Backyard Black Holes!

Last night, the astronomy session was one of the best that I've had in many months.  The new moon had already set, the sky was without clouds, transparency was good, as was the seeing.

I had to use a vacation day from work so I could stay out all night, but it was worth it!

By now, everyone has probably seen the iconic image of M87's supermassive black hole, first published in April of 2019.

It was created after years of data gathering and processing by the scientists of the  Event Horizon Telescope collaboration.

First image of a black hole, using Event Horizon Telescope 

observations of the center of galaxy M87. Credit: Event Horizon 

Telescope Collaboration.

Astronomy magazine has a good article here.

But what does this have to do with me as an amature astronomer?

Mars, Again!

Finally.

A break in the clouds last night.

I took a vacation day from work so that I could stay out all night and revel under the sky with my telescope.

Clouds eventually came back with a vengeance, ending my astronomy session much sooner than I preferred, but not before I was able to capture some images of Mars.

This month marks the twelfth month since I registered my domain name, "MarsNeeds.com," and started this simple astronomy blog.  It seems appropriate that this 52nd post on my blog (yes, 52 posts over the course of the year) features an image of Mars.

Mars, as seen from my backyard.

It's not a particularly special image of Mars, but I'm happy with it.  Mars is getting more and more difficult to image, especially compared to its glory at last year's opposition.

How does this image stack up against previous captures?

The Moon

Moons, actually.

Ours and Jupiter's.  These moons were the targets of observation for this astronomy session.

"Why moons?" you ask?

Well, it has been many weeks since we had a break in the clouds sufficient to support dragging out the equipment for an astronomy session.  Withdrawal symptoms were manifesting themselves.

This Sunday morning, there was such a break.  Sadly, the Moon was 80% illuminated and dominating the sky.  It was so bright that it was like being under the sky in a light polluted city.  Almost all of the stars were washed out!

I decided to embrace the Moon's presence and use it as an opportunity to play with the equipment.  It was bright enough that I almost didn't need to use any other sort of lighting during the session.

It also turns out that at 0515 EST, Jupiter's moon, Io, was going to make a transit preceded by its shadow.  If you've never watched a shadow of one of Jupiter's moons slowly creep across its face, you are really missing something exciting! 

I had the equipment outside by 0100 EST and started with our Moon.  I figured that I'd spend time there while waiting for Jupiter to rise.

Our Moon

I'm really happy with the field of view offered by the ZWO ASI294MC imager.  I was easily able to capture data of the entire Moonface.  I suppose I was less happy with how quickly the data chewed through the laptop's disk space.  😒

Click on the images to view them in a larger size.

Green Cheese

Nebulosity in the Pleiades?

The Pleiades, also known as the "Seven Sisters," and also as "Messier 45," is an open star cluster in the constellation Taurus.

It is naked eye visible and resembles a tiny "little dipper."

The cluster is dominated by young hot blue luminous stars, the brightest of which illuminate reflection nebula.

The Pleiades has nebulosity?  Who knew?

Whenever I took a peek at M45 through my widest field eyepiece, I could see the beautiful blue stars and maybe a hint of a blue glow between them, but no nebula . . .

I've seen photos from astrophotographers showing the nebula so I figured that it takes some serious equipment to capture it.

When I was out last weekend, I thought I'd try to capture an image with my modest gear.

I was amazed to watch as SharpCap integrated the frames from the ZWO ASI294MC.

Nebulosity!

Gorgeous Cold Morning

Thursday morning was really cold.

It was 430am and I was following my morning workday ritual.  I loaded my backpack, my running gear, and lunch box into the back of the car and then pressed the button to open the garage.

As I always do, I stepped into the driveway and took a survey of the sky.

No clouds.  It was clear.

Holy cow!  Venus, the Moon, and Jupiter were having a conjunction.  It was beautiful.  I stood there staring at it for a few moments.

On a lark, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.  Honestly, I didn't expect much.  It was dark and it was a phone camera, afterall.  And then, I remembered that my phone, a Google Pixel 3XL, has a "Night Sight" mode for the camera.

I framed the image of the sky on the screen and pushed the button to take the photo.  The camera app put up a little message, "Hold still."

I held still.

A few moments later, this image appeared.

Venus, Moon, and Jupiter Conjunction

In it, you can clearly see Venus to the left of the Moon, with Jupiter to the right.  And a smattering of other stars.  On the right side of the image, the constellation, Scorpio stands out.

It's not great astrophotography, but is a pretty good image from a phone!

Below, I labeled the visible stars.

Labeled

With these images, you can click on them to see their larger versions.

Enjoy!

A Winter Astronomical Necessity

The sky was clear, cloudless, and dark last night.  And there were not gale force winds.

There was much rejoicing.

I had the telescope and equipment outside and set up by 8pm.  Moonrise was going to be after midnight.  This gave me hours of dark sky.  Yay!

The cold temperature was the challenge.  This piece of equipment is an enormous help, though.  Using it, I was good for hours even though there was frost forming everywhere.

Recommended

I placed one in the palm of each of my gloves.  Worked well.

So, what did I see?

It's About Time

It's really nice having a SkyWatcher Dobsonian telescope with Goto and tracking.

Just take the telescope outside, level the base and OTA, ensure it is pointing toward true north, power it up, enter the time and date, align it to a few, well known, bright stars in the sky, and then you are good for a night of astronomy. 

You ask, "Wait. You have to enter the time and date?  What's up with that?"

Yes, in this modern day of connected smart gadgets, telescope owners are still forced to engage in the archaic ritual of mashing keys on a membrane keypad to set the time and date on their telescopes.

SynScan telescope hand controller