Greenhawk Observatory

For those who want to see the conjunction live: https://youtu.be/glhB1lsfcVs

Just took this image of the Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. Note that you can just make out the Red Spot on Jupiter. This is just an optical conjunction in the sky, Jupiter is located just under half a billion miles away and Saturn is located almost 1 billion miles away so the planets are obviously not really close, it is just from our perspective.

Join my talk this Saturday with the San Mateo County Astronomical Society about how long the sun will shine, how we know, what were the different theories and how the sun actually generates all the energy that enables life on Earth.

New Image: NGC 6946 NGC 6946 is a spiral face-on galaxy located about 25 million light years away. The star cluster in the lower part of the image is NGC 6939 located about 4,000 light years away. Image technical info:... Scope: 5" AP Refractor Camera: Orion Deep Space Pro Exposure: 35 sub frames of 300 seconds (2 hours and 55 minutes) I imaged this galaxy 10 years ago with a 9.25" SCT scope, you can see that one at the following link: https://www.greenhawkobservatory.com/ngc-6946

New Image: NGC 891 NGC 891 is a spiral unbarred galaxy in the constellation of Andromeda also known as the Silver Sliver Galaxy. It is located roughly 30 million light years from Earth. This galaxy has many attributes like our own galaxy and looks like what our Milky Way galaxy would look like in an edge-on view which clearly shows the dust lines obscuring the bright core. This exposure is 28 sub frames of 5 minutes (total of 140 minutes) taken with a 5 AP Refractor. As I ...started examining the images, I noted a cluster of distant galaxies, and it turns out that I inadvertently also imaged the Abell 437 galaxy cluster. You can see the details in both wide field and cropped views in the rest of the images attached to this post. This cluster contains about 30 galaxies, located about 240 million light years away (8 times further away than NGC 891) and are estimated to be moving away from us at a speed of 1.9% the speed of light. Clear Skies!

The Helix Nebula (NGC 7293) This is a 2-hour exposure of the Helix Nebula, also known as The Eye of God and The Eye of Sauron. It really needs at least two more hours and a clearer night to capture the nicer details. It is a planetary nebula which is the remaining glowing gases of a sun-like star. Small and medium stars end their life leaving behind a dense core made of Carbon, Oxygen and sometimes Magnesium tightly packed into an object called a White Dwarf. The remaining ga...ses that made up the original star drift away and are still superheated causing them to glow. The name Planetary Nebula originates from the 18th century when limited quality optics made these round objects look like planets. This nebula is quite large, and quite close to Earth, about 650 light years away. It is a favorite object for observers using lower power telescope and eyepieces. Though in my experience it requires a filter to really make it visible. If you somehow make it back to our solar system in about 5 billion years this is what our sun may end up looking like. See more

Imaging Pluto: My little homage to Clyde Tombaugh And a plug for my upcoming talk at SMCAS October 24, 2020 Observing (and even imaging) Pluto is not an extremely rewarding activity. It is too small and too far to offer any detail with any commercially available telescope. Even the great Hubble telescope barely did much more than show a glowing orb. The recent flyby of the New Horizons mission gave us our first real views of this distant icy object. I decided to attempt to r...epeat the work done by Clyde Tombaugh, the astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930, my job was easier because I knew where to look, thanks to Mr. Tombaugh. Back in January my family and I visited Lowell Observatory and the saw (and touched) the actual telescope he used to discover Pluto. By taking images of the same star field a few nights apart I was able to find the illusive Pluto as a little dot moving among the stars, and as you can see in the gif animation it moved quite a bit between the nights of October 16 and October 19 against the fixed background stars. This Saturday SMCAS will be holding its general meeting and virtual star party and I will be giving a talk about Pluto, its discovery and why it is not longer considered a planet. I will have the meeting zoom details available soon and will share them online, the event is open to the public so feel free to join. Clear Skies! #Pluto, #Astronomy, #Astrophotography, #Planets

The Helix and the Plane Did a 2 hour image of the Helix nebula last night. Have not processed it yet. One of my sub frames (5 minute exposure) captured a low flying plane passing right under the nebula, probably coming in for a landing in San Jose airport. I have seen many streaks of high flying planes and satellites going through my images but never one so close :)

When Big Stars Go BOOM! Over the past few nights, I took a combined 7 hours and 20 minutes exposure of the various components of the Veil Nebula. The Veil Nebula is a Supernova Remnant located about 2,400 light years away. The original star was about 20 times the mass of our Sun and it is believed to have exploded in a Supernova type II (core collapse) about 10,000 to 20,000 years ago. The remaining gases that made up this star are super-heated, which is why they glow, and have spread out across 3 degrees of the sky you can fit the moon 6 times between the east side and the western side of this nebula. The 3 images were taken between October 13 and October 17, 2020. For reference of the true size and spread of the Veil I have also included a composite image I took almost 10 years ago of the entire nebula.

The Pleiades (The Seven Sisters, Subaru, M45) This 2.5 hour exposure was taken last night. This open star cluster which is visible to the naked eye has many names, The Pleiades, The Seven Sisters, Subaru in Japan and is also known as M45 on the Messier Catalog. It is located roughly 450 light years away and consists of hot blue stars that are about 100 million years old (youngsters in stellar terms). This cluster will disperse over the next 250 million years. The bluish reflection you can see around the stars is thought to be a patch of cold gas and dust that the cluster is moving through and reflecting the light from these stars and is not likely to be the left-over gases of the nebula from which these stars formed.

After a long night of imaging, took a quick 5 minute snap of the Orion Nebula (m42). Need to wait a few weeks so it rises during decent hours and then I will image it properly.

Took this image of Mars 4 days ago. Took me a while to get oriented with Mars maps to figure out which features I was seeing. The image is just OK, over-sharpening caused flat areas to appear a bit elevated... still learning planetary imaging :)

The Ring Nebula - Wide Field View This image was taken for fun between longer imaging sessions two nights ago. It is a 5 minute wide field view of the Ring Nebula (M57) which is a shell of gas drifting away from a dying sun-like star, located about 2,300 light years away. The remnant of the star left behind is a white dwarf, a very condensed state of matter made mostly of carbon and oxygen. The gas is what used to make up the star and drifting away from the core, it is extrem...ely hot which is why it glows like neon in space. Over 10 to 15 thousand years it will cool off and will no longer be visible. This view mimics what you would see looking through a low power eyepiece with a small telescope (minus the color which we cannot see naked eye). The star to the left is called Sheliak and is one of the key stars in what makes up the Lyra constellation. The star to the right has the catchy name, HD176051 which deserves honorary mention as it is believed there is at least one planet (exoplanet) that goes round this star.

Light that is 500 million years old Took this 90 minute exposure last night. The central object is M13, a globular cluster of hundreds of thousands of stars which are about 10-12 billion years old in the constellation of Hercules. It is located about 22,000 light years from Earth and rotates around the halo of our Galaxy. The small spiral galaxy, NGC 6207 is located about 30 million light years away. The tiny edge-on galaxy marked IC 4617 is located about half a billion light years away. This ancient light I captured last night left there just as multi-cellular life started evolving on our planet roughly 500 million years ago.

One small step for a woman

Constellations...