M57, the Ring Nebula

The Ring Nebula (also known as the Planetary Nebula M57, Messier 57, M57 or NGC 6720) is a prototypical planetary nebula in the constellation of Lyra. This is one of the most famous nebulae often used as an example of this type of astronomical objects. It is located at 0.7 kpc (2300 light years) from Earth and was discovered by Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix in 1779.

Their joint magnitude V-band (green filter) is equal to 8.80. Its real form is possibly a bipolar nebula seen with an inclination of 30 ° from its axis, and calculated that it has been expanding around 1600 years.

From their radial velocity, -19.2 km/s, it follows that approaches Earth more than 69120 km/h: this rate is caused by the combination of the sun’s orbital speed around the nucleus of the Milky Way and the speed of the Earth itself.

M57 is illuminated by a white dwarf at its center of visual magnitude 15.8.

This picture is a single shot of 30 seconds exposition through a SkyWatcher 6 inches refractor telescope at prime focus. Fitsworks4 was used to remove a bit the background noise.

Polaris A & Polaris B

Polaris has a close neighbor at 18 arcseconds that can be spotted easily through a telescope.

This is a 15 seconds exposure through a Meade Lightbridge 16-inch, a Dobson with no tracking, but fortunately Polaris moves very slowly through its small circumpolar path, due to its proximity to north pole in the sky. The camera used was a Canon EOS 450d, also known as Rebel XTi. The method employed was an eyepiece projection using a 14mm Meade Series 5000.

Reaching Binocular focus

Someone asked me for help recently using this comment:

“Hello, I have 16×50 binoculars and a 7.1 mega pixel camera with 4x zoom and I’ve done what you said and looked at the Moon and the images are no where near as close as yours. The image blurs once the picture is taken of the moon and doesn’t seem no where near as close to the moon as yours. Please help.”

I would like to share the answer just in case someone is also interested.

Answer:

16x and 4x should mean a final 64x optical zoom. That is as much as when seeing through a telescope. If you are capturing frames at 7 MegaPixels this is to say they are around 3,000×2,500 pixels in size. When creating a video you need a final image size of 1,000×700 as much, so if you crop a frame of 3,000×2,500 into a final frame of 1,000×700, it would be equivalent to apply a 3x additional zoom to the image, because (1,000×700) * 3 is more o less equal to 3,000×2,500.

Bottom line: do a crop to your 7 Mpx image and you will get an effective 182x magnification.

Respecting the blur, don’t panic. The blur may be a product of the weather conditions, or a thermal issue in your binoculars.

Try to avoid make photos of the Moon when it is located directly over the roof of a neighbour. This is a very frequent source of blurring problems.

Try also to cool down your binoculars before the observation, trying to get a thermal equilibrium with the outdoor temperature.

Be sure that your digicam is functioning with a infinite focus mode. The focus must be achieved manually using the binocular focuser.

If you have the option of taking continuous shots, use it. The majority of the images recorded may be blurred, but sometimes you may get one more clear and sharp.

Well. I hope this helps you to get sharper images.

Good luck.

Mare Tranquillitatis in color

Color contrasts in the Moon are interesting even beautiful. The following picture shows Mare Tranquillitatis area and the southern part of Mare Serenitatis in full color. It was taken 4 days after full moon. The shadows in the terminator show the orography of the landscape. Mare Tranquillitatis seems to be mainly blue. This is due to its peculiar chemical composition.

Pitiscus

Pitiscus, Hommel, Ideler and Spallanzani are the only four craters of the picture with proper name. The rest of them are named by letter surnames like Ideler R or Ideler L. They are located in the South-East area of the Moon. The picture was taken on 2009-09-09 05h 20m U.T. and the terminator was passing across Pitiscus, Hommel, the two big and shadowed craters. Pitiscus is 85 km wide and Hommel is 129 km (76 miles). The smallest craters of the image are 7 km wide, that is 3.5 arcseconds, 1.75 arcseconds for the bright spot and 1.75 arcseconds for the shadow spot. Image detail could then be better for a 6-inch telescope (this is the equipment used to take the image, an scope capable up to 0.7 arcseconds of resolution). 622 subframes were recorded with the Manual-Crazy-Tracking system and stacked in Registax 5.

Posidonius

Posidonius is a big crater of the Moon on Mare Serenitatis. There is a lot of interesting details to observe inside: peaks, ridges, craterlets, … In the following image taken yesterday night, 4 km wide craters can be spot as small white points in the smooth surface of Mare Serenitatis.

Posidonius measures 95 km in diameter. The second biggest crater (a bit ghostly) in the picture is Chacornac, just below Posidonius. Inside it is visible a small craterlet called Chacornac A (it measures 5 km in diameter).

The third biggest crater of the picture is Daniell (31 km wide) located in the upper middle side. Its shape is not circular, but oval. This is the cause of a strange effect in perspective when comparing it with the craters nearby.

PosidoniusPosidonius is a lunar impact crater that is located on the western edge of Mare Serenitatis

Dorsum Oppel

Dorsum Oppel is a wrinkle ridge of the Moon in Mare Crisium. 2 days after full moon is the best moment to observe it. It is a very large formation and the landscape along is quite impressive, full of small craters, tiny mountains and the smooth floor of Mare Crisium. It is important to reach a high magnification to enjoy the view (150x at least).

My setup is a 6-inch telescope, but I bet it is possible to observe it comfortably with a 4-inch refractor.

The bright and overexposed crater is Proclus. I have to work harder the dynamic range issue next time.

Swift and Peirce are the pair of craters in the upper side of the picture, near the lunar terminator. Below Peirce should be visible a 2 kms wide craterlet, but unfortunately my picture cannot yield such a resolution. According to a quick calculation, 3 kms is the smallest visible feature in theis image, and that corresponds to 1.5 arcseconds. A bit far still to the maximum theoretical resolution of a 6-inch telescope (that is around 0.7 arcseconds)

Yerkes is the big ghostly crater in the right side. Apparently there is a central peak in its center. I have been looking for a confirmation of the existence of that peak, but I haven’t found any reliable source where it is mentioned. Any hint here, I would be thankful…

Manual Crazy Tracking

Lacking of an equatorial mount I have built myself a kind of manual tracking system that keeps into the field of view of a webcam a planet like Jupiter, for 3 minutes. This is long enough to record useful data and then post-process it with aggressive wavelets.

The resulting tracking is not at all perfect. You may see Jupiter swinging around the screen. It is important to capture the data at a fast shutter speed (1/100 sec.) to avoid motion blur in every frame because the planet is always dancing.

In spite of this movement, the results after stacking are very good. Here I show this really simple system and the resulting yesterday’s Jupiter with the webcam:

As you can see the Manual-Crazy-Tracking is a very simple system that consists in a rubber band attached to the tripod handle. If you try to track manually directly pushing the tripod handle, the shaking is excessive and you would need a very very fast shutter speed to get some useful data. The rubber band is necessary to reduce vibrations and increase the shift movement control.

At beginning Jupiter is located in the center of the field of view with no need to any corrections. As long as it drifts due to its sidereal movement you will have to pull using the rubber band in order to keep it in the center of the screen (it is supposed you have a laptop there capturing and showing images from the webcam). This way you may have Jupiter centered in the screen for a long time. You will have time to focus (left hand pulling the rubber band and right hand tweaking the focuser) and time to expose.

Jupiter, Io & Wesley impact scar

Good seeing yesterday too (2009-08-27 23h05m UT). Wesley impact scar is fading day after day, but it is still there. I made an animation that shows Io approaching Jupiter’s limb: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78zJtv569y4

Big Jupo

I have a good seeing last night. So I got my best Jupiter yet. Here it is:

It is 4x resampled via Registax Mitchell and PS. After resampled I can spot more details in bands and polar zones.

As always I used the 6-inch no-EQ mounted newtonian reflector, the 14mm eyepiece doing afocal projection over the Canon EOS 450d (Rebel XTi) body and recording video using “EOS Camera Movie Record” free software. Three times Jupiter crossed over the field of view. Registax and VirtualDub added and stacked the footage properly.

M42 with point & shoot digicam

It is interesting to explore the possibilities of some common devices such as digicams and binoculars. I have been reprocessing some old stuff from March. I took 474 single exposures of M42 in Orion through the binoculars with my Exilim digicam. Using a stacking software, all these subframes may become aligned and added accurately, resulting into a 4 minutes long exposure single shot with a perfect star-tracking. I reckon I didn’t use any kind of equatorial mount or motorized tracking. Just an steady tripod. Orion belt passed accros the field of view of the binoculars 3 times. In every gap, I corrected manually the FOV to get M42 inside it as longest as possible.

Ganymede’s shadow

Yesterday night I had the chance to enjoy a multiple moon transition in Jupiter. Ganymede and Europa were crossing Jupiter and throwing their shadows to the big planet. Here it is an image of the event. At 23h 24m U.T Europa’s shadow was not visible yet. Io also appears at the photo but it was beneath the planet. In a minutes it would disappear.

The picture was taken with my digital reflex body (EOS Rebel XTi) and using the video capture software that converts it into a high quality webcam.

Jupiter Opposition

15th August 2009 was the day that Jupiter reached its closest position to Earth. Its apparent diameter was 49 arcseconds, so this is the best time to do planetary astrophotography with the giant planet. Using the afocal technique and a Canon EOS 450d body I took 2 video sequences and processed with Registax 5, Photoshop & Pain Shop Pro.

Wesley impact scar

Several days ago a comet hit Jupiter leaving a dark spot near one of its polar regions. Today this spot is still visible with a powerful telescope. Maybe if I have a high power Barlow lens I could have observed it visually. But fortunately there exist astrophotography, a technique that lets you observer indirectly what you can’t spot directly through a telescope.

In this same picture I include a Jupiter from the day before yesterday. The lack of atmospheric turbulence gave me a chance to get closer to the maximum theoretical resolution of a 6-inch telescope.

Jupiter selection & post-processing

Yesterday I took several videos with Canon EOS 450d (Rebel XTi) to Jupiter through the no-EQ mounted 150mm reflector. The final effective resolution of every video is slightly different, depending on the weather conditions and the focus reached in this precise instant. So I have chosen the two best sequential videos and appended each other into one final with double frame size.

After selecting and appending, I used Photoshop to apply a hard sharpen, and several other filters getting different final results. Here they are.

Jupiter & 3 moons

Just some minutes ago.

Hommel crater

Hommel is a big crater with nice craterlets inside, a Clavius-style set, but smaller, measuring 76 miles (129 Km). It is located in the South-East area of the visible Moon face. This area is pledge of small craters. It is similar in appearance to the sand of a beach. Pitiscus, Nearch and Asclepi are some of its neighbors.

The picture was taken at 19 days of lunation, that is 4 days after full Moon. This is the best timing to get sharp images of the crater’s walls’ shadows. The image is an integration of 27 subframes, each one taken at 9 Megapixels single shots with point-and-shoot digicam Casio Exilim EX-FS10.

Mare Crisium & Tranquillitatis

Two days after full moon Mare Crisium shows a nice landscape of mountains and shadows. Some of its inner crates are visible in this picture. The small crater Swift is on the limit of visibility. The big impact called Proclus and its rays are remarkable.

To take this image I used the Canon EOS 450d, Rebel XTI DSLR camera recording video subframes and later I stacked them up with Registax 5. Some small tweaks on Paint Shop Pro 9 and ready.

Io’s shadow over Jupiter

As Io passes in front of Jupiter, a big shadow is cast over the planet. In this picture I took tonight, it is clearly visible the dark point of shadow in the dead center of Jupiter. At its right a small spot that you may barely watch is Io.

In order to get a sharp image I used a Van Citter deconvolution process.

Jupiter occultation of 45 Cap

Jupiter occultation of 45 Cap tonight:

Jupiter with Exilim, 450d & Webcam

Here I have integrated my best images of Jupiter taken with 3 different cameras:

* Casio Exilim EX-FS10

* Canon EOS 450D (Rebel XTi)

* Webcam Philips ToUcam Pro

Jupiter post-processing

I have been lucky tonight. Good seeing to see Jupiter. Using a small binoculars between the eyepiece and my eye I could spot visually Jupiter in high definition at an effective 450x magnification. That’s pretty good for a 150/600 reflector, isn’t it?

As you may appreciate in the following picture, the GRS (Great Red Spot) is clearly visible near the center of the planet. Several details are visible in the Jupiter’s bands. The image was obtained with a non-tracking Newtonian 6-inch telescope, a 14mm eyepiece, a Casio Exilim EX-FS10 digital camera that recorded 165 subframes. Registax 5 dealt with the alignment and stacking process. Dyadic Wavelets were applied to get contrast and details. PSP9 did the post-processing. The footage was taken exactly at 2009-07-28 03:33 UT.

Here several post-processing results are shown. The first one is that I like more.

Jupiter, Europa & Ganymede

Here it is, Jupiter, Europa & Ganymede.

Jupiter’s galilean moons

Galilean moons are very easy to observe using some kind of instrument to get some magnification. With just a binoculars would be enough to spot the four moons of Jupiter. They are constantly rotating around Jupiter. Every day their relative distances and positions changes. Their names are Io, Callisto, Europa & Ganymede. They all have a similar size and brightness. When passing in front of the big planet, they cast a shadow over the gaseous surface of Jupiter. It is required a telescope to observe such events.

Here it is a picture I took tonight with a digital pocket camera through a 14mm eyepiece and a 150 mm newtonian reflector telescope with no-tracking system.

Bullialdus area

A lot of features are located in this area of the Moon. Some of them are: Rupes Recta, Pitatus, Promontorium Taenarium, Bullialdus. It corresponds to the area covered by the Rükl plates 53 & 54.

Bullialdus is the big crater at upper left side, in the shadows. Pitatus is centered in the lower side. Inside several details are visible: a peak and an inner rim. Rupus Recta is the large straight wall on the right side.

This picture was obtained after stacking (with Registax 5) 20 single frames taken with Casio Exilim pocket digital camera in afocal projection through an eyepiece using a Meade Lightbridge 16-inch dobsonian telescope.

Mare Crisium

Mare Crisium is a big and round dark spot in the face of the Moon. It is easily visible through the naked eye on the right side (East) of the Moon. Inside Mare Crisium there are some interesting features, like small craters as Picard or Peirce. Proclus is the bright crater on the left (West) beyond the Crisium border. Some bright rays emerge from it crossing part of Mare Crisium. At north-east of Crisium (above right) there is a small and dark surface called Mare Anguis (the “serpent sea”). A big crater is visible at its left (West) known as crater Eimmart.

This picture was taken as the integration of 30 subframes stacked in Registax 5, from a video made with Casio Exilim EX-Z80 afocal on Meade Lightbridge 16-inches big Dobsonian, with no tracking.

A bit better Saturn

Fortunately, yesterday was not cloudy and I could do further experiments with Saturn. Using a Barlow 2x and Casio Exilim EX-FS10 camera I filmed some videos at highest resolution through the big dobsonian telescope Meade Lightbridge 16-inch. Weather conditions were good. I did a better collimation than previous days, getting sharp focus from time to time. Stacking the frames with Registax 5 I got this resulting image:

In the left side of the image, it is visible a satellite of Saturn. It is Titan, with 9 magnitude. Over it, a bit at right there is almost visible another one, Rhea of magnitude 10. Visually it was observable another one aligned to Titan and Rhea, but it is not visible in the image. It was Dione with 11 magnitude.

Luckily this image shows the gap between foreside ring and its rear part. The image effective resolution according to my calculations is 1 arcsecond. Two cloud bands are visible one in the north hemisphere and the other in the south.

I would like to break the 1 arcsecond resolution barrier, but I don’t know if it is possible with this telescope. Theoretically it delivers a 0.3 arcsecond resolution because it has 400mm of mirror diameter.

Saturn improved

Saturn is getting hard to be photographed. I have recently bought a low-quality barlow 2x and a ScopeTronix EZ-Pix II. The clouds aren’t giving me many opportunities to see Saturn, but I could find a hole in the sky 2 nights ago. I took a time trying to collimate the dobsonian as better as possible. Nevertheless I couldn’t get a sharp focus. I took video and single frames. After stacking with Registax 5, I have got this image.

Aristarchus crater

Aristarchus is a rather peculiar crater. It is for me the most exciting pattern in the Moon. It is located over a weird squared area and there is an important valley near it, to its north-west. It is visible since now, 2 days before Full Moon.

The picture was shot tonight through a non-motorized 150mm (6 inches) reflector using high definition video capture with Casio Exilim EX-FS10.

Proclus and surroundings

Stacked from a video under Registax 5 and stitched with Autostitch, I got yesterday this Moon mosaic. Equipment: Meade Lightbridge 16″ and Casio Exilim EX-FS10.

4.6 days lunation Moon

Tonight the Moon is crescent, and high in altitude. It is a good opportunity to record our natural satellite. Terminator is almost reaching Mare Serenitatis. Mare Nectaris (actually a gulf of Mare Tranquillitatis) is now fully illuminated and its Western border walls are clearly visible.

Tonight’s Moon

Here we have a 3.5 days lunation Moon. Mare Crisium is completely illuminated and some fine details may be seen, like small Swift crater (5 kms diameter). The image was a sum (Registax 5) of 10 subframes at 9Mpx using the Casio Exilim EX-FS10 and Vixen 12×80 binocular.

Waxing Gibbous Moon

Yesterday’s Moon in phase waxing gibbous as seen through the Vixen 12×80 binocular, here it is. Registax 5 stacked 55 individual frames of 8 Mpx each. Nebulosity 2 was used to compensate the sideral movement and perform the de-rotation. Sharpening with Paint Shop Pro.

Copernicus Crater

Copernicus is the name of a big Lunar crater. A video taken with the compact digital camera and the Meade Dobsonian was processed using Registax, and the resulting three frames were stitched with AutoStitch. We see here a zone in the terminator for a 9 lunation days Moon around Copernicus:

Tycho and the South Pole

A sequence of shots to the Moon taken with the Dob Meade Lightbridge 16″ telescope has been integrated into one final image, thanks again to Registax and Paint Shop Pro. This mosaic of Tycho crater and the South Pole region is composed of 30 individual frames. The biggest crater in the terminator is Clavius. Inside it there a lot of small craters.

Silberschlag casts two shadows

Silberschlag is a small Moon crater near Mare Tranquillitatis. What is my surprise when I observe that this crater shadow is proper of two peaks instead of a crater rim. Watch the picture and think about it. Is that normal?

55 frames stacked in Registax

After stacking 55 frames of yesterday’s Crescent Moon, forcing a bit the saturation, and sharpening using the finest wavelet available, I am proud to introduce this Moon picture:

Foggy Crescent Moon

Yesterday’s moon was a bit foggy in my location. Nevertheless I got an image that I am very proud of, because it is the first time I obtain a nearly perfect focus thanks to the binocular focus tip. When doing afocal exposures, you may get a sharp focus using another binocular over the lens. This way you guarantee an infinite precise focus for the camera.

This image was taken as usual, through Vixen 12×80 binoculars and with the Casio Exilim EX-Z80 pocket digital camera. I used only green channel data, because it was the sharpest.

Mizar & Alcor

Mizar and Alcor are probably the most well known double star in the sky. Located in Ursa Major,it is very easy to separate Mizar from Alcor, even with the unaided eye.

Sidus Ludoviciana is the faint star between Mizar and Alcor. Mizar is the brightest one, which in fact is a binary system: Mizar A & B, with an angular separation of 14 arcseconds.

Photo taken with the dobsonian reflector Meade Lightbridge 16″, using afocal eyepiece proyection. Here we see 222 shots of 0.5 seconds of exposure stacked. No tracking, shift-and-add method.

Where is Sirius B?

After resolving the binary system of Castor I tried unsuccessfully to spot Sirius B. Theoretically it is possible using the Meade Lightbridge 16″, but maybe another luckier night … Integrating 200 half second exposure frames I got this result:

Praesepe Open Cluster

Praesepe, also known as M44 or the Beehive cluster is one of the brightest open clusters in northern sky. Visible with unaided eye, even in urban areas. I have applied some filters to enhance the picture, including an artificial diffraction mask to get spikes. Using the shift-and-add technique for 1 minute I got this result.

Almost Full Moon

Here we see a 13 days lunation Moon, almost full. Registax 5 did the work of stacking and wavelets. Focus was not perfect but wavelets fixed it. I multiplied the red channel to the green channel in order to enhance the image contrast.

Digital camera & Binoculars

Here is my way to attach the pocket digital camera Casio Exilim EX-Z80 to my binoculars Vixen 12×80. It is necessary to cut a piece of aluminum respecting the format of the binoculars, calculating the correct distance between the hole that grabs the camera and the hole to fix with the tripod and the binoculars. Remember to always use British Standard Whitworth (BSW) screw threads, 1/4 inch, and to drill the holes for this width.

This way it is easy to do afocal astrophotography, and get sharp focus, because the camera remains pointed correctly through one eyepiece of the binoculars.

Attaching Exilim to Telescope

Digital pocket cameras like Casio Exilim EX-Z80 are not prepared to be attached to the focuser of a telescope. But it is simple to make a hand-crafted device with a piece of wood and a British Standard Whitworth (BSW) screw 1/4″ thread. The attachment is not rock solid, but enough to take photos and videos through the telescope using the afocal technique. Here we see the Casio attached to the Tanzutsu 114/1000 telescope.

The Moon highly saturated

Usually we see the Moon as in a gray scale picture, with no color details. Nevertheless the Moon has different hues depending on the chemical composition of the terrain. For example, Mare Tranquillitatis has a blue tone due to its titanium high density. Processing a Moon picture computationally, we may exaggerate its colors, giving high saturation to RGB colors. In the resulting image, Mare Tranquillitatis is the most blueish dark area. Equipment: Telescope Tanzutsu Catadioptric 114/1000.