Friends, Comet, Telescope...

Pat is a buddy and former workmate from seemingly a previous life. He is shown at left when he still worked at the Mirror Lab with one of our safety interns Delayne, standing next to the rear surface of the LSST 8.4 meter mirror substrate. Anyway, I was at his house tonight - I was thinking that his new 10" telescope would be perfect for a close-up view of Comet PanSTARRS. He recently bought my former G-11 mounting, and put his Meade 10" SN LXD75 on it - an F/4 Schmidt-Newtonian telescope that has a 1,000mm focal length.  He wants to get more into astro-imaging, so would be a good learning experience!

I arrived well before sunset and met Pat and his next-door astronomy buddy Byron, and we hauled the mount and telescope 50 yards down the street to a street corner where we had better horizons to spot the Comet. Byron had to leave, but Pat and I met the family who had just moved into the corner house and made new buddies as they observed with us.

First up was the moon, visible even with the sun still above the horizon. We were still uncertain that Pat's camera would focus with the telescope as its lens (Pat is new at this stuff), We were just short of being able to reach focus (the Moon is good as a test object for that). We were able to adjust the collimation screws to push the focus out a few more millimeters - that was all we needed. Pat was amazed at the view of the Moon in the camera's screen in magnified "live view" mode. We took a few quick snapshots, a full-disk shot at left and a cropped view at right. One thing before we move on, though... There are so many craters on the moon, it is always tough to establish scale. In the full-resolution shot at right, I labelled a couple craters with their known diameters to give an idea of what can be easily seen. Generally, the smallest craters or details seen in a moderate telescope is about a half mile or kilometer in diameter... Pat's scope seemed to work fine at resolving small details, though the triangular-shaped moons of Jupiter had us loosening the collimation screws to improve the images... But time to move on - we had bigger fish to fry!

The sun dropped down below the horizon and we searched for the comet. I'm used to a wider expanse of horizon to search, and here we had a narrow gap between houses. Did we pick the right scope location to pick it up? We finally spotted it in binoculars over the house diagonally across the intersection. With only about 10 minutes before dropping below the roofline, we moved quickly, getting it centered in the telescope. We could even focus on the comet's nucleus in "live view" mode - the starlike coma was that bright! Again, imaging in twilight required short exposures, only a few seconds, and just before setting behind the house we tried our longest at 10 seconds. Stacking 5 frames we got the image at left, approximately the same scale as the moon, so about a half-degree shown here. You can see that using the nucleus of the comet to align the images, the comet's motion trailed the stars - it moves a couple degrees per day, visible even in the few minutes we photographed it tonight... Sorry I don't know the exact orientation - the tail is approximately vertical seen in the sky, so North is off the upper right corner somewhere.

The moon is brightening, so will likely take a bit of a break from comet observing - give you a chance to recover from too many astronomical posts! I'm looking forward to seeing it in a darker sky in a couple weeks!

An Evening On Kitt Peak!

As many of you may know, I work one night per week as a guide at the Nightly Observing Program at Kitt Peak National Observatory.  While many of the daytime visitors expect to see stars during the day (other than the sun!) we gently point out they should come back when it is dark, and the NOP fills that need.  We use 16" and 20" telescopes in the pristine dark sky of the mountaintop to show some truly amazing things.

Well this last Thursday (14 March) was the first one I've worked since Comet PanSTARRS (C/2011L4) has been visible above our northern-hemisphere horizon.  Visible shortly after sunset low in the west, we modified our usual program and passed out binoculars before departing for sunset so that we could stay for some comet and other sky observing.  It worked out great, and besides the binocular views, we had a 10" Dobsonian for some very nice telescopic views.  Unfortunately, the comet is too low for any of the telescopes in the domes to reach. 

Sometimes I bring a camera along to set up to run automatically.  I normally don't have time during the program to attend to it, but with the intervalometer timers available now, I don't need to stick around other than the framing and guessing where it will go.  This was no exception - I set up my camera and 200mm lens and it took a series of frames as it set, while I attended to the crowd.  Set to aperture-priority auto-exposure, the exposure varied from just over 2 seconds to 5 seconds near the end, taken every 8 seconds.  As we were about to enter the telescope building for continued observing, I stopped the sequence on the comet and moved the camera to a view of the WIYN Observatory across the mountain to the south of us.  Again, I set it to take photos automatically every 100 seconds, this time for a fixed 90 second exposure.  It ran for about 90 minutes until the camera battery died (these things happen - it wasn't fully charged to start).  The image shown here shows the brilliant star Canopus to the left, about to set behind the building.

 

So you can guess what the next step is - with all these exposures, I went through and adjusted the brightness and contrast slightly and used Windows Live Movie Maker to assemble them into time-lapse clips.  I know a little photography, but not much about music, so don't have soundtracks to most of my clips - perhaps I'll get more into that in the future, but for now, imagine the "music of the spheres" as the universe wheels overhead!  The above two sequences are both in this clip, uploaded to YouTube.  Click on the player to start it - go to HD full screen if you have the bandwidth...

 

And speaking of movie clips, do remember my last post about comet and moon setting behind the Observatory silhouette the other day?  Well, I worked on that too and is presented here as well.  In this case, the clip, which represents about 10 minutes of actual elapsed time, is composed of frames taken every 6 seconds, with the lens set to 185mm focal length and the exposure varying from 1 second at the beginning to 2 seconds near the end.  The camera was on a tracking mount, so followed the motion of the stars.  Again, HD and full-frame if you have DSL or equivalent...  Enjoy!

Group Portrait!

Today was the big day - Comet PanSTARRS (C/2011 L4), newly seen above our northern hemisphere horizon, was being passed by the crescent moon, making an interesting photo opportunity.  I've found that the best way to do a composition like this is to add something of interest to the celestial sights.  Hmmm, let's see, what is to the west of Tucson???  Oh yea, where did I start work over 3 decades ago when coming to town, and where do I continue part time???  Yea - Kitt Peak National Observatory!  Since the comet/Moon conjunction would happen during twilight, having a silhouette of the Observatory might be pretty cool!  The plan was to head west of Tucson on Ajo Way, highway 86, then head south from Three Points towards Mexico on 286.  About 12 miles should put me directly East of Kitt Peak, about the right spot.  Because the highway is mostly north-south, once the targets were spotted, I could adjust my position as needed for perfect alignment.  The road is pretty desolate, only used by a little ranch traffic, and a Border Patrol truck every 5 minutes it seemed.  They even stopped to see what I was up to - waiting for a marijuana drop?  Naw - just lookin' for a comet!  The mountain in the distance is Baboquivari, located about 15 miles south of Kitt Peak.

 

Arriving well before sunset to scout out a spot (lots of wide spots from Border Patrol trucks doing quick U-turns!) I had time to set up the William Optics 11cm triplet scope to do a panorama of the Observatory profile.  Since the sun was setting nearly behind it, I had to wait for the sun to dip behind the Quinlans to cut out the glare.  The panorama shown at left, the profile pretty matching the orientation as seen from Tucson - the solar scopes at left, the 4-meter at far right with the U of A's 90" in the valley just below it to the left.  A shot of the setup with Melinda's camera is at right, zoomed into the image of the Solar Telescope.

 

Finally the sun sank below the mountainous horizon and eventually the Moon popped out.  Oops - a bit too far north, so headed south a bit more, another stop and look, and moved back a bit to split the difference.  To catch the Moon, Comet and Observatory, the 70-200 zoom seemed about perfect, and ended up shooting all of the conjunction with that setup on the ole' Byers Cam-Trak, the little 80's vintage equatorial mount for tracking, in case I needed to expose more than a couple seconds.  Finally it was showtime!  Shooting against the twilight with the background changing in brightness as it got darker made life difficult, so with the ISO at 400, I started at 1 second at F/4, finally getting down to 2 seconds wide open at F/2.8 before the pair set.  I took some data sets that can be made into a time-lapse if I want to do the work - we'll see.  The photo at right was taken w/Melinda's camera and semi-normal lens as my camera was working.

 

Already tonight I've seen about a dozen pictures of the Comet/Moon conjunction, if not more, but what no one has mentioned is that there is another bystander in the group shot - Uranus!  I noticed on some of the comet positional maps that besides the Moon, it would also pass the gas giant Uranus, and while you might spot it in the left picture above, it tends to get lost when resolution is reduced to fit on a monitor page.  At left here is a full resolution crop from the above picture - Uranus is easily visible below and right of the comet, right between it and solar scope!  And to make sure you don't think I'm pulling your leg, at right is a stack of a dozen (!) frames, stretched to show not only Uranus, but another field star, plotted next to a map of the comet from Heavens-above for the appropriate observation time, rotated to match approximate orientation.  I drew the lines to help you match the pattern.

 

The Earth keeps on turning, and it wasn't long until the Comet/Moon show came to an end, but taking a picture every 6 seconds, there are lots to chose from!  The image at left is about the last one before the comet sank behind the Observatory.  A few seconds later, the bright nucleus set, but the tail makes it look like a bright searchlight is being used atop the Mountain.

 

 

I needed to hustle in to work, so put the gear away in a hurry, but then, after not being under a dark sky in so long, how could I pass up a couple snapshots of the brilliant Winter Milky Way?!  The first shot was at left - the Zodiacal light seemingly to come out of Kitt Peak on the horizon, extending up to the Pleiades and beyond to brilliant Jupiter.  Then at right is the sweep of stars across the southern sky from Sirius and Canis Major to lower left, through Orion near the center, up to the V-shaped Hyades cluster, and on to Jupiter and the Pleiades again.  Both of these are only 30 second tripod shots with a Nikon 16mm fisheye wide open at F/2.8.  Gotta enjoy it while you can!  So I was a few minutes late to work...

Comet Spotted!

This year seems to be destined to be the "Year of the Comet".  As I mentioned in a recent post, the comet du jour is PanSTARRS, comet C/2011 L4, discovered in June, 2011 by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System, thus the acronym of a name!  For the last few weeks, it has been a hit in the southern hemisphere, since it was south of the sun and visible in a dark sky there.  But today, not only did it reach perihelion, it's point nearest the sun, but also was the same declination of the sun, so making it visible equally well from northern or southern hemisphere.  While I made a pilgrimage to Gates Pass last Thursday in an attempt to spot it in a gap in the clouds, the clouds won that encounter, and we've had a couple blustery, cloudy days since.

But today the storm has passed, and we had deep blue sky all day, so when Melinda awoke this afternoon (she worked the last 3 nights), we again drove the 15 miles to Gates pass, arriving well before sunset to claim a parking spot and set up some gear.  I'm glad we did because by the time sunset hit the nearest parking was down the road a half mile and we had quite the crowd gathered to look through our telescopes looking for a little fuzzy spot! The shot at left is of the little pavilion with informational plaques informing of local lore, history and geology.  I also photographed the point of sunset because that is where the comet would later appear to set about 60 minutes afterwards.

 

I set up a sturdy tripod with the little Meade apochromatic refractor for visual use, running at about 18 power for folks.  I also set up my little Byers Cam-Trak equatorial mount in case I wanted to take exposures more than a few seconds in length.  Because the sturdy tripod I normally use was already in use, it was set up on a stone wall, aligned with my best guess where north was, and used my Canon XSi with the 70-200 zoom set to 200mm.  I believe I was the first to spot the comet at our overlook, a couple minutes after 7pm, seen in binoculars above and left of where the sun had set, right where it was supposed to be, a little higher than I expected.  I took a blind picture of the piece of sky, and sure enough, zooming in, it was visible with its little tail!  As it got darker, I got the shot at left, this one a 6 second exposure at F/4 with the 200mm lens, ISO 400.

Unfortunately, today it never appeared in a dark sky so was tough to spot.  We were able to show it to a few dozen people in the scope, and while I could easily spot it in the binocs, never saw it naked eye.  Melinda, with her bionic eyes (eye surgery last year), was able to hold it in sight.  But even while it was getting dark, it was also setting into the murk and before it set was tough to pick out in binoculars.  I'm hoping it will be a little more impressive in a darker sky, because even I wasn't much impressed with this little glow!  But I'll keep on trying!

Malala Thrives!

I've considered for some time writing an update on Malala Yousafzai - the young Pakistani girl who was hunted down and shot in the head by a Taliban gunman on her way home from school.  When I blogged about her 2 days after the event in October, she was in a coma and given a 70% chance at survival...

Well the news has been good!  A week after the attack, she was flown to the UK and has been treated at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth's Hospital.  Her course of treatment is well-documented in the above Wikipedia link.  She has recently spoken on camera for her favorite cause - the call for education for all youth of the world, as well as an interview with doctors regarding her recovery.

The most gratifying response is from the people of Pakistan who were shocked and outraged at the girl's shooting, and the Taliban's justification for doing so.  There has been an identification of the shooter, but both he and the cleric who called for her killing are in hiding, the later known to be in eastern Afghanistan.  But while the Taliban claims to continue to target her, the outrage from around the world has brought her cause to the fore and between public demonstrations and the surprising (to the Taliban anyway) regional unified support of the public has loosened the hold that militants have in the area.  In the meantime, Malala continues her rehabilitation in the UK, and her father has been appointed the educational attache of Pakistan to its consulate in Birmingham, UK.  Meanwhile, the illustration at left appeared as a tribute on International Woman's Day today on Slate.com.  The illustration is the conclusion of a graphic short story that can be seen here.

You Asked For It!

A couple posts ago I talked briefly about the upcoming comets, and about Comet Kohoutek from the Winter of '73, that resulted in my first published image of a predawn Kohoutek before perihelion (close approach to the sun).  One of the comments asked for the image that had appeared in the Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa student paper.  I had run across the clipping recently, but of course couldn't locate it on short notice.  Then I found the DIs on-line archive and the only question was the date.  So I sat down and strolled down memory lane reviewing the news of the day and of Campus life on my sophomore year.

Finally I found it!  It ran on 29 November, 1973, right above Pogo and next to an ad for "Midnight Cowboy".  The headlines of the day include gaps in the recently-subpoenaed White House tapes, a recently-applied smoking ban in campus classes, and the firing of football coach Frank Lauterbur who had gone 0-11, the lousiest team in Iowa history (which I had season tickets for!).  The image of the comet is mediocre at best, perhaps due to the digitizing process, or perhaps due to the original image, but looks like a fuzzy smudge, which is what most comets look like!  The label refers to an upcoming "Elixir" issue talking about the sky, which I've not looked for yet, might have to do that if time permits.

Cochise County Road Trip!

Our friend Carolyn is in town visiting for a week.  It was a LONG week at work for me, so it wasn't till yesterday (Saturday), that I had a chance to hang out.  In previous years trips we've gone North to the Canyon, West to San Diego and Los Angeles, and South to whale-watch on Baja.  Last year we stayed closer to home, but spent a weekend going down to Rocky Point, MZ for beach time there.  This trip we're spending the entire week in the Tucson area to consolidate some time here, and it is great week with temps in the upper 70s - just what a Midwestern Girl needs the first days of March!

Yesterday we decided to do a road trip down in Cochise County, SE of Tucson.  She had been in Tombstone on a previous trip, so we barely slowed down as we drove through that town.  We could see that the current crop of winter visitors had packed the town to the gills as they went to experience the boardwalk, the actors playing wild-west characters, witnessing the re-enactment of the OK Corral shootout, and shopping for old-west trinkets. 

Our goal was Bisbee, another 25 miles beyond and another town from the wild west, this one a mining city established about the same time as Tombstone, but with a different path to present-day.  Supposedly early in the days of the last century, Bisbee was the largest city between St Louis and San Francisco - full of miners, mostly after copper and silver.  After the miners left, in the 1970s for the last time, it was taken over by hippies and artist types, who remain to this day.  Now the town is full of high-priced art galleries and antique shops, dealing the remnants of local estate sales to numerous tourists who come for the cooler temps of the mile-high city.  The picture at left shows Min at right, Caroline at left just as we're entering the "downtown" section of Bisbee.  Note that it is built amongst the peaks of the Mule Mountains, and just above the rear-view mirror is the "B" (standing for Bisbee) high on a hill overlooking town.  While we couldn't find any parking on the street, we invested a few bucks to park at the intersection of the main drag and "Brewery Gulch", a short walk to anywhere.

 

Arriving right about 12:30, we'd been saving ourselves for lunch, and what more iconic place than the 105 year-old Copper Queen, the oldest continuously operating hotel in Arizona.  We briefly perused the lobby and a few historical displays before heading to the restaurant, asking for the patio which was quite pleasant.  The sounds of birds in the trees serenaded us, brought back to reality with the sounds of diesel trucks and cars on the adjacent street.  But a fine place to "people watch" the tourists and occasional eccentric resident.  At left above is an HDR (high-dynamic range) panorama of the patio, again, you can see the peaks among which Bisbee is located.  They had a nice menu selection - Melinda and I both got the "Sandwich of the Day", ham and cheese on sourdough, which was quite tasty and hit the spot.

 

We did our duty and strolled the streets, going in most every shop we passed.  We didn't take advantage of the $11,000 paintings at one of the art galleries, but enjoyed looking just the same.  At an antique store where I last bought a Russian microscope for $35 (they didn't know what they had, and I use it almost daily at work when precision measurements need to be made) we looked around, but nothing that excited me this trip, though I had fun going through a box of 100 year old stereo pictures.  I sort of collect astronomical ones, so felt it my duty to look through the few hundred they had for sale...  The girls each bought a book at the town's music and bookstore, and a few other trinkets elsewhere.

 

Our next stop - Whitewater Draw!  Though we had already been there a couple times this year, Carolyn was interested in going, and we were interested in checking out if there were still sandhill cranes.  We normally think of them departing mid-February, but perhaps with the recent cold weather they might still be around.  We found a "shortcut" from Bisbee and were there in about 30 minutes.  We parked, got our camera gear (for all these I used the Canon XSi with the Meade 80mm F/6 APO, so 480mm focal length, manual focus) and walked over to the observation stand - it was weird, but even though there were lots of cranes we could see, it was eerily quiet - not the normal raucous rattling sound they make - strange!  Anyway, the first picture I took was of a wading bird that looked quite striking close-up.  This is a full-resolution picture (load into Photoshop, click "full pixels", and crop without changing size).  I lucked out and hit a good focus the first time.  The bird - a common Killdeer, but he was so cute, and I've not had a picture before...

 

Yes, it was quiet, and cranes appeared in the sky by the hundreds in long lines shown here with Dos Cabezas in the background.  Dos Cabezas, which means "two heads" in Spanish, is for the two granite domes that resemble heads, though from the viewing angle from Whitewater, they line up and look like a single domed peak.  I couldn't tell if the long lines of cranes were of arriving or departing birds, but the surrounding fields I could see from the viewing platform were empty of normally feeding cranes.  Seconds after the picture at left was taken, suddenly a huge number took flight - someone thought they had seen a dog or coyote near the edge of the flock, though I didn't spot any on my photos.  But it makes for an interesting shot here at right.  A minute or two they settled back down and continued their rest for their long trip north.

 

While I didn't see many new birds this trip, there were a few I'd not seen in a while.  Some of the flycatchers I missed our previous two trips reappeared, including a Black Phoebe as well as a Say's Phoebe.  There were a couple pairs of the Green-Winged Teal feeding a couple dozen feet away, and even though I got a great pic last time, I got more good ones this time as well, so include it here.  Their heads are underwater so much it is a challenge to get much of their head below their eyes!

 

 

I ambled over towards the other viewing platform, but well before getting there I spotted an unusual sight.  While sighting a single Heron or Egret is not uncommon, I've never seen them in close-enough proximity to be able to get them both in the same shot!  For some reason, you just don't see them hanging out, but here they are.  The Heron seemed a little worried, but the Egret mostly ignored me as it preened...  A few steps closer and I noted another lump in the dried reeds, a bird I'd never spotted before, and in fact, didn't know what it was till I asked other birders later.  Almost hidden in a clump of reeds was an American Bittern, grooming itself!  I thought it was one of the odder Heron species, but no...  It didn't expose itself much, casting an occasional eye to me as it worked on its feathers, when I got this shot.  As I circled around to the platform, the Heron and Egret moved a little further away, and eventually the Bittern also flew off, looking Heron-like to me...  It returned a little later, its flights attracting some birders who IDed it for me.

 

The sun set quickly it seemed, and before I knew it, I was fighting to catch the reflections of cranes in the twilight colors reflected off the water.  You can judge if it turned out as well as last time...  I think I prefer this wider view with a little more pink of the sky.

 

Finally it turned pretty dark and I returned to the first observing platform where Melinda and Carolyn were hanging out.  Shortly before we thought about departing, I again tried the trick of using the on-camera flash to get a "catseye" effect.  Similar to the "red-eye" effect on humans and cats with flash photography, the birds eyeball focuses the light on the retina and the return reflection appears to fill the pupil with a bright return.  In the growing darkness, yes, the 3-stooges of cranes here looking at me all had a good eye-return.  Click to see it more clearly - this shot had to be stretched a bit to show detail...  And as it got darker still, we started heading back to the car, yet I spotted a shadow on the water - a Heron appearing to fish in the dark!  It was way to dark to image it without aid, so again used the flash - not only did I get a pretty hot eye return, but the flash reflecting off the water waves, focused the flash light into horizontal lines projected onto the Heron.  I was amazed I was able to focus as well as I did on him (her?), but got a half dozen shots or so, this one at right being our favorite.  Of course, I had to include the reflection in the final cropped image...

 

Hitting the road, we again stopped in Tombstone for dinner - this time at the Longhorn - the meatloaf special for the girlz, a chimichanga for me.  Home by 10;30 - a long, but satisfying day trip in Cochise County, AZ!