Kicking off the New Year with some Stargazing!

My daughter and I took our Dobsonian scopes out this past weekend. We had a great clear night on Saturday, and the thin crescent moon sunk below the horizon shortly after we set up our scopes - as did the temperature! We were up at a popular observing spot, the Mansfield Dam in Austin, Texas, frequented by local astronomers and curious others. It had been years since I had been there but felt like some social astronomy. While the skies were clear and steady, the light pollution there was terrible. There has been so much development in the area that it's just not that good a spot anymore for serious observing. Sure, with my 12" I was able to snag some great views of the objects below, but the overall quality of the astronomy from that site has deteriorated a lot.

Having said that, it was definitely fun to hang out with other astronomers, including a few I hadn't seen in a while. One chap had a homebuilt 8" reflector and equatorial mount which offered great views. The old school, home-built stuff is brilliant. Another guy was field testing an astronomy video camera which produced very impressive results.

Anyway, my daughter and I hunted down various objects including:

• M31 Andromeda (Very hard to find visually/manually but got it eventually!)
• M42 Orion Nebula (Always a delight in the 12" Lightbridge - tons of nebular detail despite the light pollution)
• M35
• M37
• M38
• E.T. Cluster (Phone home!)
• Jupiter (Looked amazing, very clear, sharp cloud bands!)

I also tested out some new apps on my iPad, focusing mostly on Luminos. I quite liked it - very clear star charts which enabled me to do some star-hopping to various objects. It had some nice logging functionality as well as data on various objects. Highly recommended!

Til next time, from a darker site!

A Dance of Light

An experimental shot. There's room for improvement, but I have been imagining this shot for a while. There are a lot of light variables in this, so it's a tricky shot.

This is Austin's Pennybacker Bridge. It's a 1.5 hour total exposure, composed of 30 second individual exposures. I was glad to be able to capture some boat activity on the river. Heavy road traffic!

Compiled in Startrails.exe software, then applied mild HDR to bring out some color on the foreground. Finally, some mild curve and contrast adjustment in GIMP.

More Visual Fun and Games!

Last week I spent some time in the front yard with my 6" Dob, checking out the Moon and Jupiter. This inspired me to dust off the old 12" Lightbridge and head out this evening. And dust it off I did! I had not used it in maybe 10 months or so. The poor thing had cobwebs in the lower tube assembly and was quite dusty. Anyway, after a quick dusting and de-webbing, I packed it up and took off to one of the more popular observing spots in Austin, Texas - the Mansfield Dam.

One other chap turned up, who had a nice 12" LX200. He was good company but I wondered what happened to everyone else I used to see out there. A good clear night used to attract quite a crowd. Oh well, maybe another time.

Anyway, after a very quick setup including collimation, I had a great few hours under the stars. It remained very clear and despite the Austin Clear Sky Chart indicating strong winds, it stayed relatively calm through the evening. The other chap swore he saw a few meteors here and there but they remained elusive for me.

Highlights of the night included:

• Neptune! (Found it using the SkySafari iPhone app!)
• Comet Garrard (faint at magnitude 7.8 but it looked great with my 22mm Panoptic)
• The Double Cluster
• M13 (Very nice tonight, tons of detail!)
• Jupiter (All four moons visible, with the Great Red Spot visible as well)
• Star Cloud in Sagitarrius
• M57 Ring Nebula
• A few other small open clusters

A great night out indeed. I need to more evenly split my time between visual and photographic astronomy and be sure to enjoy the simple pleasure of actually looking at the objects directly.

Fireball!!!

While I was driving home from the gas station tonight, I observed a very large firebill/bolide streak across the sky. Time was 9:06PM local (US CST) and it moved from north to northwest. Very large, very green~ish and it split into two before fading away. This was while driving, in the city, with a near full moon in the sky. It must have been pretty big! It was an amazing sight and quite a treat.

The Moon and Venus Dance in a Texan Sunset

AWESOME night last night! I went out to the Austin Astronomy Society's dark sky site in Burnet, Texas, and stayed from about 6PM to midnight. The sunset view, as evidenced in the photo above, was a great indicator of the night ahead. The Moon and Venus looked great after the sun went down, with the beautiful color banding along the horizon.

The night turned out to be a good one indeed. The Milky Way hung over our heads at zenith through most of the night, and the it was bright and showed lots of detail. M31 could be seen naked eye. I could not see Comet Hartley 2 naked eye but found it with binoculars easily enough. The temperature was just perfect, hovering around the mid-to-low 60s. The Draconids meteor shower actually put on a decent display, and I counted (when I wasn't working on my laptop or scope setup) maybe 5-6 bright, short-lifespan fireballs an hour. Very nice indeed!

I shot several objects through the night and will post images here when I am happy with them.

Austin Under the Stars - June 2009

Last night, the Austin Astronomy Society held one of it's twice-yearly "Austin Under the Stars" public star party events. I've enjoyed helping out at such events recently and volunteered to help out with this one. Actually, my kids came along as well with their 6" Dob, red flashlights and fluffy toys! I took my trusty 12" Lightbridge.

We got there at around 7PM and stayed until just past midnight. The clouds were rather heavy during the day, but cleared away after sunset and we were presented with some pretty nice skies. Possibly 30 other members were there with their scopes, and several newbies with their scopes came along as well. Visitors made their way from scope to scope, asking lots of questions about the different objects they were looking at. Some brought blankets and picnics and sat near the scopes and simply looked up at the stars. It was rather pleasant.

I had a ton of folks come up and peer through the Lightbridge. It was hard to show people anything other than Saturn and the Moon - folks literally demanded to see those two particular objects and they were stunned with them both. Children and adults alike were really taken aback by close-ups of the the Moon, and it was funny to hear some of them utter sheer disbelief when I showed them Saturn.

As the moon set later in the evening, I opted to show the visitors some deep sky gems, namely M13 and M57. To my surprise, the people who visited and looked at these objects were quite impressed by them. M13 is a pretty object just visually, but when I explained exactly what I what they were looking at (composition and distance from us) they were flabbergasted, and I think that the information I provided gave them some real food for thought.

Another fun object was pointing out an iridium flare at around 10:35 PM or so. We gave the visitors a heads-up of the object, telling them where to look and at what time. It came in right on schedule and got very bright very quickly - I love these things! The whole field of visitors and astronomers erupted into applause once the event finished and the satellite went on its merry way.

My two ankle-biters had fun as well. Armed with a little bit of knowledge of the Moon and Saturn, they showed folks the two objects through their 6" Dob, giving their guests some good info, with maybe a little bit of embellishment along the way! ;-)

All in all, a very good night. The Society estimates maybe 500-600 people came through the event. My kids had a smashing time, and I had a lot of fun showing folks the sights of the night sky. I fielded lots of different questions ranging from stellar evolution, telescope types and capabilities, the search for ET through to the effects of light pollution and the moon landings and future missions.

A great experience for astronomer and visitor alike!

Another Serious Storm in Austin

I had planned to spend a night out downtown taking some night time photos (and was already there) but had to seriously leg it home when my wife called to tell me a serious, tornado-producing storm was coming in fast. Just outside my neighborhood, I took a few photos, trying to capture some fork lightning while not getting hit myself!
























And then I tried to capture the neat clouds moving in too...


















As the storm moved away, I ventured outside to take some more snaps. The lightning persisted for quite some time, and I got some neat images. Click on them for full size.




















Tornadoes were reported in the area, but I didn't see any. I am pretty sure I saw a wall cloud though. One day...

Austin TX Hail Storm of the Century

...that's what the local media is treating it as, anyway.

Not astronomical, but...

When your weather Doppler looks like this...

















...expect to see hail as big as this.....

















Lots of smashed windscreens today! A big storm cell blew in from the North West this afternoon, bringing with it some tornado watches and heavy storms. I love rough weather!