Jupiter - Like you've never seen it before - Part Three!

Just when I thought I had posted an awesome image of Jupiter from the Juno spacecraft, along comes this video (made up of multiple stills) of Juno's orbit around the poles of the planet.  This is absolutely fantastic. Never before have we seen the poles in such detail. And when the spacecraft gets to Perijove (closest point to Jupiter), it just knocks your socks off (at least I am currently barefoot!!)
And the music picked - perfect (extra points if you know the movie it came from).
Click the link below - you won't regret it.

Juno at Perijove

Jupiter - Like you've never seen it before! (Part two)

NASA’s Juno spacecraft was racing away from Jupiter following its seventh close pass of the planet when JunoCam snapped this image on May 19, 2017, from about 29,100 miles (46,900 kilometers) above the cloud tops. The spacecraft was over 65.9 degrees south latitude, with a lovely view of the south polar region of the planet.

You really need to head over to Nasa.gov to see the latest hi-res images from the Juno spacecraft!!

Jupiter - Three moons and Two shadows

Wow.  This year has really been awful as far as clear skies on moonless nights is concerned.  Hard to get any decent deep space imaging done under these conditions.

So I decided to see what's up in the lunar and planetary domain. Playing around with Starry Night Pro, the planetarium software I use to select and point my telescope to objects I want to image, I noticed an interesting configuration of Jupiter's moons on the night of June 3rd. Three of the brightest moons will be close to the planet, IO will transit the face of the planet and both IO and Ganymede would cast shadows on the planet surface - all during a few hours on the 3rd.

Checking the calendar I saw that the 3rd was a Saturday. Oh boy, a weekend night, I could stay up and not worry about work the next morning. And it turned out to be a clear night to boot.

So out came the telescope and imaging equipment. And although the atmospheric seeing was terrible (the images of Jupiter were boiling and roiling like crazy - not a good night for detailed planetary imaging) the event was interesting enough to make a go of it.

Jupiter and its Moons - June 3, 2017
EdgeHD11 - ASI120MC Planetary Camera
FL = 7200mm - Approx 1000 frames stacked

So here is the result - a mosaic of four images showing the progression of the three moons about Jupiter.  Clockwise from the top left: 10:30 PM, 10:44 PM, 11:12 PM, 11:17 PM. IO closest to the planet; IO's shadow to the left; Ganymede top right with it's shadow top center of planet; Callisto bottom right. You can see IO transiting the planet and just about ready to exit in the third image of this group. Seeing was so bad I could not capture IO's complete transit against Jupiter.

Jupiter - like you've never seen it before!

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Betsy Asher Hall/Gervasio Robles

With the first set of science results from the Juno spacecraft, we are seeing a whole new Jupiter.  This image shows Jupiter’s south pole, as seen by NASA’s Juno spacecraft from an altitude of 32,000 miles (52,000 kilometers). The oval features are cyclones, up to 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) in diameter. Multiple images taken with the JunoCam instrument on three separate orbits were combined to show all areas in daylight, enhanced color, and stereographic projection.

Storms the size of earth.  Magnetic fields that are stronger than expected.  A north and south pole that are vastly different from each other.  In the next few months we will learn a whole lot more, and with the Great Red Spot as one of the new subjects for study, the excitement continues.

See Nasa.gov for the complete story.

Re-processed image of Comet Johnson

Using a technique of creating a synthetic flat from the original subs I was able to reprocess the image of Comet Johnson to bring out more detail and almost eliminate the gradients.

Gravitational Waves Are Permanently Warping The Fabric of Space-Time

Researchers have proposed a method for detecting exotic events in physics by looking for the scars they leave behind on the fabric of space.

By identifying how objects like cosmic strings or evaporating black holes leave behind memories of their existence on the Universe, it might be possible to move some rather strange phenomena from theoretical to empirical science.

Complete story at ScienceAlert

Comet Johnson

As promised, here is Comet Johnson from my imaging session on Monday, May 15th.  My light box is still not operating properly so I didn't take any flats to correct for the vignetting and other gradients. That is the reason for the slight ring-like halo around the image. And since I didn't have flats I couldn't stretch the image as much as I would have liked, but the result is not all that bad.

Comet C/2015 V2 Johnson - May 15, 2017
EdgeHD11 w/Hyperstar f/2
50x120sec Subs -20C QHY10

Comet Johnson C/2015 v2

Monday evening was one of the first clear nights that I was able to actually get out and image some astro-objects.  With comet Johnson high in the eastern sky and the moon out of the way (until at least just after midnight) I setup the Edge11 early to cool down before the image run.

SkyTools recommended over a two hundred 30 sec subs, but I knew that the Hyperstar on the Edge was able to do 120 sec subs without any significant fogging due to light pollution.  So with everything set I started the sequence run of 50 x 120sec subs starting at 10:28 pm, just about 18 minutes after the start of Astro-Dark skies (the time slot recommended by SkyTools).

Of course it wouldn't be a 'Mangieri' night of imaging without some problem cropping up. This time it wasn't the weather, or the mount, or the guiding, but the QHY10 camera.  For some reason it took almost an hour to cool down to the -20C temperature.  It has always completed this cool down in about 10 minutes. Post analysis showed that using the QHYCCD software EzCap (supplied with the camera) completed the cool down at the normal rate. Since I just downloaded and installed the latest release of SGP (my normal imaging software) I suspect that the issue may lie there. Anyway, the evening was a success and I captured 50 nice subs of the comet. The sequence ended at 00:48 am (the extra 40 minutes taken up with downloading each sub to the computer). I tried to use my home-build light box to create a set of flats to improve the post processing, but the light is way too bright to work with the Hyperstar - got to get that fixed.

Since I need some time to process the images, I decided to create a time lapse video of the comet movement among the background stars (accelerated quite a bit!). As the frames progress you can see the ever 'popular' aircraft light streaks! The ugly 'pea soup' sky is because I did not process removal of sky glow (light pollution). It will be removed when I process the still image of the comet.

In the next few days I should be able to post the full color image of Johnson.

Comet Johnson - I'm almost ready for you

Between the full moon, clouds, daylight savings time, and having to get to my real job on the weekdays, I have yet to capture a decent image of comet Johnson, now visible in binoculars in Bootes fairly high in the eastern sky around 10:00 PM.  Johnson is still brightening and will reach best viewing in early June.

According to weather forecasts (and Clear Outside software) Monday through Wednesday next week should provide some decent sky conditions. The only issues might be a warmer air mass with some moderate humidity.

If you want to try viewing Johnson, look high overhead due east (almost 70 degrees from the horizon) just to the left of the 3rd magnitude star Delta Bootis.  Johnson remains high in the sky most of the evening, but the moon will interfere around 2:00AM.

Starry Night Pro 7

View to the east, 11:00PM - May 15, 2017

Starry Night Pro 7

Enlarged area of Constellation Bootes

Nice Arrangement of Jupiter's Moons

If you have a telescope that can view Jupiter (and most small telescopes of reasonable quality can) there is a nice arrangement of Jupiter's four largest (and brightest) moons on the night of May 9th. The image below shows the moons at 11:15 PM.

Jupiter and its four moons
May 9, 2017

Even a good set of 20x binoculars will probably be able to see them provided the binoculars are held on a tripod or you happen to have those really nice (but expensive) image stabilized versions.

Postal Service new Eclipse Stamp

Now here is a novel idea for a commemorative stamp.  The Postal Service will soon release a first-of-its-kind stamp that changes when you touch it. The Total Solar Eclipse Forever stamp, which commemorates the August 21 eclipse, transforms into an image of the Moon from the heat of a finger.  The public is asked to share the news on social media using the hashtag #EclipseStamps.

Complete story at:  USPS News