Finally back into the night

Its been a few months of clouds and rain and so I havent gotten to get out to observe or image in quite some time. My local astronomy group (San Antonio Astronomical Association) had an outreach outing at Garner State Park this past weekend and the forecast was iffy, but had the possibility to be nice so I packed all my gear and drove out for it. We were treated to a gorgeous night free of clouds until around 245 in the morning. Each scope had lines of people, adults and kids alike, excited to see planets, globular clusters, nebulas - basically whatever we would show them. It was a great time.

About 11 pm the crowds left and I was able to start imaging. I had already selected the Trifid Nebula so retweaked my alignment since it had gotten bumped with all the people around the scope and began imaging. I got a good amount of Luminance, Red & Green data. I had just started the Blue channel when the sky got completely socked in. Once I got home the next day I ran through my normal processing except I had to take the two blue frames I got before the clouds and some tweaking with the Green channel to create a false blue to see what I had ... despite the false blue channel, I am happy with the result.

I do plan to get out and get some proper blue sometime soon, but for my first chance at imaging since April, it made me happy to be back out with the scope.

Behind the scenes, at NASA!

Earlier this week my husband and I were fortunate enough to attend NASA's latest Tweetup at Johnson Space Center. What is a Tweetup? Well, it is a gathering of Twitter followers of course. NASA has been putting them on recently to gain publicity and awareness of launches, programs, etc. Myself (@antimorris) and my husband (@vtmath) traveled the short distance to Houston for a full day at the home of astronaut training, Johnson Space Center.

We were greeted with nametags, coffee, and an hour or so to explore the Visitor Center before it was open to the public. It was very nice to see the exhibits without the noise of crowds and enthusiastic children (although I think all of us at the Tweetup were just as, if not more, enthusiastic about this than all the children!) ... after the initial free-time we all gathered in the auditorium for some briefings. These, mind you, are not your typical boring briefings. We were treated to a backdrop of the live EVA going on up on the ISS and talks from astronauts Ellen Ochoa & Jeff Williams as well as a very in-depth break-down about the new Ku-band communications antenna that was being installed by the EVA in the background. All of these "briefings" were very much audience focused and the majority of the time was spent on Q&A rather than just being talked at. I think we all thoroughly enjoyed Jeff Williams (@Astro_Jeff) describing the differences in launch and landing in the Soyuz versus the Shuttle, just how excited all the astronauts are that they now have internet up on the Space Station, and their new exercise equipment up on the ISS. 

We then had time for a quick lunch in the VC cafeteria and then broke our 100 person group into two to start the tour. This was, mind you, not the typical tour you get when you visit JSC! We first headed over to Mission Control ... yes, THE MCC which was currently running STS-132. We got to sit in the gallery and watch them finish up the EVA and have Ed Van Cise (@Carbon_Flight), a Flight Director for the ISS, speak to us.

If this wasnt enough, we then made our way through the labyrinth that is Building 30 down to the historic Apollo Mission Control. Why Annie, you might say, the Apollo Mission Control is on the regular tour. Well, yes, and no. Normally you get to go to the gallery for the Apollo MC and just look in the room, we got to go in the room, press buttons, sit in the Flight Director's chair and wave back at the people on the "regular tour" in the gallery. It was fantastic!

This day couldnt get any better, right? .... WRONG! Where we headed to next was the place I have been wanting to see for years and was the most excited about (although MCC was pretty darn neat!) ... The Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL)! Thats right, the ridiculously giant, perfectly clear swimming pool with life-size shuttle cargo bays and the ISS in parts in it so astronauts can train on them. To make it even better, there were multiple astronauts in the pool (each with 4 safety divers) training when we were there. This massive training facility is beyond description. The only thing that would have made it better was to have been able to go diving in the pool, but alas, only NASA-certified divers are allowed.

By this point, I am beyond a happy camper. But we are still not done with the tour! We next head over to the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility (SVMF) to see the shuttle, Soyuz, and ISS trainers. We, of course, get an astronaut tour-guide, Dave Leestma, and also get to see STS-133 crew as they practice their post-liftoff suiting procedures. In this building they also have the new Lunar Electric Rovers, and some other robotic prototypes for future space operations. All very neat to see. 

We then capped off the day with a visit to the Rocket Park and the Saturn V rocket, which I have seen many times but am still impressed by its size every time I do. 

My overall impressions for the day ... WOW ... oh and never did I think that Twitter would be so useful. Getting to watch Mission Control run a shuttle flight, see astronauts train in the NBL, chat with multiple astronauts, and everything else we did were just amazing. Thank you Johnson Space Center and NASA for the behind-the-scenes look at everything. As someone described during the day, it was like having the golden ticket to get a special tour of the Willy Wonka's chocolate factory. It was a fantastic day and I really hope that we are fortunate to do another Tweetup with you in the future (preferably to a shuttle launch, hint hint)

Click on any photos here to see them larger or if you want to see all of my photos from the day, they are located here: STS-132 Tweetup Photos

NGC 3718 ... the comparison of dark versus urban skies

My latest project was to test the limits of imaging a) in the city and b) without an autoguider on my wedge-mounted scope. I chose NGC 3718 as I dont see many pictures of it and I think it looks cool and it has not only the main galaxy but alot of faint wispies that I figured (rightly) that I wouldnt be able to pick up in the city. I planned this so I had a week or two here in San Antonio to work on it and get data before my vacation to Big Bend where I would be able to get DARK DARK skies to get data for it there.

I found out that I can get 10 minute subs with no autoguider with my piggybacked EON (piggybacked on a CPC800) with slight tweaking over a week, though I kept most of my subs to 250sec as I still need to do a decent PEC training.

I also determined that no matter how many hours you get in the city it cant compare to a few hours in the ink black skies of Big Bend! Here is the comparison .... 


the first is 7 hours worth of Luminance data taken from San Antonio, mostly all 250sec subs, with a few 500sec subs in there. 

The second is the original 7 hours of data and then 2.5 more hours from Big Bend added to it. 

My the difference a few hours with absolutely no light pollution can make!!!! SO many more stars and now I was able to pull out the faint wispies I wanted to!

Now, just to get color to add to it next month when I head out to West Texas again for a star party to get more imaging time in dark skies ....

Here is the info for the shots:
Scope: Orion EON 80ED piggybacked on a CPC800
Camera: Atik 314L+
Autoguider: NONE
Filter: Astronomik Luminance
Exposure time: Image 1: 7 hrs, Image 2: 9.5 hrs
Sub length: 250 sec, (a few thrown in at 500 sec) 


Really makes the case for getting rid of light pollution and bringing back our dark skies!!!!

6 months later ....

I started astrophotography almost as soon as I got my scope, which means it has now been 6 months since I took my very first astrophoto ... I am almost ashamed to show my first few shots and processing of them.

The first ones of M31 and M13 were not focused (shooting a DSLR through a long focal length scope with no Bahtinov mask and no Live View ... soon made a mask and dont have such a focus problem with the Nikon anymore) I did get some acceptable attempts at the Lagoon Nebula, Swan Nebula, and Double Cluster - especially since I had no idea what I was doing and what darks and flats were, etc. ... but I dont have any recent ones of them to compare so I will just show the comparison ones to save on space here.

This is M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, from the second day of attempting astrophotography and from almost exactly 6 months later (3 days shy of it to be exact) ... I cropped and oriented them about the same to get a fair comparison.

Its come a long way! Although it is still not perfect, I know a lot more about what I am doing and improving with every night I spend imaging. I look forward to seeing the progress another 6 months will bring! 

First published astrophoto! (Twice!!)

Yesterday I had an astrophoto image published on Spaceweather.com!!!

On March 20, 2010 the Moon occulted Pleiades (with only occurs once every 13 years) and I took a few images while throwing a star party at my house. This was a multiple exposure image combined into an HDR astrophoto taken with my Nikon D40 which shows the occultation from my yard in San Antonio, TX. The link above will show you the front page of Spaceweather for March 21, 2010.

Addition: NASA also selected this photo for Friday, March 26, 2010's APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) .... I am very excited about this!!!, Here is the link: NASA APOD

Here is the full image: