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.

Say Goodbye to Cassini

A lovely view of Saturn and its rings as seen by the Cassini spacecraft on Aug. 12, 2009.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

Cassini Is About To Graze Saturn’s Rings In Mission Endgame

There is a Twitter-bot that randomly tweets out “NOOOOOOOO Cassini can’t be ending!” (with varying amounts of “O’s”). @CassiniNooo represents the collective sigh of sadness and consternation felt by those of us who can’t believe the the historic and extensive Cassini mission will be over in just a matter of months.

And next week is the beginning of the end for Cassini. Se the complete story at Universe Today and minute by minute updates on Saturn.JPL.NASA.gov

Are You Ready For the Supermoon?

Supermoon!  What's that? 

Stefano Sciarpetti

Well, unless you're totally unconnected to the cyber-world, you've undoubtedly heard that we are going to have a supermoon this Monday.  A supermoon occurs when the positions of the moon and earth are just right so that the moon is closest to us in it's orbit and full at the same time.

The details about the specific geometry can be found at EarthSky and the NASA site, so you can link there to read all about it.  The quick and dirty is that the moon becomes full at about 8:52 AM on November 14th, and will reach perigee – the moon’s closest point to Earth for this month – within an one and one-half hours of that time - ergo, a supermoon.  This one is the largest since 1948. The full moon won’t come this close to Earth again until November 25, 2034.

A supermoon, or perigee full moon can be as much as 14% bigger and 30% brighter than an apogee full moon. But you might not be able to tell the difference, especially if it's slightly cloudy, or even if you've not looked at the moon before - since there is nothing to compare to.  But, it's worth the effort to check it out, the only thing you need are your pairs of eyes.

When should you look?  Both Sunday and Monday nights would be good (note: weather forecasts for the Maryland area are calling for cloudy skies on Monday.)

As for me, well I'll take a quick look.  But since the moon is a bright 'annoying' orb for us astrophotographers I'll be happy when its all over and I can get back to deep space photography in dark skies!

Mount repaired - back to imaging!

I finally got my mount issues resolved (at least most of the way).  I know for a fact that I am overloading my mount with equipment and that is the basic reason for its failure to track adequately at the prime focus focal lengths.

However, after rebuilding the mount and re-routing the cabling I am now able to use the wide field camera.  I anticipate getting the longer focal lengths to work as well, but having the wide field Hyperstar operational is a big plus.

So here is the first image since the mount starting having problems back in August:

IC 1805 - The Heart Nebula
EdgeHD11 w/Hyperstar;  QHY10 Camera
October 24, 2016  30x120sec

The Heart Nebula, IC 1805, Sharpless 2-190, lies some 7500 light years away from Earth and is located in the Perseus Arm of the Galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. This is an emission nebula showing glowing ionized hydrogen gas and darker dust lanes.

The very brightest part of this nebula (the knot at the top right) is separately classified as NGC 896, because it was the first part of this nebula to be discovered.

The nebula's intense red output and its configuration are driven by the radiation emanating from a small group of stars near the nebula's center. This open cluster of stars known as Melotte 15 contains a few bright stars nearly 50 times the mass of our Sun, and many more dim stars that are only a fraction of our Sun's mass.

Wikipedia

European Mars Lander's Crash Site Seen By NASA Probe

The european Mars lander, expected to soft land on Mars earlier this week, apparently crashed into Mars at a high rate of speed. An orbiting NASA spacecraft has spotted its grave, European Space Agency (ESA) officials said.

The lander, named Schiaparelli, stopped communicating with mission control about 1 minute before its planned touchdown on Mars Wednesday morning (Oct. 19). Newly released photos of the landing site by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) seem to confirm what ExoMars team members had suspected — that Schiaparelli died a violent death.

This comparison of before-and-after images by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows two features likely created during the Oct. 19, 2016 landing attempt of the ExoMars Schiaparelli lander. The small bright feature at bottom is probably Schiaparelli’s parachute, while the dark, fuzzy blob is likely the lander’s crash site.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Complete story at: Space.com

More Lunar Photos

Here are the remaining two moon photos I imaged on Oct 10,2016.

Hope you like them!

Copernicus Crater - October 10, 2016
EdgeHD11 Prime Focus
ASI120MC 400 frames of 2000

Plato and Vallis Alpes - October 10, 2016
EdgeHD11 Prime focus
ASI120MC 400 frames of 2000