Another Once in a lifetime Comet. C/2014 E2 Jacques

We have been treated to a few bright comets over the last year and once again treated to another dance across the heavens. A possible collision event somewhere deep in the Oort cloud has sent another cosmic interloper to grace our skies. Comet C/2014 E2 Jacques is a long period comet of approx 30,000 years, so last seen 1200 generations ago when the Neanderthals and modern man were developing stone tools and art whilst enduring what was earths last last ice age.....
I too have endurred a few recent problems with the DDG focusser on the FLT110 scope and will need to be replaced for sure. So I have for the purpose of this comet removed the Starlight express and replaced it with the Canon 40D. Better for short exposures on what was the guide scope William optics GT81. Offering a nice 2.6 x 1.7 degree fov. The GT 81 boast a flat field lens which performed well on it's first test with the Canon. No coma issues at all.

So my aim was to:
Capture enough frames to put together an animation showing its motion.
Use Deep sky stacker software to Comet stack, Star stack and merge the two together.
The final result is noisy for two reasons capture was @Iso 1600 and there were no calibration frames used. (no time to acquire them) It is also a shame that 4 minute exposures was never going to be long enough to capture the Heart & soul nebula that it lies between in my image.

So first up the animation. 14 frames of 4 minute exposures separated by 1 minute intervals.

Next the comet stack from Deep sky stacker. Sigma clipped to remove most of the stars.

 

 

Final processed image of star field & comet.

I think I will also try the same process in maxim as the stars are not right. But for now it is another comet bagged & tagged.

 

That reminds me I will have to dig out some of my comet Hale Bopp photos and scan them in and post. Them were the days when comets had 2 tails you could see naked eye. We need another Hale Bopp.

 

perigee-syzygy

I am trying to refain from using the term "Supermoon", as it seems to inspire some strange questions from those whom think my interest in Selenology is being a member of the Celine Dion fan club.
No it won't start earthquakes.
No it wont cause a Tsunami.
No the world will not end..............

Therefore you can see my reluctance in using the phrase. The term "Supermoon" was first coined by an astrologer Richard Nolle way back in 1979 He claimed that this proximity of the Moon and the Earth has the tendency to trigger a series of natural disasters on the planet. In order to support his claim, he put forth a list of natural disasters in the past which he alleges happened as a result of this phenomenon. I say "WHAT A LOAD OF TOSH" So as you can see it is what you would expect from an astrologer. (pretend science) sniggering as I type.

Science fact.

Everybody knows that the Moon orbits around the Earth, but only a few people are aware of the fact that its orbit is not round, but is elliptical in shape. As a result of this shape, the distance between the Earth and moon varies from time to time. When the Moon is at its farthest point from the Earth, it is referred to as 'lunar apogee', and when it is at its closest it is referred to as 'lunar perigee'. In other words, the distance between the Earth and the Moon fluctuates between 221,000 to 252,000 miles - and lunar perigee occurs when this distance is somewhere around 221,000 miles.

My Image was taken last night between 21.39 & 21.42 at a mean distance of 222,483 miles.

Using my William Optics GT81 and my trusty Canon 40D I captured segments of the moon in series of AVI files. Processed in Registax 6 with a wavelet sharpening. Stitched together in Photoshop with a small contrast enhancement.

The opinions expressed about Astrology in this post are entirely my own.

M27.

After capturing some swan nebula data. I refocussed and aimed high to the ever enigmatic Dumbell nebula.

 

5 x 20 sub frames, calibrated in axim DL and photoshop processed has produced a nice image with good colour. Unfortunatly I do not have full dome automation and closed the shutter and went to bed at 2.30 am. I am sure a revisit for some more data to add wouldn't go amiss.

M17 The swan Nebula

It has been a very long time since we have had a decent run of good weather here. Plus I have just started 2 weeks holiday with some clear skies so things are really looking up for us astronomers literally !!

We all know how low the constellation of Sagittarius is from the UK, I can see part of the teapot asterism for a short period coming from behind some poplar trees crossing our lane the disappearing as quick as it arrived behind the front wall of my house. I recently saw a post of M17 with some lovely detail and colour. I wanted to see what I could capture in a very short space of time. I have captured here 4 x 600 second exposures calibrated in Maxim DL. Processed in photoshop.

Friends far & wide

I was just checking on the blog stats to see where people are looking at my blog from.
I dont know if you are frequent visitors to my antics or just passing through. Please feel free to say hi and let me know where you are from. Make comments on what you like & don't like. If you have a link to your own webpage I would be happy to share a link back to you too. It would be nice to post a page with all your own pages, blogs, facebook links to your pics. Lets just hope we all get a few more clear night skies very soon.
Malc. AKA astrogeek.

M13

A test of the set up was required. So I rebalanced and ran PHD of a target much lower in declination than M106. I wanted something bright and easy so M13 was an easy choice to make rising nicely in the North east. I ran the guide programme for 5 minutes with no issues. Fingers were crossed and I ran 5 x 20 minute exposures as a test run really. Calibrated in Maxim DL and processed in photoshop. All I done to process was levels and curves. No unsharp masks or colour correction. Very pleased the core of the structure was not overcooked. A close inspection of the image had shown a faint galaxy between M13 and NGC6207. Carte Du Ceil shows it to be a PGC (principle galaxy catalogue) designation PGC2085277 a mag16.15 galaxy some 2500 times further away than the galactic cluster M13. Delving deeper I found 31 in total as deep as 19.22. Some showing as a marginal brigtening of a pixel or 2 but still there. call up a 2 degree FOV in Carte du Ceil and see how many you can capture too. You may have to download a few extra catalogues though.

The dogs go hunting.

As mentioned in the previous post this was the first time in a month the kit had been powered up. A fellow Breckland AS member has emailed an alert stating a new type II supernova has been discovered near the core of the barred spiral galaxy M106 in Canes Venatici (the hunting dogs). A quick set up and focus gave me the scope pointing near verticle. PHD had it's guide star and ran its set up. A few minutes later everything was ready to go. I programmed my usual 20 minute exposures and left it to it. I returned after the first image to find everything had gone haywire. PHD had lost its star nearly 15 minutes earlier. I spent the next hour running tests and shorter subs not to capture anything worth keeping. All I could manage was 3 x 3 minute exposures. Even these show elongated stars. Very annoyed.

 It appears that a star 23.5 million light years away a rare red supergiant star ended it's life in the most violent way. Nuclear fusion burns in it's core creating heavier elements. Fusion stops at the production of iron from Silicon. With no more energy being created to continue cooking the elements, Gravity takes over, collapsing the star and the resulting shockwave tears the star apart. Barely visible here the nova is situated just to the left of the bright core.

The only that redeems itself is the capture of a few NGC's. NGC 4248 just below M106. below him the pair NGC 4231 & NGC 4232 Bottom left is NGC 4217 & lower right NGC 4220.

Camelopardalids

Apologies for the lack of posts. Me, like the rest of the UK has suffered for a month now with the dreaded cloudouts. However excitement and tension across the astronomical world had reached a pinnacle last night with a new meteor shower called the Camelopardalids. We knew the peak would hit about 3:00am BST. I had the kit set up and ready. My ageing Canon 40D with an 18mm lens at Iso1600 is a proven success for me in the past. I set the alarm for 2:50 and got up to see once again full cloud and rain. To be expected I suppose. As I gently lay my head on the pillow and began to dream again, the flashes of a thousand meteors lit up my eyelids and I slept again till dawn. Upon checking websites this morning it appears the shower inside my dream was the best we could had hoped for...

Mars

This must have been the 4th Tuesday in a row for me to get over to the Observatory at Great Ellingham. A great opportunity was taken with good seeing I set about to image Mars. I was not happy with the images taken the previous week, Seeing was very poor and @f20 offered no image stability. So gave it up as a bad job. This Tuesday gone was however a surprising and welcome change. Still low on the horizon at the point of capture. Details teased and flashed with clarity on the screen. Registax processing and some work in Photoshop has revealed a pleasing result. Syrtis Major the largest dark feature demonstrates perfectly the dichotomy of the region as the vast expanse of Arabia Terra extends all the way to the Northern polar cap. Terra Meridiani sweeps across the bottom of the image and out of shot, as Hellas basin also appears bright . Overall I am happy with this image. Visually you can see why astronomers like Giovanni Schiaparelli back in 1877 thought there were canals on the surface. Optical illusions  and the seasonal changes gave this impression of a changing living surface. It was only the Mariner probes in the 60's and 70's that finally dispelled the myths and legends of little green men from Mars.

A bay of rainbows

Without a doubt my favourite area on the lunar surface. Every capture of the bay of rainbows I try to tease out a little more detail. Not the most favourable of seeing as I ran 3000 frames. Processed in registax with my favoured wavelets setting. I think this is the most detail I have managed. My William Optics GT81mm 5 element Apo was the scope of choice with a 2 x barlow and the ZWO ASI120MC camera. Capturing around 40 frames per second for a huge 10.3 Giga bite AVI.

Deep, Deep,Very Deep

My previous post of M97 & M108 required further inspection as I could see numerous faint fuzzies about 20 in all. I have highlighted the brightest in boxes and spent a great deal of time finding a desiganation for them. trawling through known to me and some obscure catalogues like MCG Morphological catalogue of galaxies, Holmber galaxies and the VV catalogue Vorontsov Velyanimov of interacting galaxies.

I was amazed to find a remote galaxy a bright one at that mag 14.6 named

MCG+09-19-018 A galaxy with active galactic nucleus, With a redshift of z=0.03475
we are Looking back time: 467 million light years a new record in distance capture for me.

Position confirmed again by Cartes du Ceil.

My image framed nicely with the glorius M108 shows this rather bright galaxy.

 

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Just when I thought it could not get any better.

 SDSSCGB 24289.1 breaks my distance record with a whopping 2.02 Billion light years. I can safely say that is the first time I have broken the billion light year barrier.

I have framed this small fuzzy against the Owl nebula. Position confirmed again by CDC

 

 

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The best was yet to come.

 

 but my greatest surprise was a 20th mag capture of a distant, sorry I mean VERY VERY VERY distant quasar [VV2006] J111005.6+553532 confirmed in position by Carte du Ceil. This is certainly a record for me that will last a while capturing a z=3.54642 Redshift Quasar an incredible 11.9 Billion yes you read it correctly 11.9 Billion light years away. That equates without a great deal of maths, the light from the earliest universe when it was just 1.7 billion years old. To say I am stunned is an understatement. Framed again against M108 who seems to just get bigger. Is the faintest couple of pixels I have ever captured. No enhancement of this image exept levels & curves in Photoshop.

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I am just wondering what I can do next to top this.