Stacked image of the recent famous comet.
Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS
Craters on the Moon
Some prominent craters are Theophilus (98.6 km), Cyrillus (98.1 km) and Catharina (98.8 km) in the center. Western side of Mare Nectaris (333 km) is visible. On top of this Mare, Vallis Capella (49 km) is seen in the top right corner of the image with the Capella crater (48.1 km) and Isidorus Crater (41.4 km). To the lower right, this half filled crater Fracastorius (124 km) was invaded by the lava from Mare Nectaris, hence the North Wall is missing.
On the bottom left, Sacrobosco Crater (97.7 km) is half lit. The big Rupes Altai (427 km) is near. To the middle left, some part of Catena Abulfeda (438 km) is also visible.
Many more craters are here.. Ibn Rushd (31.1 km), Kant (30.9 km), Zollner (47 km), Taylor (41 km), Alfraganus (20 km) and many more.
PS: On April 16, 1972, We landed the crewed three days mission Apollo 16 on the moon. The image above has the location where it landed. Can you find the location?
M 57 - Ring Nebula
Comet on 18 October 2024
Comet, Satellite, Clouds and Camera noise :)
Comet Tsuchinshan–ATLAS
Yesterday tried to image the comet, again. Clouds thought otherwise!
Sky Brightness Continuous Measurement
Sky brightness, or darkness as we here prefer, is probably one of the most important factor in visual or instrumental observation of celestial objects. The lower the sky brightness number, the better the contrast we can have for the target object.
Here is a simple chart that shows two weeks of continuous monitoring of the sky. The top numbers are when it was night time. These numbers are in calibrated magnitude scale.
The dips there are the presence of clouds which made the number go a bit higher momentarily during the nightime. Remember, magnistude scale is reversed.
Asteroid 2023 FR3
50 minutes of imaging and i got to around 19 magnitude for this faint asteroid; this is in Ic band though. SNR is low but detectable. This asteroid was discovered some two weeks ago.
A distant galaxy in M 67 Star Cluster
Catalogue of Principal Galaxies, which has thousands of galaxies in it is a famous catalogue to find distant galaxies in your astro images. While imaging recently the famous M 67 cluster, i could easily see hundreds of far away galaxies in the images coming in the storage disk.
One of the galaxies i saw is PGC 4565962 which has a ‘look back time’ of some 3.2 billion light years!
Center of our Milkyway Galaxy
This is a combined 2 hours of infrared acquisition of the area where our Milkyway Galaxy’s center is located (marked with the arrow). Colors are artificial.
Dusty Crab Nebula
Infrared view of M 1 nebula.
C14+Hyperstar+Infrared Filter
International Space Station fly by
Starlight Xpress Oculus All Sky Camera thought this streak is a meteor and flagged it by saving it in Meteor Detection folder. This single image was exposed for about 25 seconds long.
Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
Meet Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko!
The bright line you see is the path of the comet in 30 minutes.. Surrounding the bright core is the ejected material which is going towards the left of it.
This comet is 66 million kilometers away from us and has an orbital period of 6.43 years. In 1959, Planet Jupiter moved this comet's perihelion inwards form 2.7 to about 1.3 where it remains today. In 2014 Rosetta mission visited this comet.
Imaging details:
Telescope: Celestron C14
Mount: Losmandy Titan
Camera: Zwo 183 mono
Filter: Infrared
Total exposure: 30 minutes (Guided)
Melotte 15 in Heart Nebula
Here is what i Rarely do.. imaging DSOs :)
Melotte 15 in Hydrogen Alpha 3nm filter shines brightly..
Telescope: Celestron C14 with Hyperstar
Camera: ZWO 183 mono (2 by 2 binning, 2 min subs, total 2 hours)
Filter: Astrodon Halpha 3nm
Sunspot no 2882
Solar imaging after a loong time.. Sunspot number 2882 here.
Telescope: Lunt 152
Mount: Celestron CGEM DX
Camera: ZWO 174 mono
Image Acquisition:
ROI: 1072x760
Shutter: 11.96ms
Gain: 55
Brightness: 40
Gamma: 1
Bit depth: 8 bit
Camera Temp: 55.2 C
My 300th observation of Near Earth Asteroids
Near Earth Asteroids are the ones whose orbits come very close to the orbit of planet Earth. Astronomers want to keep an eye on these objects all the time and since they cannot do it, amateur astronomers happily do that for them. As of today, there are 24,158 Near Earth Asteroids known to us.
For the last few months, I have been actively involved in the follow-up observations of Near Earth Asteroids from my observatory (N31) and as far as I know, this is the only observatory which is observing NEA from Pakistan.
The following picture is the stacked image of 100 NEA 2013 PY6 images, which I observed at around 17 magnitude. The three straight lines are the lights of an airplane, which crossed the field of view of the telescope.
You can see how many asteroids are in fact in the field of view
And this is the orbit (in Grey) of this Near Earth Asteroid.
Andromeda Galaxy in Infrared Light
Telescope: Celestron C14
Camera: ZWO 183 mono Pro
Filter: Astrodon Ic
Mount: Losmandy Titan
Computer: Eagle Pro
Software: The Sky X Pro, Maxim DL, PS
Periodic Error Correction
Worm gears in the mounts has an inherent error where they introduce a star going back and forth in the image, resulting in a not a perfect round star. Worm gear cannot be made perfect.
Since this is a periodic error, this problem can be reduced by using software to figure out the error and then tell the mount how to move in order to solve the issue. This is called Periodic Error Correction.
Pempro is an amazing software which i have used to ‘perfectly’ polar align my mount and the minimize PE. Recently i had opened the whole mount and cleaned and re-greased everything. Later i put a lot of effort to properly, as far as i can, adjust all the gears back. and today i ran Pempro and here are the results:
On the top right is the PE which is stunningly good for my mount.. i would want to believe that something is not right.. an error of just and arcsond.. really? is Losmandy Titan such an amazing mount? I am very very happy with these numbers.. but seriously.. 1 arcsecond?
ZWO 183 CMOS Linearity Test
A quick linearity test of ZWO 183 CMOS chip.. this is so surprising.. the linearity goes above 60k ADU. Is the CMOS chip that good or am i doing something wrong here?
Moon with Hyperstar Setup
Just experimenting with the new ZWO camera.. here is a cropped image of the moon with hyperstar lens on C14 telescope.