almost completely eliminated!  The center top of the image is Fleming's Triangular Wisp; the larger portion, to the right, is Pickering's Triangle.  The full resolution image can be found on Astrobin where I keep all my photos.

Later this summer I may try to capture the whole Veil using a process known as mosaic imaging where the telescope takes different subs from different parts of the sky and then stitches them together to form a whole image.  This takes a lot of time and all the equipment needs to be operating at peak efficiency.  

Later this weekend I will be processing the images I took of M16.  Look for M16 soon.

Jupiter - a target again - amateur detects impact on the giant planet!

It has happened a number of times in the past - in fact, 7 recorded impacts since July of 1994.  Texas amateur astronomer Ethan Chappel recorded this latest impact while waiting for some Perseid meteors to flash across the night sky. His Celestron 8 telescope captured the event as a flash of light in the planet's South Equatorial Belt (SEB).

For more, read the complete story at Sky and Telescope.