Artemis 1 cubesat has a problem

Artemis 1, the first mission of the Artemis program to return astronauts to the moon was launched successfully November 16, 2022, at 01:47:44 EST. It's mission - to test the Orion spacecraft, especially its heat shield. The Orion capsule is currently in orbit around the moon. Secondary missions include ten CubeSats, also on a trajectory to the Moon. 

One of those sats, the LunaH-Map spacecraft, failed to ignite it's engine, probably due to a stuck valve (how many times have we heard that one before). Read the complete story at Space.com.

Total Lunar Eclipse of Nov 8, 2022

The last total lunar eclipse until March of 2025 is now in the past.  At first, I didn't expect to see it let alone photograph it as the weather forecasts were all calling for high cirrus clouds from 3:00am to 7:00am. The partial would phases would be OK, but if the moon goes really dark during the total phase, the clouds may have made it near impossible to see.

I prayed before I left the house for the skies to clear. I was planning to drive to my church in Westminster MD since the tree line surrounding my house where the permanent scope is set up doesn't allow any views of objects lower than 25 degrees and most of the event would occur at 20 degrees or less, with mid eclipse at 10.

Arriving at the church around 3:15am the western sky was covered with cirrus clouds, some fairly thick. I decided to setup my portable WO GT102 refractor with my Canon 50D as the imaging camera. Once I had everything ready to go I started taking a few exposures and soon after first contact with the umbra the skies cleared and remained so for the whole event - praise the Lord!

There were, however, a couple of issues. One was I forgot to pack the cable for my remote shutter release, so I had to trigger it by hand, which would potentially cause some vibration of the scope during exposures greater than 1/100 second. Second, was the wind, typical for the location at my church which is at the top of a hill - great 360 degree views, but usually has a breeze. At first it was manageable, but when totality was about to commence (requiring the longest exposures) it really picked up, with gusts reaching 20MPH.

But I was still able to get a few good shots. The first image is a montage of subs from first contact to full phase.

Details of the exposures are as follows:

              Time             Exposure

Image   (EST)   ISO  (sec)

  1          4:06    400  1/1000

  2          4:17    400  1/1000

  3          4:26    400  1/1000

  4          4:55    400  1/200

  5          5:06    400  1/60

  6          5:14    400  1/10

  7          5:17    800  1/20

  8          5:18    800  1

The second image is the moon near mid-eclipse. Time: 5:50am, 2 sec, ISO800.

I did take one other photo. That was my setup, at 5:49, that I took with my iPhone. Considering I had to hold it as steady as I could for 3 seconds it came out pretty good. You can even see the Pleaides just above the moon.  All in all, a great evening (or should I say, morning!).

Upcoming Lunar Eclipse - November 8

The last Total Lunar Eclipse until 2025 will be coming our way on early Tuesday morning, November 8, 2022.  And I mean 'early'. The partial phase starts at 4:09 EST, with total starting at 5:16 EST, lasting until 6:42 EST. 

Not only is this an early morning event, but the moon will be quite low in the western horizon. When the total phase starts the moon will only be about 15 degrees high in the western sky for us here in the Maryland/Washington DC area. So you'll need to find a clear view to see it. The moon will set while it's still total, so we can only watch the first half of the event.

Right now, as I post this, the weather is so-so, with clear skies up to the start of the event and high, cirrus clouds getting in the way during the event. Depending on the thickness of the clouds and how dark the moon will be you may loose it from view. Dusk will really make things worse around 5:50.

Lunar eclipses are can easily be observed with the naked eye, but binoculars will really enhance the view.

Full details on the eclipse can be found at Sky and Telescope.

More from the JWST - Fingerprints in Space

A new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals a remarkable cosmic sight: at least 17 concentric dust rings emanating from a pair of stars. Located just over 5,000 light-years from Earth, the duo is collectively known as Wolf-Rayet 140 (NASA).

When I first saw this I though for sure it was a test of the optics. Complete story can be found at: NASA

The Coathanger

Seems like this year has been an interesting one for astrophotography. Either the skies are cloudy, or they are very clear but during the full moon. What to do. 

Well, when the sky is bright and deep sky imaging is not ideal, it is an opportunity for imaging some of the brighter objects the universe has to offer. In this case the Coathanger.

The Coathanger
September 10, 2022 - WO GT102/ASI2600mm
f/5.6 107 minutes

The Coathanger is not a constellation, but a pattern of stars that is not one of the traditionally established, named constellations.  These collections are known as asterisms. It is a small collection of physically unrelated stars, also known as Brocchi’s cluster and Collinder 399. Although It looks very much like its namesake, and easy to make out with a pair of binoculars, you will need a dark sky and know just where to look.

DART Hits Dimorphos

Certainly not of the level of technology that Captain Kirk discovered on Miramanee's planet, which was ultimately used to save her planet from doom (that was science fiction of course) but impressive nonetheless was the successful impact of DART – the Double Asteroid Redirect Test on Dimorphos, a small asteroid moon of Didymos. DART struck the little asteroid – hoping to nudge it slightly off-orbit – at 7:14 p.m. ET (23:14 UTC) on Monday, September 26, 2022.

Didymos-B aka Dimorphos

I remember back in the day discussing the unlikelihood of anything that could redirect an asteroid, but here we are, a first test of doing that very thing. Now this asteroid is very, very small compared to the one on that Star Trek Episode (The Paradise Syndrome, which aired Oct 4, 1968) but it is a first ever to test the viability of redirecting an asteroid impact threat to Earth. 

NASA has a number of images and videos of the impact. 

Here is the series of stills taken as DART approaches Dimorphos.

And here is a actual view from the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS): A NASA and University of Hawaii project to patrol the sky every night in search of incoming asteroids as DART hits the asteroid.

EarthSky has a good writeup on the mission. We won't know for sure yet if the mission was a complete success. We need to wait for data to come in on the change in Dimorphos' orbit. 

The Eastern Veil and the 'Bat'

Yikes.  It's been almost two months since my last post. Have I been that busy on other things? Why, YES. Work, gardening, my retirement business, church activities and a new puppy. Now that's a lot of things keeping me busy.

Cloudy skies for most of the time made imaging a real challenge. But I did get in a few objects; just took awhile to find the time to process them. Turns out that a recent image run is what I processed first. So here it is: the Eastern Veil nebula and a starless cropped close up of the section known as the 'Bat'.

The Eastern Veil Nebula is part of the larger Veil Nebula, a cloud of ionized gas and dust. It is located in the constellation Cygnus the Swan.  This object is actually the visible portion of the much larger Cygnus Loop, which itself is a supernova remnant.

Eastern Veil - GT102/ASI2600 - f/5.6
August 19, 30 and 31, 2022
46x300sec Ha; 46x300sec Oiii; 20x60sec RGB

The star that was the source of the supernova weighed in at 20 times more massive than the Sun and exploded some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. If you were living at that time you would have seen an object in the daytime sky that would have been brighter than the planet Venus. During the 20,000 years since the explosion the remnants of that star have now expanded to an area roughly 3 degrees in diameter (six times the size of the Moon). It is estimated to be about 2,400 light-years distant.

This rendition is a combination of the Ha and Oiii narrowband (HOO) palette combined with RGB stars.  A total of 8 hours integration of the narrowband and 1 hour for the stars.

The lower section of the nebula is known as the 'Bat'. I cropped the original NB image to capture just the Bat and removed the stars to produce a starless version. I generally don't like starless astrophotos but this nebula looks pretty good when portrayed starless.

The "Bat"

First full color image from the James Webb telescope

Well here it is. The first full color infrared image released from the James Webb telescope. And it’s awesome! This is a region of the sky that represents an area the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length.

Each of those colorful ellipses and oblong objects are distant galaxies. Only the bright objects with the diffraction spikes are local stars from our own galaxy. And the curved sections around the middle is a even more distant galaxy whose light is being gravitationally bent by a foreground galaxy allowing it's faint light to be magnified and made visible. 

Wow - can't wait for more - and there is more to come for sure!

Full details can be read at NASA and here at SkyandRockets.

First James Webb image to be released today

NASA

The first full color image from the new James Webb telescope will be announced later today. The image, known as “Webb’s First Deep Field,” will be the deepest and highest-resolution view of the universe ever captured. Biden is scheduled to release it today, Monday, July 11, at 5:00pm.

Details on the Webb telescope can be found at nasa.gov

Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS)

C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) is an Oort cloud comet with an inbound hyperbolic orbit, discovered in May 2017 at a distance beyond the orbit of Saturn when it was 16 AU (2.4 billion km) from the Sun. It had been in the constellation of Draco from July 2007 until August 2020. As of June 2022, the estimated distance of the comet from the Sun is ±5000 km. The comet is record breaking because it is already becoming active at such a distance. Only comet Hale–Bopp produced such a show from that distance with a similar nucleus. However, this comet will not be as visible as Hale–Bopp was in 1997 in part because it does not come nearly as close to the Sun.

Comet C/2017 K2 (PANSTARRS)
June 25, 2022
GT102 - ASI533MC - 50x180 sec exposures

On its way to perihelion, C/2017 K2 is currently shining at about mag 7. Missing is the typical greenish glow of a comet's halo that comes from diatomic carbon (C2), a simple yet unstable form of elementary carbon. C/2017 K2 is too far from the sun for the reaction to occur.

M20 - The Trifid Nebula

With the pier maintenance completed it was time to start imaging again.

The Trifid Nebula (catalogued as Messier 20 or M20 and as NGC 6514) is an H II region in the north-west of Sagittarius in a star-forming region in the Milky Way's Scutum-Centaurus Arm. It was discovered by Charles Messier on June 5, 1764. Its name means 'three-lobe'. The object is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars, an emission nebula (the relatively dense, reddish-pink portion), a reflection nebula (the mainly NNE blue portion), and a dark nebula (the apparent 'gaps' in the former that cause the trifurcated appearance, also designated Barnard 85). Viewed through a small telescope, the Trifid Nebula is a bright and peculiar object, and is thus a perennial favorite of amateur astronomers. (wiki)

Trifid Nebula (M20) - June 27, 2022
William Optics GT102 and ASI533MC Camera
146x60 sec at f/5.5

My image of the Trifid is part of a study I am conducting on the benefits of taking lots of short exposure subs vs a moderate amount of longer exposure subs. Longer subs are prone to satellite and aircraft crossings, clouds, and other image corrupting events, and inaccurate guiding (although my AP1100 mount produces almost perfect guiding). So, it would be really good if you could, say for example, take a hundred 30 second subs and make it produce as good a final image as ten 300 second subs - the total integration time is the same; 50 minutes. 

Preliminary results are encouraging as demonstrated by the image above which was processed as 146 single 60 second broadband subs. Narrowband imaging requires substantially longer subs to collect sufficient light through the special filters and so would not benefit from this technique. But OSC (one shot color) and LRGB filtered mono cameras would benefit.

Check back later when I post the complete study results.