Of Telescopes, Astronomers, and Comets

I repeatly wonder why I practice photography - especially astrophotography. It requires lots of equipment, time and effort. On Friday I had an engineering run on the 2.3 Meter Bok telescope on Kitt Peak. The moon was nearly full and didn't set until nearly 1.5 hours before morning twilight - leaving precious little time under dark skies. Knowing I was going to finish working on the BOk Telescope long before sunrise, I decided to bring my trusty Takahashi Astrograph and mount and attempt to photograph the early morning comet - 45P Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova. This periodic comet made a close pass to Earth earlier this year but was poorly placed for northern hemisphere observers. Now close to the sun in the early morning sky - photographing it was going to be a challenge. Though it is sporting a modest tail, it is buried in the morning zodical light and only achieves 12 degrees above the horizon before the onset of morning twilight. To make matters worse - from Kitt Peak I would have to shoot through the heavy glow of the city lights of Tucson. Sigh.

After finishing my duties with the 2.3 Meter Beast - I returned to the dorm around midnight and setup my mount and scope in the parking lot favored by a good eastern horizon and shielded from the wind by low trees.

At about 2:30am as the moon was about to set I decided to attempt a few minutes of imaging on the old standby - M42 - the Orion Nebula. Yeah - I know - everybody shoots this thing - its like a flower for the terrestrial photographer - pedestrian, but pretty. After about an hour of fighting a bad USB extension cable for the autoguider I finally was able to get about 30 minutes of integration with the 5D II on the neb - here is the result.

At 4:15 the comet was supposedly about 5 degrees above the eastern horizon. Not visible with the naked eye (and not having my binoculars) I was forced to search for it using the autoguider. My mount is not a "Goto" model and I had to fall back on my skills I learned as a lowly amateur and star hop to the expected location. After about 5 minutes I found a fuzzy "star" in the guider that was near the predicted postition. Without the luxury of time to decide on whether or not this was the comet - I started taking 1 minute long subframes of the field. 40 minutes later, twilight stopped further efforts on the comet. After inspecting the images - indeed the comet was there - though buried in the fog of the city and zodical glow. After processing - 40+ images revealed the object below.

After a few hours of shut-eye in the dorm I wandered back to the 2.3 Meter dome and finished working on a couple of hardware issues with the spare control system computer. This evening was the annual Tohono O' odham visit to their sacred mountain. All the Observatories were open to the public and the o'odham nation for inspection. The Tucson Amateur Astronomers association (TAAA) were on hand to show visitors views of the moon and celestial objects through various small telescopes (small compared to the monsters that permanently inhabit the mountain). My friends Dean and Melinda Ketelsen are members of the TAAA as well as docents for Kitt Peak. Seeing a note on FB from Mel that they planned on being on the mountain - I made the trek across the hill to where the TAAA had setup teles. It was good to see a couple of fellow astro-nuts and chat briefly with them before having to return to tour duty at the 2.3 Meter. Here are a couple of snaps of the K's setup near the 0.9 Meter that evening.

McMath Sunset

Tonight's sunset behind the McMath Solar Telescope atop Kitt Peak. 800mm lens ISO 400 1/200 sec @ F/7.1 through Baader Solar Filter. This image was captured from 12.2 miles away from the mountain top where the telescope resides.



The video below was obtained from the same location using a Questar 3.5 and a Canon 5D Mark II in video mode at 1080p. The video is sped up by a factor of 2 for brevity.

Selene behind Kitt Peak

This morning at 04:37 am from a calculated position on Sandario road, I got to see this sight. The atmospheric seeing was atrocious at the 2 degree elevation of the event from the desert floor - but . . .

This image was taken from 25 miles away from Kitt Peak. The larger of the two domes in the silhouette is the Mayall 4 meter telescope. The dome is 187 feet tall. This shot was obtained using an 800mm lens @ F/5.6.



A montage of images from the event . . .

Silhouette

After admiring Dean Ketelsen's amazing Kitt Peak sunset images, last month I had an idea for a spectacular image of the Moon setting behind the 4 meter Mayall telescope on Kitt Peak. I predicted the where, and when this would happen and subsequently made this image. The image is real - the only photoshop used was to composite the individual 7 frames of the scene taken at 1.5 minute intervals. Unfortunately clouds obscured the moon just prior to the actual silhouette.

The images were obtained with a Canon 5D mark II camera attached to a 400mm lens and 2X teleconverter for an effective focal length of 800mm.

An all nighter

For several weeks now I've been Jonesing to take my portable astrophotography system out and send some "quality time" with one of my favorite astrophotography subjects - the Rho Ophiuchi region of the Milky Way. I had to wait for the moon to wan enough to get dark skies, the weather to be clear and the winds to be mild to get the images I wanted.

The weather forecast for this weekend looked promising except for the winds. A Red Flag warning was out for Friday and Saturday with gusts expected to be 40 mph - not a good prospect for my little Takahashi mount. Thursday night looked like the best option - so I packed up the van and headed to Kitt Peak.

My target wasn't available above the horizon until after midnight so I spent the early hours of the evening taking calibration data for the later targets. Flats, and Darks were finished by 20:30 and so I decided to spend the remaining three hours until "Rho rise" getting a deep image of the Virgo cluster of galaxies centered around M87. The mount held my two Canon 5D Mark II DSLRs one with a 300mm F/2.8 L and the other used a 400mm F/2.8 L lens. Working at ISO 800 and at F/4.0, I made 36 five minute subexposures of the field - below is the result - a 3 hour exposure of the region around M87.



At 00:30 I started a 4 hour sequence on Rho Oph with both cameras. By 4:30 the sequences were finshed and I packed up for home - arriving shortly after sunrise. My first "all nighter" with my little portable system. Click on the images for a larger view.

Orion's Belt

For a long time now I've wanted to do long exposure astrophotography in the field. To do this properly I needed to have my Takahashi EM-200 mount, my DSLR, my autoguider camera and my laptop all working simultaneously - for hours at a time. The quickest solution (for me) was to get a portable generator to power the whole lot. Last week I finally broke down and bought a Honda EU2000i. Great little generator, very quiet, efficent and puts out 1600W of power - far more than I needed for my current setup but there's room for expansion.

So - after work on Kitt peak last night I finally got to try out the new setup at the 6000 foot pull-off of the mountain road. Though there was a 25% waxing cresent moon nearby I attempted a 150 minute exposure of Orion's belt using a 300mm lens @ F/4. A standard Canon EOS 5D Mark II was used at ISO 800. Thirty - 5 minute exposures were combined using ImagePlus and PSCS5.

The three bright stars running diagonally across the field are the three belt stars of the constellation Orion. IC 434 (the horsehead nebula) along with NGC 2024 (the flame nebula) can be seen making up the environs of the left-most belt star - Alnitak - or Zeta Orionis.








Note:

If everything is working properly this kind of photography is pretty boring - I spent the nearly three hours it took to make this image watching "Avatar" on my DROID. Ha!

The Big Gun

Every once in a while I get to "play" with a telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. Typically this happens when something is wrong with one of my charges or there is maintenance to be performed on the beast. Now - this isn't your daddy's typical backyard telescope. I spend most of my time in my "day job" around telescopes that are housed in buildings many times the size of my house and worth more than a thousand times my annual salary. These "Big Guns" of astronomy are used by professional astronomers from around the world to explore the vast depths of the Universe. For me - they are just really, really, really long focal lenght telephoto lenses.

Last night I had to do some software work on the 2.3 meter Bok Telescope atop Kitt Peak here in Arizona. When the work was done I took the opportunity to put my puny little Canon 5D on the back of this monster and do some cursory astrophotography. The planet Saturn, The Ring Nebula, and the center of the the Whirlpool galaxy were a few of my test subjects. The moon was full (and the sky was bright - blocking the faint light of some of the more interesting features and more difficult subjects). The seeing was not great either - but I managed to collect a few fuzzy photons as seen below.


The telescope farm atop Kitt Peak.


The Bok 2.3 Meter Telescope.


Saturn.


The Ring Nebula.


The Whirlpool Galaxy.

Kitt Peak by Night

A five hour long exposure of the 2.3 and 4 meter telescopes atop Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson. Actually this is a composite of 545 seperate 30 seconds exposures taken last night from that venue. Moonlight from the first quater moon illuminated the domes for half of the sequence hence the "daylight" appearence of the the buildlings. Brake lights from cars headed down the moutain after the nightly public evening illuminated the 2.3 building during a few of the exposures giving that telescope a red highlight. Details: Canon EOS 1D | Canon 24-70mm F/2.8 L lens at 24mm | 545 x 30 seconds @ F/3.2 | ISO 1000

Online

Well another day - another technology generated way to keep up with Dave's photography.

I just returned from three days on Kitt Peak where many large astronomical telescopes are available for use by astronomers from around the world. This is a view of the 4 Meter Mayall Reflector - the largest telescope on the mountain. Taken from atop the Steward Observatory 2.3 meter telescope building just south of the Mayall Telescope. I used a Canon 5D camera and a Canon 16-35mm zoom lens along with a Singh-Ray Gold/Blue Polarizer to capture this dramatic sunset - typical of the 7,000 foot vistas on this mountain sanctuary for "men with the long eyes".