Was at HFCC near the science building in their courtyard for solar observing Saturday

Chatted with Tim Campbell on the phone and mentioned it would be nice to do some solar observing. He mentioned he was busy at the HFCC planetarium giving a presentation, but that he thought about taking out his solar setup and doing solar outreach.

The problem was, he'd need someone to watch the setup while he was giving the presentation. I wanted to compare the new Hershel wedge on the solar setup Tim uses against my Vixen binocular telescope with dual filters.

I've seen at times really great detail with two eyes on the 80mm binoculars when using safe solar filters, I wondered now the twin 80mm would compare to a single 101mm view of the Tele Vue NP101 is.

With the Herschel wedge supposedly giving great views, it would be interesting to see if I could match the detail of the Herschel wedge.

We started looking around 2:15pm. James French joined us and brought his four inch telescope with a Baader planetarium filter on it.

We looked at the sunspots and also at solar flares though Tim's wonderful 80mm lunt solar telescope.

The views from the Hershel wedge were stunning. Many details could be seen. Tim had a zoom eyepiece from Lunt on the rig and it was already zoomed in to the highest power when I first looked at the sun.

I started to count sunspots in one group on Tim's setup. I counted at least 30 sunspots in the large group. But I knew there were some I missed because they were so small or I wasn't keeping track of the place I left off counting. There were likely forty sunspots in a small area.

When I looked through the vixen telescope the view was nice and pleasant, but it was no where near the view or detail of the Lunt Herschel wedge. I could perhaps make out half as many sunspots but. I was using a lower power than Tim's rig was using. I tried higher powered eyepieces and still found that it was difficult to get the sunspots in sharp focus for some reason.

The Hershel wedge won the shootout big time. It was far more pleasing of an image and I hoped to get a nice Tmounted shot of the sun to show what that telescope could do. Unfortunately with the filter and tmount I had I could not get the setup to go into focus.

I shot a few photos through the eyepiece which is called AFOCAL. Photography. This worked but the detail just wasn't the detail I was seeing in the telescope.

Below are some photos of the HFCC event.

Two young FAAC student members showed up as well.




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A lot of people have been under the weather.

Let's see, both my sisters have been under the weather with some kind of bug. I've been under the weather and a fellow Faac observer James has been not feeling well.

Symptoms may vary from person to person. Some are complaining about sore throats, some fatigue. I have been having a little bit of a sore throat and cramps and aches and pains in my legs from time to time as well as a general feeling of great fatigue from time to time. The chords in my hands feel like they are aching as well once in a while. I had a doctor take a brief look at my throat and she said, it looked okay. I was wondering if some of this might be related to allergies, there is a lot of tree mold in the air according to some recent local news reports.

With all the people I know being under the weather, one has to wonder if some kind of virus is going around.

Today James called me and I thought he wanted to know if HJRO was going to be open so I returned his call. I said I probably would not open up HJRO myself but might visit if others were going to open up. I called a Tim to find out if he was planning on opening up. He said he was thinking about it and may be opening up later but we should call the observatory phone to be sure they are open.

I packed up my car thinking I might meet James at the observatory and do a little observing outside, while two Tim's were inside testing cameras. I drove by the observatory at about 9:30 but nobody was there. I had a few errands to run, one being the picking up of some medication for our family and also ran through a couple of places to get a jot chocolate and a coffee. I returned home with the medication and coffee and then got back into my car and started to drive while calling to find out what was happening at HJRO.

It turned out that the two Tim's were busy with some other things and one of them said the sky didn't look very good out.

I decided to drive to Wyandotte by the waterfront to look at Saturn and the moon, fairly quickly and then perhaps open up HJRO if I felt good enough or return home. I felt the more likely scenario would be I would return home rather than open up HJRO with sick parents at home and myself being sick.

I told James I would call him if I was going to open up, but decided that it wasn't worth the risk and hassle to open up. I did talk to Art Parent as well on the phone and talked to him for the thirty or so minutes I observed. I ended up heading home. When I arrived the heat from the vents in the car, brought a feeling of fire passing over my fingers. Like the hairs on my hand were lit up. It was an interesting sensation, almost like a form of tickling sensation. Tickling and pain sensations can be almost the same and interchangeable at times. It's related to nerve sensors. But rather than speculate if my muscle and tendon aches were a kind of flu, I'm better off giving a quick observing report.

At 36 and 48 power Saturn looked stunning through the BT 80 vixen binocular telescope. It looked like seeing and transparency were very good. This at relatively low powers however which can be misleading. I put filters on the 32mm plossls and looked at the moon with 26x. The moon of course is one day past being full. The moon looked okay, but heat currents seemed to affect the seeing. The moon revealed a problem in seeing conditions that was not visible with the planet Saturn.

The temperature in Wyandotte was about 46 degrees according to my cars thermometer. The air was calm and somewhat moist but not nearly as bad as it was Friday early in the morning.

That's about it for a report. The sky is supposed to be really good for viewing the next couple of nights. I just don't know if we will have any healthy operators to open up HJRO.

Sorry about the late warnings or last minute reports. I've been to busy and feeling inconsistent in my health lately so I can't easily plan or give a good announcement before many impromptu observing sessions.

Greg


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A photo of the sun from yesterday, Thursday mornings outing.

I woke up Thursday morning (yesterday) and went out for a ride and since it was clear in the morning I took my binocular telescope and solar filters with me.

I also took my canon EOS camera as well.

Grabbing something to keep me warm, I must be addicted to those Tim Horton hot chocolates, and I don't even get paid to mention those so many times on my blog. . . :)

Anyways, grabbing the hot chocolate, I decided to setup right on Fort Street in Trenton Michigan.

The sight was rather poor due to rising thermos coming off the streets and from all the traffic. I snapped a photo using my iPhone which did not turn out very well.

I USED A SAFE SOLAR FILTER - designed to safely view the SUN.
I used safe solar filters.  See more comments below, but didn't use a guard outside to block the sun that might be hitting the outside eyepiece.  I wasn't looking through the safe solar filter from a shaded location.

Glare from the sun can affect the view and the photos.  And we can see a reflection lens flare which is caused by glare in the photo below.

I decided to try to take a few photos with the Canon EOS and those were not very good as well.

I downloaded one of the photos to my iPad and saw that there was a big reflection glare by the bottom of the image.

The photo below was taken at 1/160th of a second, handheld.

I decided to tweak the shot a bit in Filterstorm and this was a simple Mellow Yellow filter setting I saved in Filterstorm, making the white disk image look yellow which is more pleasing to some viewers. I also sharpened the image a big bringing out the details of the sunspots a bit, but a zoom into the photo shows I may have over sharpened the image a bit.




It's interesting that many people think the sun is normally yellow when it's up in the sky. It's so bright we don't look at it directly. The sun will show different colors when briefly glancing at it due to the atmosphere of the earth absorbing different wavelengths, in effect becoming a filter.

WARNING: ONLY USE A SAFE FILTER DESIGNED TO LOOK AT THE SUN AND READ DIRECTIONS CAREFULLY.  When in doubt, don't look and save your eyesight.

Don't look at the sun directly or with a telescope or binoculars because you could go blind. Have an astronomer verify the correct filters for a telescope, or call one of the many telescope and astronomy dealers that are out there who are knowledgable and can sell you a special filter or solar observing system that can safely view the sun.

Companies like Daystar, Thousand Oak Optical, Lunt, Coronodo(Meade), and Baader planetarium, sell solar telescopes of safe filters.

There are many ways that are UNSAFE and dangerous which people think are safe. This includes homemade filters from mylar ballons, and almost every type of welding glass sold. These are NOT designed to look at the sun and are not safe. I had an old astronomer who had a lot of knowledge tell me he was using number ten or twelve welding glass to view the sun, and that is NOT the safe rated glass to view the sun with.

There is only one kind of welders glass that is safe to view the sun through and that is only for naked eye observing, not using powered observing through a telescope. Because that glass is rare, your better off no using any welders glass and avoid using any of them.

The only safe welders glass is the old number 14 green glass welders glass, or number 14 with a gold coating on it. Some versions of number 14 are not safe as well, so you are better off avoiding welders glass for solar viewing.

A long time ago people used to think you could used dark exposed negatives as a kind of solar viewer. Those are not safe and that should NOT be used.

There are some safe solar glasses that are sold by planetariums and on the Internet that can be used. They are marked as solar glasses. They are used as glasses for your eyes, not for any kind of powered viewing.

There are filters and filter kits, sold by companies like Opt over the Internet that can be added to a telescope to make it safe.

I have a Daystar white light filter that is a safe filter marked for solar use. I also have Baader planetarium filters that are safe for solar viewing.

Some filters kits are designed for photography only and may not be safe for eyepiece viewing. To keep things simple at HJRO and with my own solar kits I only have solar filters and telescopes that are suitable for visual viewing with humans looking into the eyepiece. If I avoid the photographic only filters I can avoid accidentally using one for visual human use. So to be safe I only use visual solar filters rated for safe viewing.

Filters themselves can be damaged as well and have to be inspected each time before they are used. The best way to inspect one is by using a regular light bulb and look at that incandescent light bulb through the filter. If there are no cracks or holes that can be seen it can be safely used.

For filters that attach to telescopes you need to make sure they are firmly attached and will not easily be removed and can't just fall off or be blown off by the wind. Such accidents could be fatal and cause instant blindness.

Finders and other optical aids have to be covered when looking at the sun. One member told us he had his hair catch on fire from light from the finder when looking at the sun through his telescope. He didn't realize that the finder could cook or blind him if it was uncovered. At HJRO we keep the finder and the c14 covered during solar viewing.

Also the solar observer cannot tolerate any playing around near the telescope, or goofing around. A goal for safe solar public events is to keep others away from the front of the telescope when people are viewing. Make sure nobody is touching or playing with the front end of the telescope and that the filters are very much secured in place.

Constructed filters need to be constructed and taken care of. I have safe solar filters that I made and some I bought. The ones we make have to be inspected and constructed to resist any kind of malfunction and stored properly to avoid moisture damage and scratches.

That's about it for the security info on safely viewing the sun.

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Early Opening of HJRO to chase and try to capture comet Panstarrs

PANSTARRS was flying away from the earth and I was chasing it, with it's cold CO2 and water vapor dust flying in my face . . . a dream?  Let's find out. . .

There was a loud knocking sound in the house that woke me up.  That's a different story, but I was fast asleep and heard this knocking and yelling which is unrelated to astronomy.  I don't know if I was dreaming or what, but I felt like I was in a REM dream-like state.  The clock said, 4:30AM or something like that, as my vision was fuzzy and I tried to fall back asleep.  Then more noises. . . so I finally woke up a bit at about 5AM.  I took a quick look outside, and it was fairly clear outside.  I decided to make a quick attempt to open up HJRO and perhaps get a video clip of Comet Panstarrs which is perhaps still a good photographic target.  I kind of muddled around the house and started to gather a few items, not having an observing kit planned.  I decided to grab the Canon EOS, the Stellacam and an eyepiece bag.  I also grabbed my Toshiba PC which could control and record stills and video from the Canon EOS or Stellacam.

Perhaps I could get video of the comet with the Stellacam. . . it seemed early enough out.

It was cold out and my snow pants were in the car already pre-chilled.  I decided to stop at Tim Horton's drive through to get a hot chocolate.

I decided to grab a bagel and cream cheese as well from the drive through.  Then quickly pulled up in the parking lot and started eating the bagel and put out a quick post to some FAAC members in case some were up and around the area and felt the need to go out and take a look up this morning.  I don't know many of the FAAC member's schedules, some might be up early in the morning on their way to work and some who are in the area might have a chance to quickly head out and join me. . . at least that was my early morning logic.

Last night I was going to ask a few FAAC members if they wanted to do solar astronomy for the school system, a kind of impromptu outreach, but I was so busy and had to leave early and was feeling a little under the weather.  I decided to wait and see.  Now it was morning. . . rather than stay in bed and get more REM sleep, I was out dreaming of getting that perfect Stellacam video clip that we would process and finally I'd have a low light video clip of the comet.

Arriving at the observatory I decided to open the gate and drive up close to the observatory.   The moon was starting to look a bit worse.  It's full now and opposite of the sun.  It was about 20 degrees above the horizon, which means the sun was about 20 degrees below the eastern horizon, all things being equal.  "What time does the sun rise?"  But also what time is the sun 15 degrees below the horizon, because generally speaking when the sun is one hour below the horizon there is sky glow.  Ideally I'd be there a little earlier and be able to setup and have some time to be ready.

So I opened up the observatory.   I had two jackets on but no snow pants and could feel the cold chill in the air.  The air was still but seemed to be full of a frost like dew.

I couldn't tell if haze or some thin clouds were covering the moon, I guessed it was a bit of clouds perhaps moving north. . .

I started up the mount after uncovering the telescope.  I took the Stellacam and my ipad into the observatory, but left my eyepieces in the car.   I left my hot chocolate in the car as well.

The computer would not quickly connect to the computer, because the cable wasn't plugged into the computer that attaches to Windows.  I was a bit puzzled by the computer cable that was left hooked up to the computer, it was a camera control cable.  I should have realized it was for routing Stellacam signals into the computer.  I didn't know if the C14 was set up for the Stellacam focus or an eyepiece.  I should have remembered it was setup for the Stellacam, but that wouldn't help, because that would be a very narrow field and the mount and Sky Software wasn't likely going to point to Panstarrs correctly, for a small field of view.  I needed to use the Stellacam on the refractor.   I could perhaps get a view of the comet with the C14 first, and then mount the Stellacam on the Meade and setup the Meade's focus for the comet.  But the comet would be faint and I would have to focus on something else first.   Most targets might fade quickly for focusing as the sky started to grow brighter.  I could aim at the moon, but it was way over in the west and that meant moving the dome and I still didn't have the Stellacam mounted on the telescope.   I'd have to run cables.  That would take time.  I wanted to use the ONE good extension cable to hook up the heater because it was cold inside and I was really feeling that chill of the 36 degree air with moisture in it.

I felt like I walked into a dairy cooler from the old days when I worked at a convenience store.  Those coolers were moist with air, cold and chilly.  I felt like a chilled bottle of milk inside HJRO.

I turned on the Heating pad on the chair and finally connected the computer to the mount and told it to go Panstarrs.   The C14 moved toward Panstarrs.  The comet was further north and higher than I expected it to be.  The sky was getting brighter and brighter.  I put an eyepiece in and looked and saw nothing but blue sky.

I didn't know if the eyepiece was in focus and if Panstarrs was even in the field of view. I told the scope to goto a nearby bright star, near the comet so I could find that and sync the computer software called "The Sky" to the nearby star.  This would allow accurate pointing to the comet.  The star was found and I had to move the mount with the control paddle to the star and get it in the field of view.  Still a blue sky.  The mount was pointing to the star, but the star was out of focus, because it was setup for the Stellacam.  I refocused the star, fine tuned the alignment and "synced" the software.  Now it was off to the comet.

I had a 33mm SWAN eyepiece in the telescope's focuser.  The comet wasn't visible.  I could see a nice bright blue sky.  Then taking a second look, I could see the comet.  I felt like I could feel the ice crystals flying off the comet filling my lungs with icy air. . . but it wasn't from the view.  The comet looked like a simple faint star, no tail was visible.  The icy feeling was literally from the cold damp air filling my lungs.

Because I couldn't see a tail and the sky was glowing brighter and brighter, it was unlikely I could setup the camera or stellacam in time to get a photo of the comet and it's tail.   I would have to setup the camera or the Stellacam.  And setting up the Stellacam would take some time, because I'd have to focus the Meade, align the meade with the smaller target area provided with the small image chip on the stellacam.  The chances of seeing the tail with the Stellacam were zero.  

So I ended up running outside and taking a few stills with my iphone showing the glowing sky conditions.  I took a photo of the moon, but it was poor, so I won't post that here.  The moon was covered with thin clouds and haze.   The morning haze will likely burn off with the morning sun as it rises.   I was feeling cold and very chilled by that time about 6AM.  I didn't hook up the IR heater and that probably wouldn't have helped, because my lungs were feeling like they would fill up with ice and the IR heater won't heat the air, just object surfaces.  I don't know if I want to open up or chance opening up this morning, due to the could air and conditions.

So I locked up and left HJRO.  I drove over back to Tim Horton's to sit down write this blog entry and get the camera photo for the blog entry.

So I don't have a photo of the comet this morning to post.  Just this photo of the observatory and the sky as it was starting to glow, when I saw the comet inside.

I'm heading back home for a morning nap.  Maybe I'll catch up with that comet in my dreams.

(No comet photo today, by the time I was setup, the sky was starting to glow.)

Two quick photos of the moon through Ken Anderson's large 17 inch Newtonian

These were just a couple of quick iPhone photos taken through a 20mm ethos eyepiece last night at Island Lake State Recreation area. We have a monthly beginners night at the Faac observing site at the mill creek pond at Island Lake state park.

Yesterday was the first Saturday of the season for beginners night out there.

We had about twenty astronomers from the club out there. I only saw a few visitors, but I arrived very late and only took these photos of the moon through Ken's telescope. I didn't bring out the canon EOS to take photos of the members there and their rigs out.

The large crater in the left photo is easily spotted with most telescopes, but a lot more detail and fine gradient hues can be seen in a larger telescope. These photos don't really do the visual view justice. We could see a lot more than these photos relay.

The image on the right shows two craters if you hunt for them you may find them, which have a light colored patch which trails off making them look like a kind of artistic representation of a couple of comets with two tails. There craters were named after Charles Messier a famous astronomer who made a list of "non comet" objects in the night sky that he would mistake for comets. Messier was a comet hunter who never found any great comets, but made up this list to help other comet hunters who might mistake one of these other faint or fuzzy objects as a comet. His list became known as the Messier list and has many spectacular nebulas, open and globular clusters and galaxies which astronomers love to look at. Ironically he is known for his "non-comet" list instead of a comet he may have discovered.

Someone looking at the moon, saw these craters and thought they look like comets, artistically and they named the craters after Messier.





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Yesterdays solar observing event at Michigan Science center.

I arrived late and only stayed a few minutes, snapping a few photos of the Faac volunteers and staff member manning the telescopes for safe solar viewing.

They had a quite a variety of ways to view the sun. Tim Campbell had a very nice HA outfit that showed solar flares blasting off the moon. Tim also had Leon's refractor and a great Hershel wedge setup that showed a lot of detail for sunspot viewing. James French had a solar white light filter allowing views of sunspots and the science center had a light funnel attached to their telescope allowing a safe solar projection of sunspots to be seen.





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I might get a photo of the astronomy event at the Michigan science center

Today from 9am until 4am there is an astronomy event at the Michigan science center in. Detroit with displays planetarium shows and solar observing. But it's mostly cloudy now.

I don't know if I'll have time to get to that event. Because of things I need to do around the house.

They also have a solar viewing event at the nature center at Krnsington metro park and a beginners night at island lake state recreation facility.

The solar event at Kensington lasts until 4pm as well.

Sorry about the late post.

The island lake event starts around sunset at Island Lake state recreation area at the mill creek pond area.

I don't know if I can make it to any of these. One of the Faac members asked me if I could make it to a local lake Erie metro park or of I'd open up HJRO. I'm kind of doubtful of lake Erie but might open up at HJRO if someone else in our core group is there to man e observatory. But even with that option it will be cold tonight and a bit windy, so I'm kind of thinking I'll probably not open up HJRO either tonight.

The only good thing about the cold is it keep mesquites from biting.


Greg


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Early morning eyepiece test and attempt to look at Comet Panstarrs 5:30AM

This morning I woke up at about 5AM.

 I took a quick peek outside to see if the skies were clear.  They looked better than last night.  The sun would not be rising until about 6:30AM and sky glow would happen about an hour before sunrise.  I decided to rush out to HJRO and look at a few objects, perhaps test some eyepieces and maybe photograph the comet. 

I wanted to test the new Tele Vue 55mm Plossl that a club member found for me on the internet.  He purchased it for me from an Astromart ad and I was able to pay him and get the eyepiece yesterday.  It's a 2 inch eyepiece and requires a telescope with a large focuser.

I drove to Tim Horton's and got a hot chocolate before heading to the observatory, just to have something to insure I would stay warm for the next hour or so of observing.

Comparing of the eyepieces seemed to be the best thing at first, because of clouds obscuring the horizon and the sky looking like a soup bowl, with clouds and thicker haze near the horizon and some clearing above.

The Losmandy mount was directed to look at Saturn and I quickly opened the shutter and rotated the dome toward Saturn.  There is was.  These eyepieces are low power eyepieces that I was comparing.  A 40mm wide 68 field of view Williams Optics Swan, a Tele Vue 55mm Plossl, and "the Harold Wonder" eyepiece.  (We wonder what he made it from.)   The Harold Wonder eyepiece is a great eyepiece for public out-reach and Big Bertha.  How would it hold up against the others.  I'm going to give a better review later in the blog and possibly in a short piece for our Star Stuff FAAC magazine.  I write an HJRO update column that I try to get into each month's newsletter.  FAAC has a newsletter and I was the editor of it for about a year and started creating HJRO updates during that time.   I still write up some kind of update for each month's newsletter and submit it to the club, in case they want to put it into the newsletter.

The quick summary is as follows:

Viewed Saturn - Conditions poor with haze, but at low powers it still looked good through the C14 at 3911mm F11.   All three eyepieces showed a good deal of detail and I could see a few of Saturns moons, or at least stars that looked like it's moons, I didn't have time to check and verify this.

The three eyepiece performed essentially the same way.  I was actually surprised how well the Harold Home built eyepiece held it's own against the other two eyepieces.  It looks like the Harold Homebuilt eyepiece is a 55mm eyepiece, with essentially the same field of view and performance that the Tele Vue 55mm plossl has. 

I also looked at Comet Panstarrs but it was in more clouds and haze than Saturn and the view was disappointing with all three eyepieces.  The tail could not be seen and it looked like a fuzzy star.

Looking at M13 before the sky grew to bright the three eyepieces also showed very similar views.  The Televue Plossl had a more flat and smaller apparent field of view than the Swan.  The Televue had a very flat and detailed look.  The quality of it was apparent and it did slightly outclass the other two eyepieces.  It had a flatness and sharpness that is hard to quantify, it was almost a subliminal difference.  It was apparent but very subtle and something man viewers may not even see as a difference.  I was shocked at how well the Harold home-built eyepiece performed.  It offered sharp stars out to the edge of the field.  Perhaps a little bit of softness and pop was lost compared to the Tele Vue.  There was something that was probably an advantage for the Homebuilt eyepiece over the others and that was the wider glass in the eyepiece and an apparently huge exit cone.  This might cut down on the light a bit for some viewers, but with a large 14 inch it wasn't apparently any darker than the other eyepieces, even if larger exit pupil cone of light may cause loss of light from the primary mirror (this being a theory by some.)

The large light cone of the Harold home built gave a slight problem at some distances from the eyepiece.  There was a shallow area of a certain distance which caused a dark spot from the secondary to appear, really a pair of them.  Kind of like a mirror testing pattern.  That might be a distraction to some viewers at some distances.  They might see the dark pattern and wonder what that spot is?  I've heard this from some viewers before.   This is easily overcome by movement of the eye in relation to the eyepiece.  Some simple eyepieces with less glass components may show this more than a more complex design with more glass in the path of the eyepiece.  I've seen this in a "single lens" eyepiece I made as a kid as a "cheater finder" which was a 60mm single lens eyepiece.  At low powers one will at times find the secondary obstruction shadow to appear, and this can happen with the Harold Wonder eyepiece.  At least with the C14.

The Harold Wonder eyepiece gives a slightly more forgiving area where you can look and see the entire image.  It's much greater when looking at the moon.  You can see the image from anywhere within a 2 inch circle behind the eyepiece, with plenty of room to have an off axis view that is great on Big Bertha and the moon with the Harold Wonder eyepiece.  The Tele Vue has a wider more forgivable exit cone than the Williams Optics eyepiece.  It's big and for this eyepiece for Saturn on the C14 it's almost as large as the Harold Wonder provides.  The William's optics needs your eye to be centered to get the view right, but this is common with "wide field" eyepieces that offer a wide view internally with a big piece of glass inside the eyepiece for the "image to be projected on".

They were all winners in their own ways.  None had the clear advantage.  I'd give the flat field and sharpness of star definition to the Tele Vue.  The ease of use for sidewalk astronomy and light weight advantage has to go to the Harold Wonder.  The wide field immersive view would go to the 68 degree field of view 40mm Williams Optics Swan.  All have an advantage in some aspect and none are a clear winner.  Of course for rarity and novelty, the Harold "home built"has to have some extra points if you want to show someone something that is truly unique.

This test was limited to the C14 at F11.  I didn't test them on other wider field telescopes. I'd like to test them all on Big Bertha for example which is a F5.35 Schmidt Newtonian which the Harold Wonder eyepiece came with.

I only had time to look at three objects before the sky started to get bright.  I tried to take a photo of Comet Panstarrs, and may post it later.  That photograph turned out poorly due to haze and cloud cover in front of the comet.  I was actually surprised that I could see or photograph the comet at all.

Below is a snapshot from the observatory this morning I took outside.  I processed this a bit using contrast and brightness and created a few different exposed looks of the sky and observatory and then took those into Photomatix HDR processing and created an HDR that gives you a look at the observatory and a good idea how the clouds were.  The comet was in the low cloud bands you can see in the photo.

Sunday night observing report from Lake Erie Metro Park

I ended up joining James French at Lake Erie Metro Park. Faac members have a special agreement and can use one area of the park for astronomy with a pass.

So we headed out there. James was actually out there first.

There was a lot of clouds, haze and some cold rolling fog off the river, with a few patches of open sky bug haze often in those areas, not perfectly clear in any location of the sky.

This from 9:45 until 11:30 when we left Lake Erie Metro Park.

James setup his new(used) six inch reflector telescope that he bought at the Faac swap meet and also a four inch reflector that he bought there as well.

Both are Newtonian reflectors. and the larger one we worked on earlier in the day at Harold Thomalson's house. We worked a bit on the mirror mount and position of the mirror and then did a fairly quick collimation of the optics. The laser collimator tool did a fairly good job and the star test showed a pretty good aligned optic using an 8mm eyepiece tonight.

The images of Jupiter and Saturn were pretty nice though both telescopes. We looked at m42 but didn't find any other clusters of faint objects due to the massive number of clouds in the sky.

We looked at a few stars. I brought out my vixen binocular telescope as well and we looked at a couple of boats on the river. One ship and a tugboat pushing a barge. We chatted briefly with George Korody about the weather and he said things should be clearing up in a few hours. I forgot my snow pants. Although it was 45 degrees out, the slight breeze and humidity made it feel a little colder. It was a hint of warmer weather. James felt it wasn't that bad out. I had just had a cold drink before I arrived as a part of a rushed drive through meal from McDonalds. We had a ranger from the park approach us in the lot to tell us to check our watches, because we were supposed to leave when it closed. We said, we have passes for astronomy and showed them to him. He said, I'd didn't know about them and eventually left. The flashing lights and spotlight on us didn't help our night vision much, but the sky wasn't cooperating anyway.

Of course when I stopped off back home and started to unload I could see a clear area in the skies in Lincoln Park. It was almost enough to tempt me to go and open up HJRO early in the morning before the storms arrive to test a new eyepiece I bought. (it's a new used eyepiece, but that's another story.)

A couple of other Faac members were thinking about meeting us at LEMP tonight, but they really didn't miss much due to the cloud cover. We had a good time anyway and were able to test a few of my eyepieces in James new telescopes. All it all it was a pretty fun evening even with the clouds and poor weather.




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Friday night I didn't open up HJRO but took a little observing field trip to Dexter Michigan

HJRO was closed Friday, because I wasn't in the area.  Now perhaps Tim Dey or someone else opened up the observatory without my knowledge, but if it was open, I wasn't there.  I might wake up and open it up this morning and try to take a photo of the comet.  But as I write this it's getting pretty late here and I'm pretty tired, so I may miss the comet.  I'd need a really wide field setup to get the comet and Andromeda in one field of view anyway and I don't think we'd get very good results from Lincoln Park due to the low position of those in the morning and the sky glow from Detroit in the East.  So it's likely that the best pictures of the comet and M31 will be on the net or perhaps from some other astronomy photographer in the FAAC club.  I haven't heard of many FAAC members being excited about the comet as far as taking photos of it, lately as it's dimmer now.  I'm not sure why.  Maybe they just aren't to excited about a comet with such a short tail.

THE MESSIER MARATHON - PART 1 FRIDAY NIGHT
There was a Messier marathon tonight, and I'm sure it's still going on.  This is where astronomers meet at a dark sky site and try to see how many Messier objects they can see all night long.  In theory around this time of the year, one might be able to see every Messier object in the catalog.  Over a hundred objects in one night.  The key is to have a list of the objects and know the sky and how to find them well or have a really good goto telescope.  You have to start with the ones that are just about to set after the sun sets and then work your way up from the west toward the east.  In theory there is an opportunity for a break and perhaps a nap in the early hours of the morning and they you resume and try to bag a view of all the objects as they start to appear in the east before sunrise.  Only a couple of times a year the sun is in a position where you could see all the Messier objects.  This is one of those times.

Of course this isn't something that many beginners would attempt to do.  I'm usually at HJRO and I'm not much of a visual search and find astronomer because I'm so accustomed to using the observatory computer now and I'm often there to have it open for others.

I have never done a Messier marathon.  It's tempting to think about how easy it would be to do it and the endurance and fairly quick pace one would have to have to find objects.  Some being quite faint would require a fairly large telescope and dark skies to easily find.

I have tried a Messier torture test, in other words just tried to see how many I could quickly find one night back in 2010 during a marathon.  I was in the observatory with Greg Ozimek from the club and we had a kind of make shift list I came up with, not having a printed up one that is available on the web by those who know better than I on how to construct the list.  We were using the C14 goto and found quite a few Messier objects, but by 3AM were pretty tired and we only saw perhaps 45 or 50 objects by that time.  We were slowed down a bit because we had three astronomers in the observatory during part of that run and all of us wanted to look at the object and I was trying to take photos of each one with a 30 second exposure.  This slowed down our movement from one object to another, but it was still a pretty quick pace to see that many objects.

Rather than try to do that with my newly working old Nexstar telescope, I decided to go to an isolated site away from the other astronomers who are attempting this tonight and perhaps on Saturday as well.  I decided I'd try to go out to Dexter and have dinner first and then head over to my friends front yard.  He lives outside of Dexter and is about 4 or 5 miles away from Peach Mountain, U of M observing site for the University of Michigan Lowbrow astronomers.   It's a pretty dark sky location where my friend lives.

I stopped for pizza but was tired.  My car had three telescopes I took out there.  Looking up many thin clouds and haze made viewing look like it would be doubtful.  This was a bit earlier at about 7PM.  I was tired and decided to take a nap in the car before eating dinner.  My friend knew I'd be coming out but he wasn't sure what time I'd arrive.  After napping about a half and hour I went into Cottage Inn Pizza in Dexter Michigan and ordered a medium pizza with a couple of toppings and a Pepsi.

I quickly ate the pizza and wrote a couple of quick emails to club members.  One picked up an eyepiece for me off Astromart and wrote me that the eyepiece was in.  I can hardly wait to pick it up from him and pay him and test that eyepiece.  But I was pretty far from his location and he was already likely busy or observing somewhere else.  I hope he gets a chance to look through that eyepiece with his setup and gets some good use out of it before I take it off his hands.   It's a Televue 55mm Plossl, in a 2 inch format.  This means it should be great for really wide field views, especially on the C14 at HJRO.  It supposedly is okay on rich field telescopes but better for long focal length telescopes from what I've read on the net.  

After eating four pieces of pizza I headed over to my friends house.  I let him know I was there and started setting up a telescope in his front yard.   His son Eli who is 14 came out to help out and made some remarks which were funny and we had a pretty good time setting up the telescope.   But I ran into a problem which was I was having problem getting the alignment at first, due to my not wearing my glasses while looking up.  A real problem for me, I need to get a string or tether for my glasses for when I'm observing and I always forget to get one.  Another big problem was my finder is not working and I didn't fix it.  So I knew that I'd have these hassles and it would take some time. But Eli was thinking I'd have this setup quickly.  He made a remark that it was warm out and I was over-dressed.  He was out in a Sweat shirt early on.  I said, you better get your coat, because it's going to be getting cold tonight.  I had long johns on and snow pants for snowmobiling on.  So I was toasty warm.  We were running the telescope off an AC invertor from my Prius. I also setup my binocular telescope and we looked at a couple of objects.

Eli complained I had the binocular telescope set to low.  I had it set lower for him, but he's taller than I set it up for, and I could have set the telescope up at a lot higher position.

The Nexstar gave me a few problems.  The display seems dim and not as bright as I'd like it.  Probably my bad eyes and my need for bifocals.  I had problems reading it.  I had problems getting the scope polar aligned.  I had it setup with the wrong star at first, then realized that's not the north star.  Then when I had two stars finally picked as alignment stars and set, which was difficult because I didn't have a finder working, the telescope died on me.  Eli had told me that he heard some noise from my car and I dismissed it as some complaint that didn't matter.  What happened was I didn't put the Prius into operating mode and it was only in accessory mode.  This drained the starter battery and the inverter quit on me.  I could start the car and get power back, but my Nexstar had lost it's settings and I had to get it aligned again.  I set it up in EQ mode, which requires the tilting of the base with the built in setup that allows this.  But I don't have a telescope setup on the base that gives me a polar alignment.  So I didn't have a good polar alignment.

The second time I setup the telescope I didn't have it in the correct EQ align mode and wasted more time not getting it setup correctly.  So I had to go through the process a third time.  By that time Eli was starting to complain, how he was cold and of course we chatted at times about other things.

Another strange thing that happened, was I had a massive amount of gas from eating at the Cottage Inn apparently, maybe it was a combination of the cheeze and the Pepsi.  Eli was mentioning that there was a black bear in the area that scared some people in the nearby park as it awoke from it's hibernation.  And they saw this black bear.  He said, I hope you have your 45 ready to shoot at this if it comes around.  I said, I don't have a 45, much less have a 45 with me.  And I mentioned that using a handgun on a bear might not be a very good idea, as it might just make the bear angry and not harm him at all.  Bears have very thick bones in their skulls and many handgun bullets might just bounce off their heads and not do any damage other than make them more mad at you.  I said I heard that if you bark real loud at a bear, they don't like the sound of barking dogs.  But perhaps that might be a sign to them that "dinner is ready".  We were not sure what we'd do if a black bear came out after us at night looking for dinner.  I assured Eli he'd be okay because he could run faster than I could and the bear would probably get to me for dinner first.

We were hearing sounds, but it was not bear sounds.  It was the sounds of methane that I was omitting from time to time with loud noises.  My stomach was even making fart sounds with internal movement of gas inside my body.  It was quite distracting and of course we had all the fart homor one would hear in such a situation.  It was like a methane nebula was near.  I said, perhaps this smell would keep the bears away and swore these were not SBD stinkers.  I don't know if Eli agreed with this or not.  The sound of the Prius from time to time would turn on and off.  Finally after about an hour Eli said, I gotta go in, I'm getting cold. . . and he went back into the house.  About 20 minutes after he was in I had a pretty decent sync for the Nexstar.  His dad came out and I said, I finally got the thing setup and it works.  I said, "your son had me distracted with all his talk and gas."  Trying to blame him for all the fart distraction.  But of course my friend already had heard the story and knew I was trying to pass off the blame as well as the gas from Cottage Inn.

The IPad controlled the skifi flawlessly.  From time to time the ipad might lose it's WIFI connection and try to connect by default to my friend wifi network instead of the SKYFI network.  This was a bit of a distraction, but not a big deal.  A bigger problem was I didn't have a perfect alignment with the EQ not pointing at the north star correctly. And my alignment stars were quite close together, so the mount could find objects in one area of the sky pretty well, but further away to the east or west it would be fairly far off in it's positioning and "slewing" to the target.  It would be off and the narrow field of view that the Nexstar 4SE has didn't allow the object to fit inside the field of view of a 40mm plossl.  So I would have to try to find the object by moving the scope with the hand controller buttons.  This added to the task of quickly finding objects.  About 40% of the objects were quickly found.  I looked at a dozen objects with the telescope.

Another interesting thing was I put the Ipad on the Prius to set it down while looking at the objects through the telescope.  When I set it on the trunk lid of the Prius as my friend was approaching the Prius started up to charge the battery.  When the Prius started up, a strong EMF field apparently was generated by the Prius motor.  It is after all a 41 horsepower generator when it's charging the battery if the main motor is being used.  And this 41 horsepower can be multiplied by 660 to find out how many watts this is equivalent to.  That's a lot of wattage and a lot of power.  And the magnets in that must be pretty strong.

The magnetic field from the Prius motor, played havoc with the display of the ipad.  It's display was moving all over the place, as if many fingers were moving the display around and zooming it in and randomly moving the screen back and forth.  Totally uncontrollable.  And it might cause some to panic and wonder if the iPad was being reset or damaged by the stray fields.

I simply picked up the ipad and pressed on a part of the screen so it would respond to my finger direction.  This cleared up the software glitch.

We looked at a few objects and then Eli said, it's 11:30PM as if that is late, and it probably is for a person with a normal school or work schedule.  They are used to going to bed early and rising early.  I wanted to tell him Astronomers are like Vampires, we like to be up at night and sleep in during the daytime, especially when the sky is nice at night.

He went off to bed and I observed a little more.  But by 12:30 I was feeling a little tired and I had complaints from the home front about the need for me to be home and help out. So I decided to pack up the stuff.  After taking a few photos of the sky and telescopes there, I had all the telescopes put away and started the trip home.

It was a pretty successful night.  The question may be was it worth the trip.  If we think about it. I live 1 mile from HJRO. My friend lives about 50 miles away.  So I can drive to HJRO 50 times for every trip out to Dexter to observe.  Dexter has a nice observing site and I can see a lot.  I really like it out there.  But I don't get 50 times more quality from viewing in Dexter.  The views are much better but not 50 times better.

Well I think I've talked enough like a gasbag.   In any event, I didn't float away from all the methane and I never had to fend off the bear out there, so I suppose everything went about as well as it could for a Friday night observing session.  Had I not been bothered from home I might have stayed out a little later, but all in all it was a good observing session.

What did I learn.
1. The EQ mode is useless for the Nexstar 4SE for me, unless I can get a really good alignment.
2. I need some kind of Polar scope setup to get that.  Second I need a better finder scope setup, one that works. One that is optical not based on some button battery which can go dead.
3. the Ipad is really bright even in it's darkest setting at a dark sky site.  It's screen glow was really annoying. I didn't use the built in night vision mode, but I doubt that would have helped much. I would really need a red screen filter that some sell for astronomy to use that much at a dark sky site.  I ended up turning the ipad away from the telescope at times, but wanted to leave it's display on, to avoid the app from going to sleep and losing the connection to the telescope.  So it would have been really annoying for others at the Messier marathon hunt had I been near them with a bright iPad running and ruining their night vision.

These things would make the Nexstar 4SE a better telescope for casual observing.  It's small size makes it a little bit limited compared to a larger sized telescope like a C8.  I can say I'm really spoiled with the quick setup and permanent setup and computer at HJRO. I'm much less efficient in the field, because I'm used to the easy and quick setup we have at the observatory.  I actually got home a lot sooner than I might from HJRO, because at HJRO I live so close I know I can make it home sooner, if need be.

(Photo below)The two of us looking up through dark Dexter skies, Eli on the left viewing through the Vixen binoculars and I'm (the old fart) on the right looking up through the Nexstar 4SE.

Below:  Massive glow from the iPad.  As I search for the Ghost Of Jupiter nebula.

Also I forgot to add in the other post. . .

I'm really glad I didn't go out to Dexter tonight, and did my little test runs in Lincoln Park. Because I had two telescopes in my car, but forgot my eyepieces. And I would have really been bummed out to get out there and not be able to use both telescopes to their potential due to my lack of eyepieces.

Read previous post for a quick post on imaging tests at HJRO, and what I did with a little test run tonight near my car in the parking lot near the observatory.




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The testing continued, tested auto guiding at HJRO today.

Wednesday night some members of the Faac club tested the auto guiding setup at HJRO. Or a possible future setup. There has been a lot of reconfiguration and testing of new setups at HJRO. Because this involves a lot of debugging and sometimes mundane reconfigurations, we aren't in a position to give many sky tours or talk about the observatory and chat with visitors.

In some ways the timing may seem bad, with Comet Panstarrs being a focus and draw in the last month, but we had plenty of viewing of that comet when it was brighter and near the sun. And it could be more easily seen with small telescopes in urban locations. In a sense that gave me a good break from the observatory and let others work on the new configuration.

I took a lot of extra equipment to the observatory, mostly extra stuff we don't need for the technical configuration. The nice toys were brought by others.

I didn't even widely announce or tell other core Faac members much less the public about this, because these sessions are more about the testing of equipment, and normal observing and chatting can just end up getting under the feet of those doing the work.

Wednesday I was probably more of a distraction than help AR the observatory. It was pretty exciting to see the auto guiding work. It seems each session I over plan and bring to much stuff, and never can get to it all.

I brought some camcorders to the session on Wednesday and just tested recording parr of the session in low light. It was fun to watch the guys work with the programs and George brought a really nice astrophotography camera and took some test images of the new supernova in m65. Mike brought his auto guiding camera.

Mike, George, Tim Dey and Tim Campbell were at the observatory Wednesday. A couple of visitors were invited and a couple Faac members who didn't arrive said they might show up as well. With all the little things we worked on it was probably going to be somewhat boring, to most visitors. Sometimes boring is good, because things worked well. We had a couple of glitches but these were tied to a USB cable becoming disconnected. The mount tracked really well.

Thursday afternoon I received and email that George and a Both Tim's were going to be at the observatory after the Faac board meeting. I could join them and learn some more if I was able to make it. I didn't have tine with errands to return Georges call. I didn't have time or energy to go to the board meeting either. I ended up laying down for a while because I felt like I had a pulled muscle and was aching a bit. So I decided to take a nap.

The sky cleared up and I ended up rushing out and picking up dinner for my father who seemed to need a better meal than he has been having lately. And my mother was complaining a bit and wanted some kind of meal created. She has health issues, and can't cook for herself, but that is another story. I decided to cook her a pretty decent meal and prepared all these special dishes for her. I loaded up the car with stuff, but had two thoughts, one was to head out to my friends house in Dexter and test the Nexstar 4se under dark skies. The other was to go to HJRO and join in on the fun there. Since two of the key keepers were going to be at the test, there seemed to be little need to be there. And I was running late, but I figured I would drop by say hello and perhaps go out t a darker sky site.

Tim and George were taking test photos of a galaxy. And this was faint and difficult to photograph from our bright skies in Lincoln Park. Geroge got a pretty nice shot of the galaxy, which is in Ursa Major. He and Tin were going to test and compare the Canon 60da as well, and I offered to let them use my t1i as another camera to test on the same object. I know the 60da would do better then the t1i but it would be nice to see the difference.

They choose m51 a nice spiral galaxy for the test. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. I decided rather than stick around and watch the photos come in that I could do a quick test out here in the lighter skies of Lincoln Park and test my nexstar again and see hoe it ran and if it would hold sync during a test run. Maybe I could bag a few Messier objects a day before the FAAC Messier marathon, which happens this weekend for Faac Astronomers at one of our observing sites.

I left the guys inside and setup near my car. I was able to get the nexstar to sync and found a few objects, but viewing outside the observatory can be distracting from nearby street lights shining on my eyes and the eyepieces. I didn't have a good polar alignment and although I had a good two star northern EQ alignment, the objects I would search for were not hitting the center of the field of view of m 40mm plossl. I was using the skyfi box and the iPad to drive the telescope. It worked pretty good. I was feeling the cold but had an ac plug I found outside near the bleachers and was able to drive my scope. I noticed George and Tom were not using the ir heater inside earlier, so I returned to grab the heater and use it outside to throw some warmth on me.

Returning inside Tim said, oh we thought you left and went out to observe somewhere else. I said, no I'm outside, but wanted to borrow the heater while I'm observing near my car.

I was able to find a few messier objects, for some reason I choose mostly open star clusters from the software and most of them were easily found. M43 did not show up in the eyepiece however. My cheap crappy finder that Celestron puts on the nexstar was not working, so rather than search for it manually I moved on to other objects. The Celestron red dot, eats through button batteries when you leave it on and it's on switch is to easy to bump and turn on. In addition it's so cheap, maybe this is just my unit, but the on switch only works half the time.

Its just one of the annoyances of a cheap telescope, or one that is in the lower end of the nexstar line. The telescope is optically white good, I have no complaints with the optics, but it's low capacity drive system and finder leave a lot to be desired. The telescope is designed to do a lot of things well and it's nice in a small package. But the little things you get used to that seem to always work on a much more expensive setup don't always work with this grab and go setup.

Clouds were moving in from the north and Tim Dey showed up. I let Tim Campbell know the clouds were heading in and they better hurry with their tests. Then I decided to try to take a quick photo of something, maybe part of an open star cluster with my telescope using my canon t1i. The clouds moved in quickly. I was looking around in my car for my eyepiece bag with my standard set of eyepieces so I could set the focus of the nexstar for my canon t1i. Because the 25mm tv plossl is an almost perfect match for the focal distance of the t1i when it's mounted on the top front viewing eyepiece of the nexstar 4se. There are two viewports on this little telescope. One on the back and one up at a 90 degree angle. A flip mirror directs the light to the upper eyepiece holder or the back eyepiece holder. The back eyepiece holder with an inverter 45 degree prism by Celestron and the 25mm plossl is par focal with the Canon t1i mounted on the top eyepiece holder. So I can focus with the 25mm eyepiece, then flip the mirror and the canon will be in focus. Can quickly frame and focus the object and then take a picture. And the 25mm gives me almost the same field of view as the resulting photograph. This is a Great feature of the nexstar 4se.

But where was my 25mm eyepiece. I left my bag of eyepieces at home. I only had a 40mm eyepiece and a 5mm eyepiece in a different bag and the clouds were really moving in now. So I fumbled a bit with the camera trying to get the image in focus. But I could not see the stars or focus on them at least not the open cluster target I had, m35. So I ended up slewing the telescope with the goto to a bright star. The motors on the drive made their sound as the telescope moved to the next target, but it wasn't in the eyepiece.

The weight of the camera and eyepiece was not balanced enough to allow the Dec motors to move the scope. They were moving the scope in as much as the motors were spinning, but the clutch pressure, was not strong enough for the tube to move. So the telescope thought it was moving to the target, but it wasn't. The motors spun and the computer thought it was looking at the object. The system was still running, but I was out of sync or alignment now. So I never did get a quick photo, because the camera, once I had it in focus would not be pointed to a target in time to beat the clouds.

The other three Faac members decided to leave. They locked up the observatory and started to leave. I said goodbye, then unlocked the observatory to put the heater and my observing chair back inside.

Overall it was a good night. I think a lot was completed inside the observatory, and I was there for a little while. I didn't get much accomplished with the nexstar, but that was just a little test. It's not like I have the time to go out to a Messier marathon hunt anyway. I'll probably stay in this area for the weekend.

James a new member but frequent visitor said on some of the newsgroups that he wants to complete the messier marathon and see all the Messier objects in the next year. That would be a nice observing goal. I tried an abbreviated messier marathon in 2010 at HJRO with Greg Ozimek. We only saw about forty objects that night and we were up until 3am. To see 110 objects in one night would be a marathon. I would guess it would be a challenge for a new astronomer to see them all in one year as well. I don't think James can easily do this in one year, not from Lincoln Park skies with his current telescopes. The reason I say this is we had a difficult time seeing some of the fainter messier objects with the c14 under our skies. We could not see some of the galaxies which were beyond magnitude 9.5 or magnitude 10. If they were fainter than magnitude ten we pretty much gave up on them, with a 14 inch telescope. Why? Because of massive sky glow.

If James wants to see all the Messier objects in one year, his best bet is to get a list of the fainter ones and pair up at times with someone at a dark sky site and focus on the faint ones from there. Getting the bright ones are easy even with a small telescope from bright skies of our city. It's the faint ones that will be problems. I doubt we could visually see all the objects from HJRO with the C14. The faint small galaxies are the hardest to see visually of the Messier objects.

Now a nice ten inch dob under dark skies should make it a lot easier to bag most of them. If your lucky enough to look through one of our members larger telescopes at a dark sky site, then it may be easier to meet the marathon goal.

Thats about it for now. Perhaps this weekend we will be open for some observing. Maybe Friday night. But I'm not sure. My friends dark sky site is still calling me.

Greg


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Finished image, from the Filterstorm process, Comet Panstarrs at 125x

Output results from that curve, comet Panstarrs April 2, 2013
Comet Panstarrs l4 2011 at HJRO.

125x processed with a curve in Filterstorm for iPad.





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Image adjustments of Panstarrs using Filterstorm, the curve setting.

Previous image adjusted with Filterstorm for iPad, the curve adjustment.

Ideally one would use stacking of many photos and a much more fine and smooth process than a simple program application or app, like Filterstorm.

Filterstorm for the iPad is a rather rough photo editing program for the iPad. I think due to limitations on the iPad it was written to use less than the full range of colorspace which would be available in other more expensive programs (like photoshop, nebulosity, practically any advanced editing program on the Macintosh or PC). The normal PC program likely has more internal color space storage for each pixel of the image, inside the program. Because of the limited processing, I believe color gradients may appear to be more rough and posterized with filterstorm, than one might get with a better program.

The positive of the app is instant feedback on a touchpad with Filterstorm. It seems like the process for editing is more organic and quick than a desktop program would offer.

So in this case, I traded quality for speed of use, especially with curve filters.

We can still use a curve process to try to take some sky glow out.

In this case I'm going to use some rather radical processes which is somewhat radical to most photo processors who do astrophotography. I'm going to use negative curves. I'm using negative curves to reduce the sky glow that we were picking up from the longer exposures. This sky glow
usually is in the reddish range from lights at night in the atmosphere, that is an orange like tint, from sodium street lights. We can reduce that by targeting the tint in the reddish range. The theory which is put forth in the Nebulosity manual, which can be found on the internet, is one can separate the colors from a bright photo and split off the histograms, using processes in Nebulosity that will do this. This is the opposite of what most image processors due with faint images. They usually try to merge the colors in the histogram. They usually want the red, blue and green color curves to be aligned. In reducing sky glow from a photo that is to bright, we will try to split the histogram in Nebulosity, and then pull down the sky glow portion of the image using negative curves.

Negative curves tend to bring an image back or part of the image back and cause the display to look like it was drawn back into the photo in a 3d kind of way. It often ends up showing a white over saturated image in parts often bright stars, and this looks like it was literally pulled back into the photo, giving a quasi 3d look to the photo. The posterized effect in the photo is due to the radical use of curves and there being little differences in gradient values, that is actual values of the trail of the comet from the sky glow.

So we end up with an image that looks like it's more posterized and where many values look like they were clipped. It's a posterized kind of view of the comet. Having less color space in internal processing will cause clipping and a rougher gradient as well, giving a pixelated posterized sudden drop off that is less smooth than most astrophotographers would like.

I can always say I was trying to be Artistic in a poster kind of way. Will that get me off the hook?

Some heavily processed photos that people create of Hubble deep space images end up having a posterized and somewhat granular glow and look to them. I suspect they are using negative curve processes or positive curve processes that are so extreme that the bright areas are pulled out and the 3d like effect seems to occur.

Below is the radical curve I used on the iPad




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Panstarrs, basic image at 125x from HJRO, c14 this morning

Below is a single still image of Comet Panstarrs from HJRO, that was taken this morning.



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This morning goal will be Panstarrs and m31 at HJRO

Target Panstarrs

Then star between it and the andromeda galaxy


Then the andromeda galaxy

Hopefully to stitch together in post





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Panstarrs one 3.2 second image through the Meade this morning at about 6:20am

Comet Panstarrs 04-10-2013 Hector J Robinson Observatory, Lincoln Park, Michigan

3.2 second photo, at 1600 iso on Meade 480mm refractor.  Processed with Nebulosity, Preview, Neat Image Pro.  JPEG output size reduced for Blog posting.

I played around a bit with Nebulosity, then filtered the results.  This with with one photo.  There were no darks or flats processed.  The biggest problem is the Sky glow and the tail are so close to each other in the color space, it's really hard to bring out the details of the tail.

Maybe with curves and photoshop I could do better, but I haven't tried that yet.  I ended up desaturating the colors to try to show more detail in the tail and did a few tricks (mostly pushing buttons on a few different settings) with Nebulosity until things looked a little better.

I'm not very happy with this image, because it really doesn't show enough detail.  I filtered the image, but of course there is a bit of fall off to the edges which darken a bit in this picture.

I tried some radical settings as well to see how much tail detail could be found from the image, but those images look like reverse color photos and have little value.  Perhaps in some kind of layer they could be used to bring in detail.  Sometimes processors treat different layers often color layers and luminance layers separately and then recombine them mapping detail from the luminance layer back in. I wasn't using techniques that advanced with this.

Perhaps I'll get a better shot of the comet under a darker sky condition showing more tail detail in the near future.

One of the hassles was the telescopes were not focused for the camera, so I had to keep trying to refocus them, without slewing to another object.  When it's getting bright out, that will slow a person down.

Took a few tracking photos of the comet today from HJRO.

Woke up early, but not quite early enough to get the results I hoped for.

I was able to take some photos of the comet, but I went to bed really late last night and only had about an hour sleep. Waking up at about 6am I bolted over to the observatory and arrived at 6:08am.

I had the telescope setup and ready to go, but I didn't prefocus the camera.

That caused a delay. And some of the photos were not as in focus as I would have wanted them to be.

I haven't had time to review them and process them yet. I took a lot of dark frames and also flats as well, which are frames to reduce problems the camera might introduce into the photos. Specifically bright hot pixels, removed with dark frames and processing them, and dust in the system removed by using flat frames or white frames which show the dust.

I don't think there was any dust in the photographic path, so I think the whites are of little use. The sky glow was so bright, I doubt the dark frames will be of much value as well, but I took them just in case they would help.

All these were taken with backyard EOS so the images were streamed to my PC and none of them were captured on the sim card in the canon EOS camera.

I post pictures later, I'm heading back to bed to get some sleep.

This morning is this astronomers night time.

Greg


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