A Clear Night...Finally

It has been a very cloudy month in the Pacific Northwest.  However, the night of March 30/31 was a cold, clear night.  A friend of mine uses Megrez to determine how well the seeing is and for me, the 3.3 magnitude star stood out fairly easily in my urban sky.

I decided I would tackle a couple of galaxies...M101 and M51...and took out the ETX80. 

After aligning the scope, I punched M51 into the Audiostar Handbox and watched the scope slew towards the area of M51.  When the scope finished slewing, I looked into the eyepiece and at first saw only a couple of stars.  I was using a 32mm Plossl and after a few moments, noticed a little fuzzball about midway between west side of the view and center.  I had to move the scope a little to center the galaxy in the view of the eyepiece.  I don't think I will ever hit the correct manual slew button on the first attempt...hehe.

I was pleased the GOTO found the galaxy as I wasn't exactly perfect in aligning the scope.  Through the 32mm, M51 looked a lot like a fuzzy comet.  It being rather small in the view, so I swapped out the 32 for the 13mm. 

Again M51 was to the west of center and a slight adjustment (still didn't hit the correct directional button right away) put it more or less centralized.  With the 13mm, I could see an oval shape to the fuzzball, but no other detail.  I was rather disappointed in that.  I thought The Whirlpool Galaxy would show some arms.  I switched out the 13mm for the 6mm, but I lost the contrast with the 6mm and went back to the 13mm.  

With the 6mm, there was a star of about 8 mag to the east of M51.  With the 13mm, I could see one other star north-northeast of M51.  It also appeared at about 8 mag.  All attempts at using averted vision to see some detail didn't bring out much, although I thought for a moment or two I was seeing some banding of arms.  It would come for a split second, then disappear.

Being the "Old Fart" that I am, my fingers were beginning to go numb in the 28 degree temperature, so I decided M101 could wait for another day.  After seeing what I saw of M51, I wonder what M101 will show.

Maybe I'll use the ETX 125 on it.

Aldebaran and the Moon

I realize this post is a little late regarding the occultation of Aldebaran, but in my defense, I have no excuse.

I had miscalculated the time of disappearance March 4, but did decide to go out and see how long before the Moon would cover the star.  I took my binoculars with me and raised them to the Moon only to find Aldebaran moments away from disappearing.  I watched the occultation and went back inside and prepared my camera to photograph the reappearance.

I boosted the ISO on my Canon EOS 60D to 6400, selected Aperture Priority, put on the Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens and opened it up to f/5.6 at 400mm. Several minutes before the predicted reappearance, I went outside and to begin taking photos (handheld) every 30 seconds or so.

Outside I was greeted with high clouds which varied from thin to thick, but moving fast over the Moon.  I was a little disappointed, but started photographing the Moon, hoping to get something.  When it was a good 15 minutes after the predicted appearance of Aldebaran, I called it a night (it was about 20 degrees at the time) and loaded the images on my computer.  After a quick "look-see" of the RAW images, I didn't see anything and worst of all, the high clouds were blowing out a lot of detail.

The next morning I began looking at the images a little closer and attempted to fix the high cloud glare.  I found an adjustment in exposure, combined with a gamma tweak did a decent job of lessening the glare of the clouds. I applied the changes to all the images and began looking through them.  About midway I noticed something in one of the images which looked like Aldebaran peeking out from the side of the Moon.  The next image proved it as it showed Aldebaran a couple of diameters from the lunar limb.

The image below shows the progression of Aldebaran from hidden to fully exposed.  Images which followed the third photo here were too badly blown out due to thicker high clouds.

In the montage, the first image, Aldebaran is still behind the moon.  In the second image, taken at 20:06:52, a small portion of Aldebaran is visible emerging from behind the moon just above the 3 o'clock position.  In the third image, taken approximately one minute later, Aldebaran is fully visible and away from the Lunar limb.  

I live in central Oregon, however a friend of mine who lives south of Chicago also viewed the occultation.  He sent me this information after viewing my montage.

"Your pictures showed exactly what I saw, Aldebaran to the center right of the "round" North latitude lunar sea Mare Serenitatus. The star had the same look I saw. No color, like it was washed out by the Moon's glare. Your picture is exactly what I remember."

He added the only difference was he could see Earthshine from the north Pacific Ocean.


Until the next clear sky moment, keep looking up!

Feb. 10 and 11, 2017

It's a milestone day!  My first true astro post...

Feb. 10 brought a penumbral lunar eclipse at moonrise.  Since my eastern horizon is rather blocked by tall trees, I waited until I could see the moon well enough to see if the Earth's shadow was visible. Unfortunately, I couldn't see any chance in lunar brightness from the time I began watching and the time the eclipse was predicted to end, which was around 6:45 pm.  But in my defense, I have old eyes and the moon was very bright.

Several hours later, I grabbed the binoculars and went outside to look for Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková.  I had a good idea of where the comet would reside in Hercules and went to the south side of a storage shed on the property where I live.  I tucked myself into the slim shadow of the building and scanned the area below the keystone.  I didn't see 45P, nor did I see anything which looked greenish to my eye.

Once again, the bright moon interfered with what I wanted to do.

I did briefly consider bringing out the camera and tripod, but it would have been difficult to set the tripod in a spot I could frame the image based on several factors...the moonlight, the snow still on the ground and the proximity of the building to about the only place I could setup.

Snow depth is falling finally, and should open my regular observing area soon.  I don't have great sky views here, but I do have a north-northwest to east view of the night sky, and a sliver of a southern sky.  But I do have a nice view above me.

Not sure when my next update will occur, but I do want to give the ETX-125 a maiden voyage.  I spent a few hours this afternoon mating my Lenovo laptop with both the Meade scopes.  I had to order another USB-to-Serial adapter and it arrived in today's mail.  After loading the drivers for the adapter, I made all the connections and was able to control the scopes from the computer on most of the astro programs I have on the computer.  I didn't test the setup on all of them, as I will only be using the Meade Autostar Suite program and C2A to control the scopes.

Well, that is all for today.  Clear skies and no moon, y'all!

The Beginning

What is Ashrunner's Skies?

The simple answer is that it is an astronomy blog I have started.

The not-so-simple answer is that it is a blog where I will talk about my adventures in Astronomy.

I know there are probably thousands of astronomy blogs on the internet...and the majority will be better than this blog for the most part.

I started this blog as a way to keep me interested in what I see in the night skies.  When there isn't a lot of snow on the ground and the temperature is above 20F and I have nothing better to do, I will be outside watching the night sky, photographing meteors in the night sky, or peering through a telescope at the night sky.

I have always loved the night sky.  When I was 14 or 15 (give me a break...I'm 65 now), I developed an interest in astronomy.  For Christmas that year, Santa brought me a 6 inch reflecting telescope on a German equatorial mount.  As soon as I could, I dragged the scope to my backyard in south suburban Chicago and looked through the eyepiece.  I didn't point the scope anywhere in particular, I just pointed it up at the sky.  When I looked through the eyepiece, I was amazed that I was seeing a lot more stars than I could see with my eyes alone.  I was hooked.

A year or so later, my father read about a public star party at an address near where we lived.  On the night of the star party, he dropped me off and began to mingle with the gathering people.  I learned a lot of interesting things that night, looked through some really good telescopes and met a number of people who would become good friends.

The star party that evening was hosted by the Lowell Astronomical Society of Burbank, Ill.  One of the people I met was president of the society and he invited me to join...and I did.  I remained a member of the society until I joined the U.S. Air Force.  I stayed in the Air Force for more than 20 years and although my interest in astronomy remained, I never had a telescope...binoculars...yes, but no telescope.  Even after I retired, I couldn't afford a decent telescope (my 6 inch reflector disappeared four or five years after I entered the military).

But that as all changed.  After retiring from the military, I began nature photography.  I don't make a living at it, but through time and the assistance of a friend, I have acquired a good camera and several excellent lenses.  I have used the camera mostly to photograph the sky during meteor showers, but I will also occasionally photograph a random part of the sky hoping for a beautiful sporadic meteor.

Along with the camera (it is a Canon EOS DSLR) I have two telescopes.  Both are small scopes, but are of excellent quality.  One is the Meade ETX-80 Observer, an 80 mm f/5 refractor telescope.  I have owned this scope for about two years and have used it to view the moon, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus mostly.  I have also looked at the Pleiades star cluster and the nearby Beehive cluster.  Both are beautiful sights in the fast f/5 scope.

Most recently, I took delivery of another telescope...the Meade ETX-125 Observer which is a 127 mm f/15 Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope.  I have yet to view anything through it as the night sky has not cooperated since the scope arrived on my doorstep.  If the optics on the new scope are as good as those on the ETX-80, I'll be very happy.

I also have several cameras which connect to my telescopes.  I hope to be doing some astrophotography in the coming days.  And as I learn the trade, I'll post to this blog for those who read Ashrunner's Skies.

Stay tuned for clear skies!