Total Lunar Eclipse - Wednesday Oct 8, 2014

If you are up early on Wednesday morning and have a clear sky to the western horizon you might want to take a glimpse of the 2nd total eclipse of the moon of four due in 2014/2015.

Astronomy magazine has the details.

Hypertune of mount

After a number of attempts to resolve a problem with guiding, I determined that some severe backlash in the DEC axis and some moderate backlash in the RA axis is probably the cause. Although gear mesh adjustment would help resolve the issue I decided to do a complete overhaul of the mount by performing the HyperTune procedure from Deep Space Products.

This service is provided by DSP but they also provide a DIY kit, and I didn't want to wait the 4 weeks for the turnaround. So I ordered the kit earlier this week and spent all day yesterday doing the tune up. Here is a before image and the disassembled mount.

After the rebuild was complete I set up the mount on the pad and made some final mechanical adjustments. The axes are now silky smooth and the backlash in both axes seems almost non-existent. However, the proof is yet to come when I test the mount later this evening with the OTA attached. Now I just need the skies to cooperate.

Where Will Philae Land on Comet 67P?

On November 11th, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft will dispatch the heavily instrumented Philae lander to an area called "Site J" on one end of Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

For details see the article in Sky and Telescope.

Comet Jacques - Coma

It turns out that there was just a bit too much noise in the high ISO images I took of comet Jacques back on August 26th. Stacking and processing them in PixInsight revealed a slightly better view of the nucleus/coma of the comet, but the improvement was marginal at best. If there is a tail in there I didn't capture it.

Comet Jacques - Part 2

While I'm still processing the closeup images of comet Jacques from August 26, I couldn't resist the clear skies we got in Maryland this past Thursday and Friday evenings. Although I'm still calibrating the new motor control unit on my telescope mount I was able to image Jacques as well as M103 (Star cluster) and M15 (Globular Cluster).

For the comet I decided to image sixty 30 second images and put them together into an animated gif so you can see the rate at which the comet is traversing the sky. I actually only imaged 41 photos since I was fighting off dew and other issues but the animation is still kinda cool.



Comet Jacques August 29, 1:25-1:47 AM
Celestron EdgeHD-11

Comet Jacques

Initial image of comet C/2014 E2 Jacques

Here is the initial (no post processing to remove noise and bad pixel artifacts) image of the nucleus of comet Jacques taken on August 26, 2014. This is the result of 60 individual 30 second images of the comet taken through a Celestron EdgeHD-11" telescope at prime focus (108x magnification).

The dimmer dotted lines are bad pixels. The brighter dotted line is the result of a star image drifting in the field of view since the stacked images were centered on the comet and the comet was moving pretty rapidly during the 30 minutes of total imaging time.

I will be removing noise and bad pixels later and will repost the hopefully improved image.

Comet C/2014 E2 (Jacques)
Celestron EdgeHD-11" (prime focus)/Canon 50D
60x30sec ISO-1600 (30min total)

Where's the Lithium?

Measurement at Big Bang Conditions Confirms Lithium Problem

Lithium, aside from hydrogen and helium, is one of the three elements that are created before the first stars form. These three elements were – according to the theory – already created early on, through what is known as “primordial nucleosynthesis.”

But, many observations of astronomers show that the oldest stars in our Milky Way contain only half as much lithium-7 as predicted. So where is all the missing Lithium?

See the complete article at:  HZDR

Back in Action!

Well the new motor board arrived on Saturday - but I was at the dump taking care of household chores. Of course, the shipment required a signature and so it went back to the Post Office. No worry, the sky was cloudy and rainy all weekend anyhow.

Wifey picked up the package at the PO on Monday (they didn't ask for a signature!) and I installed it that evening. Checked out the mount for the basic operations and all seemed OK. Didn't have the time to test the guiding system yet - hope to do that this Friday when skies are supposed to be clear and the humidity low.

Disaster - sorta!

Well, it had to happen. As anyone who knows about the "Mangieri Cloud", technology and the local Mangieri household don't get along. It seems that whatever I buy, build, assemble, or otherwise acquire will very soon develop a problem. This is how the cloud works. I even told a salesclerk in a local store that I wanted to exchange a product while I was still in the checkout line. When asked why I told her: "to save me the trouble of getting home, finding the item to be defective, and then having to drive back to the store to get a replacement!"

So, last weekend, out of the blue, after I had setup the complete telescope system with full imaging capability, the telescope mount motor control board failed. Had to cancel the session, pack everything back up and find a vendor to replace the unit. Why, isn't the board under warranty, after all it has only been 10 months since I got the mount? Well, it would have been if I hadn't jury-rigged a power coupler on it the very day I got the telescope (see post October 26, 2013). New part costs $350 (not in the budget!). Yikes. I guess high-end, expensive equipment comes with pricey replacement parts. Funny thing (OK, not so funny) is that its probably a $1.50 component on the board that went bad, but nobody fixes circuit boards anymore, and without a schematic I don't know what type of component to get. Maybe some day I'll experiment and see if I can fix it - then I would have a spare.

New board should arrive this weekend, just in time for the cloudy skies and rain :)

A day before the board failure I was able to get some good subs of the Ring Nebula. Haven't processed them yet, but should be posting them within the next few days.

Apollo 11 - 45 Years Ago Today

“Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.”

Where were you 45 years ago when that message was beamed to earth from the Moon?  Hard to believe it was almost half a century ago.

Read the complete story at NasaSpaceflight.com

M27 - The Dumbbell Nebula

Last Friday evening was an unbelievable evening for July in Maryland. The temperature was in the low 60's, dew point way low, no wind, clear skies. Yeah, a bit of turbulence in the atmosphere which would have made planetary imaging a bit difficult, but the clarity of the sky was awesome. About the only problem was the waxing moon - but once it set, everything was a go.

So here is the result. The Dumbbell nebula in all its glory.

Dumbbell Nebula (M27) - July 5, 2014
Celestron EdgeHD-11 Prime Focus
20x180 sec ISO800