Dusty Mars and Dust is Everywhere!

What a difference a few days makes!

We had a cold front come through on Friday and it drove the Summertime temperatures down by about 15 degrees (F).

I brought the telescope out at 0100 this morning to let it get acclimated for a couple of hours before I started imaging Mars.

I had to go back into the house and put on my Winter coat.  It was chilly.

While waiting for the telescope to cool down, I pointed it at a few other of my favorite deep space objects (DSO) and used SharpCap's live stacking to capture some images.

These images have at least one thing in common:  Part of their beauty comes from the existence of dust.  Interstellar dust, of course, but dust, nonetheless.

The Iris Nebula

NGC 7023, also known as the Iris Nebula, is a reflection nebula located in the constellation of Cepheus. The nebula has a young star at its center and since it is young, there is plenty of local dust surrounding the star. The starlight hits the dust and is reflected which becomes the purpleish nebula that we see.

Iris Nebula.  Purple, like its namesake, the flower.

More, after the jump break

Dusty Mars is Still a Visual Treat

I took advantage of another night of good seeing on Tuesday morning, July 3rd.  Nights of good seeing seem to be few and far between this year.  Don't want to miss any if it can be avoided.

It was still oppressively warm and humid when I brought the telescope outside.   I was thankful when the cooler air finally made it over the top of the hill upon which our house sits.  It did bring a light layer of fog along with it, coating everything with dew.  Whoever would have thought that astronomy gear needs to be waterproof!? 🙂

With my handy Celestron Zoom and Shorty Barlow, I did some visual observing of Mars.  I do have better eyepieces, but the Zoom is so easy to use;  Just rotate it left or right to dial the magnification that the seeing supports!  

Celestron Zoom, Orion Shorty Barlow, and cat fur.

Mars was a beautiful bright reddish-orange disk and while the dust storm was obscuring most of its surface features, the southern polar cap was visible. 

Yep.  The dust storm was still raging.  Marvin the Martian is going to have quite the mess to clean up when things calm down.  I hope he remembers to sweep the solar panels of the Opportunity rover. 

After taking in all of the visual beauty, I put the imager at prime focus and again captured many tens of thousands of video frames. 

Dusty Mars, Saturn, and the Moon!

Excellent seeing conditions for planetary observing Saturday morning!

On Friday, I got an email alert from the nice people at the Clear Sky Alarm Clock letting me know that upcoming conditions were favorable for astronomy.

They were right!

I used the opportunity to capture images of dusty Mars, Saturn, and the Moon!

The Moon

First, the Moon.  It was bright.  It was 96.1% illuminated, just 10° away from Mars in the sky, and practically flooding my telescope's optical tube assembly with unwanted light while I was observing.

I suffered through it. 🙂 And, I took advantage of the good seeing; I put the 2x barlow on the imager and used it to scan the Moon's face.  I thought that this crater was interesting so I captured its image.

Crater Langrenus

Next, Saturn.  To be followed by Dusty Mars . . .

Mars Power

Wow.  Three and a half inches of rain in the past 24 hours.

That is a lot of rain for central Virginia.

The astronomy forecast for the remainder of the weekend doesn't look good.  There may be a brief window for viewing Mars tomorrow morning, but I'm not counting on it.

Shoo, clouds!

So, in lieu of fresh images of Mars this weekend, this post is going to feature some of the equipment that I use during my driveway astronomy sessions.

Specifically, what do I use to keep everything powered during an all night session?

Weekly Mars, a Double, a Little Gem, and the Lagoon

The astronomy weather forecast for this morning by Astrospheric was right on the money.  The sky was nearly cloudless, completely moonless, had average seeing, and had average transparency.

Good enough to bring the telescope out.  And, I didn't have to burn a vacation day from work to do it.

Yay!

 After getting the equipment situated, I attached the imager and immediately captured many tens of thousands of frames of Mars for "seeing conditions going south" insurance purposes.  I then continued my survey of the sky surrounding Mars -- like I did in last week's post, "Mars' Neighbors."

Mars is still in Capricornus so I thought I'd take a look at the stars that define that constellation's shape.  I'm pretty pleased that I did!  At least one of Capricornus' stars is a double.  These two stars, Algedi Secunda and Algedi Prima, are separated by only a little over 6 minutes.  To the unaided eye, they appear as one star!

Algedi Secunda and Algedi Prima

Diffraction spikes are pretty!

Just to the right of this double, by about 8 degrees, is another gem of a find!

Mars' Neighbors

Another cloudy weekend.

Friday morning looked good, however.  I took yet another vacation day from work so I could take a long post-astronomy nap after staying out all night with the telescope.

Mars rise was actually just a few minutes after midnight.  By the time I had all of the equipment outside and set up, Mars was already high enough in the sky that I could start observing.

Its southern polar ice cap was visible and so brilliantly white through my eyepiece that my jaw dropped.  I quickly put the imager on and captured a few tens of thousands of frames for insurance's sake; I wanted images of Mars, but I'd rather have them when Mars is higher in the sky -- less atmospheric murk through which to peer. 

While the Astrospheric forecast said that seeing was going to get better as dawn approached, if I'd waited and the clouds rolled in, I'd be really unhappy.

Mars was to cross the meridian shortly before 0500 and that would probably be optimum for imaging.

So, I bided my time by exploring the neighborhood around Mars.

 

Well, at least the neighborhood of Mars from our perspective here on Earth.  Mars is currently in the constellation, Capricornus.

There are some interesting things to see around Capricornus.  Some images to follow after the jump break and, of course, the latest image of Mars!

Focus on Mars

No new images this week, I'm afraid.  Clouds and rain for the entire week.

Don't worry, though.  I'm continuing the focus on Mars anyway!

One of the frustrating things about using a telescope at high magnification is getting perfect focus on an object.

Touch the focus knob to give it a twist and you'll impart vibrations on what you are seeing through the eyepiece or the imager . . .  Wait a few seconds for the image to stop shaking, evaluate the focus and try again.  And again.  

Change magnification by swapping the eyepiece or the imager?  You'll need to adjust focus again.  And again.

I've mitigated this with a DIY project to add electronic control of the stock focuser that came with my SkyWatcher.

Here is a photo of the focus controller's display showing the temperature, focus tube position, and bar graph of relative position.  The display is covered with dew, hence the streakiness of the photo -- pointing out the importance of water resistance in astro gear. 🙂

Focuser OLED Display

The display will stay illuminated while the focus tube is moving and will timeout after a few seconds of the tube stopping.

Focus on Mars ahead!