DR. SMITH'S BACK YARD ASTRONOMY
GFSH PHOTO GALLERY
Ed Whitfield, past President of the West Valley Astronomy Club, wanted to have some astronomical photos taken by WVAC members. Here are a few of the images that I have taken from my Gray Fox Star Harbor Observatory.
All of the deep space images are with an ST 9E CCD (B/W) and the Moon/Planetary images are with my Adirondack PlanetCam (live color video). I use the shareware Registax to stack and process the video frames; a time-consuming task. I don’t use any special processing on the ST 9E images other than subtracting a dark frame from the light frame. The “purists” among you may scoff at this but astroimaging isn’t my primary concern.
COMETS
I suppose my astronomy interests could be divided into Solar System and Deep Space objects. From early age, I was always attracted to the Moon and Planets. I remember spending hours drawing Saturn and wondering what lay beyond Pluto. I have retained my interest in these things but I suppose my passion has turned to comets. I watched Comet C/1995 O1 Hale-Bopp extend as a bright streak from horizon to the zenith when I was hunting Muskox on Banks Island near the North Pole. It was one of the most amazing sites of my life.
COMETS
I have spent many evenings (some warm, some cold) observed comets with binoculars and taking images of them in my observatory. Since 2000, I have observed seven comets (listed below) and made time lapse movies of several of them.
Comet C/2001 A2 LINEAR 2001 (playing at the right)
Comet C/2001 C1 Ikeya-Zhang 2002
Deep Impact on Comet 9P Tempel 2005
Comet 17P/Holmes 2007
Comet C/2007 N3 Lulin 2007
Comet C/2009 R1 McNaught 2010
Comet 103P/Hartley 2010
Early in June 2010, the non-periodic Comet C/2009 R1 McNaught made its first ever appearance as a binocular target in the constellations Perseus and Andromeda. By late June, it had become a naked-eye object at dark sky locations. This was the latest of 50 comets discovered on September 9, 2009 by Robert McNaught using the Uppsala Southern Schmidt Telescope at Siding Springs Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. As a non-periodic comet it is thought to have originated from the Oort Cloud. Its period has not been calculated but its orbit is highly eccentric with an inclination of 77 degrees. All this indicates that this comet will likely be ejected from the Solar System into interstellar space.
To the left is a movie made from a series of images I took in my observatory on June 19, 2010 when the comet was at a magnitude of 5.5. The frames were assembled into a GIF file and played here. In this movie you can see that both dust and ion tails are well developed.
From September through November of 2010, we were visited by another comet 103P/Hartley (aka “Hartley 2”); a Jupiter family, periodic comet. It was discovered by Malcolm Hartley in 1986 also at the Uppsala Southern Schmidt Telescope at Siding Springs Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Hartley 2 is a very small comet that looks like a cross between a bowling pin and a peanut with a diameter of about 1.2 to 1.6 kilometers. Its periodicity is 6.46 years. This latest visit was interesting because the Earth’s orbit brought it within close proximity of Hartley 2.
Hartley 2 was expected to be a bright comet but it never did became bright enough to see even with binoculars. The movie at the left was made from a series of images taken on September 4, 2010 when it was at magnitude 8.4.
By mid-October, Hartley 2 had brightened to magnitude 4.8 which should have put it within the viewing capability of the naked-eye. However, it was so tiny that it was visible, with difficulty, with binoculars. Another feature of this passage of Hartley 2 was that the Deep Impact satellite that had crashed a probe into Comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005 was re-tasked as EPOXI (Extrasolar Planet Observation and Deep Impact Extended Investigation) to go on to rendezvous and photograph Hartley 2, the smallest comet ever visited by a spacecraft. On November 4, 2010, EPOXI began returning images of this strange little chunk of rock/ice. It is peculiar in that there is a smooth “waist-like” constriction with rough rocky on the ends. Barring any unforeseen events, Hartley 2 should be last for about 100 apparitions (~ 700 years).
PLANETS
Most of the planets are too bright for my SBIG St-9e CCD camera that I use for deep space imagery. Instead, I use an Adirondack PlanetCam live video color camera for the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The images below of the asteroid Ceres and Neptune were taken with the St-9e.
It is difficult to get good sharp images of Jupiter and Saturn because of atmospheric disturbance.
Jupiter is a favorite target and was the first object observed with “First Light” of the GFSH C14 telescope. That night, December 31, 2000, Io was passing in front of Jupiter similar to the image below. Imaging the Galilean moons and Jupiter at the same time is difficult because they are so different in brightness.
In the image taken on April 4, 2003, the dark “belts” and the whitish “zones” are clearly visible. The shadow of tiny Io is approaching the western limb of the planet. In addition, this was one occasion when I was able to catch the “Red Spot” a storm system over 300 years old.
Saturn is a favorite among those who have visited GFSH observatory when it is visible in the evening sky. The image I took on December 12, 2002 shows some banding on the planet. These result from counter rotating winds systems similar to those that produce the “belts and zones” on Jupiter. The Cassini Division between the outer A ring and the inner B ring is clearly visible.
On August 27, 2004, Mars was the closest it has been to Earth (34.65 million miles) in 60,000 years. This opposition was a major opportunity to photograph the “Red Planet”. I spent many nights in July and August 2003 hunched over my laptop computer and Sony video tape recorder trying to capture live video images of Mars that I later processed with Registax. One of best images is shown here.
The south polar ice cap is visible in the image below. The dark sideways “X figure” is part of the Syrtis Major feature. Below it is a light colored, roundish oval feature called the Hellas Basin.
In July of 2010, I spent some nights capturing sequences of Neptune and its moon Triton. I wanted to make a movie of Triton orbiting counterclockwise (retrograde) around Neptune. Another interesting feature of this movie is the size of Triton compared to Neptune and how close it orbits Neptune.
The “Amphitrite Hypothesis” conjectures that a planet named Amphitrite (mother of Triton, son of Poseidon =Neptune) and an orbiting moon (captured KBO =Kuiper Belt Object) entered the outer Solar System and had a close encounter with Neptune. In the process, Neptune captured the KBO which became its moon Triton. Amphitrite was accelerated by the exchange of angular momentum and went on to plow into Uranus tipping it on its side.
It is easy to distinguish the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn from Stars because they are bright and they move relative to the star background. Fuzzy comets are distinguished from fuzzy deep space objects such as galaxies and star clusters because they too move from night-to-night relative to the star background. The famous Messier Catalogue was compiled by Charles Messier to identify those fuzzy comet-like objects that were not comets.
Very distant, small planets such as Neptune and Uranus or objects such as Pluto have long orbital periods. For example, Neptune takes 165 years to complete one circuit around the Sun. In 2011, Neptune will complete one orbit since it was discovered September 23, 1846. To “see” these seemingly slow moving objects, you must plot their position or to take multiple images of these planets. This is also true of the bright visible asteroids such as Vesta and Ceres. The movie here illustrates the movement of Ceres over a couple of hours.
MOON
The Moon has always fascinated me and I followed NASA’s preparation to go to the Moon from Alan Shepard’s ride on the Mercury rocket Freedom 7 in May 1961. I cut my college classes to watch the TV broadcast of Shepard’s and later John Glenn’s rides of the Mercury-Atlas rockets. I was a junior in high school when Sputnik 1 was put up by the Russians and I remember my dad and I going out at night to try to see it; we never did. Of course, Apollo 11 was a thrill and I remember watching it on TV during a severe thunderstorm at Fi and Jerry Choate’s trailer; Jerry and I were graduate students at the University of Kansas.
I have spent many hours in my observatory capturing images of the Moon with my Adirondack PlanetCam. With a slight move of the mouse, you can literally roam around on the moon’s surface poking your nose in here and there.
I also enjoy photographing the Moon with my Nikon D90 DSLR camera attached to my Borg 76mm EDL apochromatic refractor telescope. The slide show below was assembled from over 50 images collected during August to November 2010. The slide show tracks the Moon from one day old to just before New Moon.
Comet C/2001 C1 Ikeya-Zhang 2002
From September through November of 2010, we were visited by another comet 103P/Hartley (aka “Hartley 2”); a Jupiter family, periodic comet. It was discovered by Malcolm Hartley in 1986 also at the Uppsala Southern Schmidt Telescope at Siding Springs Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. Hartley 2 is a very small comet that looks like a cross between a bowling pin and a peanut with a diameter of about 1.2 to 1.6 kilometers. Its periodicity is 6.46 years. This latest visit was interesting because the Earth’s orbit brought it within close proximity of Hartley 2.
Hartley 2 was expected to be a bright comet but it never did became bright enough to see even with binoculars. The movie at the left was made from a series of images taken on September 4, 2010 when it was at magnitude 8.4.
By mid-October, Hartley 2 had brightened to magnitude 4.8 which should have put it within the viewing capability of the naked-eye. However, it was so tiny that it was visible, with difficulty, with binoculars. Another feature of this passage of Hartley 2 was that the Deep Impact satellite that had crashed a probe into Comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005 was re-tasked as EPOXI (Extrasolar Planet Observation and Deep Impact Extended Investigation) to go on to rendezvous and photograph Hartley 2, the smallest comet ever visited by a spacecraft. On November 4, 2010, EPOXI began returning images of this strange little chunk of rock/ice. It is peculiar in that there is a smooth “waist-like” constriction with rough rocky on the ends. Barring any unforeseen events, Hartley 2 should be last for about 100 apparitions (~ 700 years).
PLANETS
Most of the planets are too bright for my SBIG St-9e CCD camera that I use for deep space imagery. Instead, I use an Adirondack PlanetCam live video color camera for the Moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. The images below of the asteroid Ceres and Neptune were taken with the St-9e.
It is difficult to get good sharp images of Jupiter and Saturn because of atmospheric disturbance.
Jupiter is a favorite target and was the first object observed with “First Light” of the GFSH C14 telescope. That night, December 31, 2000, Io was passing in front of Jupiter similar to the image below. Imaging the Galilean moons and Jupiter at the same time is difficult because they are so different in brightness.
In the image taken on April 4, 2003, the dark “belts” and the whitish “zones” are clearly visible. The shadow of tiny Io is approaching the western limb of the planet. In addition, this was one occasion when I was able to catch the “Red Spot” a storm system over 300 years old.
Saturn is a favorite among those who have visited GFSH observatory when it is visible in the evening sky. The image I took on December 12, 2002 shows some banding on the planet. These result from counter rotating winds systems similar to those that produce the “belts and zones” on Jupiter. The Cassini Division between the outer A ring and the inner B ring is clearly visible.
On August 27, 2004, Mars was the closest it has been to Earth (34.65 million miles) in 60,000 years. This opposition was a major opportunity to photograph the “Red Planet”. I spent many nights in July and August 2003 hunched over my laptop computer and Sony video tape recorder trying to capture live video images of Mars that I later processed with Registax. One of best images is shown here.
The south polar ice cap is visible in the image below. The dark sideways “X figure” is part of the Syrtis Major feature. Below it is a light colored, roundish oval feature called the Hellas Basin.
In July of 2010, I spent some nights capturing sequences of Neptune and its moon Triton. I wanted to make a movie of Triton orbiting counterclockwise (retrograde) around Neptune. Another interesting feature of this movie is the size of Triton compared to Neptune and how close it orbits Neptune.
The “Amphitrite Hypothesis” conjectures that a planet named Amphitrite (mother of Triton, son of Poseidon =Neptune) and an orbiting moon (captured KBO =Kuiper Belt Object) entered the outer Solar System and had a close encounter with Neptune. In the process, Neptune captured the KBO which became its moon Triton. Amphitrite was accelerated by the exchange of angular momentum and went on to plow into Uranus tipping it on its side.
It is easy to distinguish the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn from Stars because they are bright and they move relative to the star background. Fuzzy comets are distinguished from fuzzy deep space objects such as galaxies and star clusters because they too move from night-to-night relative to the star background. The famous Messier Catalogue was compiled by Charles Messier to identify those fuzzy comet-like objects that were not comets.
Very distant, small planets such as Neptune and Uranus or objects such as Pluto have long orbital periods. For example, Neptune takes 165 years to complete one circuit around the Sun. In 2011, Neptune will complete one orbit since it was discovered September 23, 1846. To “see” these seemingly slow moving objects, you must plot their position or to take multiple images of these planets. This is also true of the bright visible asteroids such as Vesta and Ceres. The movie here illustrates the movement of Ceres over a couple of hours.
MOON
The Moon has always fascinated me and I followed NASA’s preparation to go to the Moon from Alan Shepard’s ride on the Mercury rocket Freedom 7 in May 1961. I cut my college classes to watch the TV broadcast of Shepard’s and later John Glenn’s rides of the Mercury-Atlas rockets. I was a junior in high school when Sputnik 1 was put up by the Russians and I remember my dad and I going out at night to try to see it; we never did. Of course, Apollo 11 was a thrill and I remember watching it on TV during a severe thunderstorm at Fi and Jerry Choate’s trailer; Jerry and I were graduate students at the University of Kansas.
I have spent many hours in my observatory capturing images of the Moon with my Adirondack PlanetCam. With a slight move of the mouse, you can literally roam around on the moon’s surface poking your nose in here and there.
I also enjoy photographing the Moon with my Nikon D90 DSLR camera attached to my Borg 76mm EDL apochromatic refractor telescope. The slide show below was assembled from over 50 images collected during August to November 2010. The slide show tracks the Moon from one day old to just before New Moon.
Jupiter is a favorite target and was the first object observed with “First Light” of the GFSH C14 telescope. That night, December 31, 2000, Io was passing in front of Jupiter similar to the image below. Imaging the Galilean moons and Jupiter at the same time is difficult because they are so different in brightness.
Saturn is a favorite among those who have visited GFSH observatory when it is visible in the evening sky. The image I took on December 12, 2002 shows some banding on the planet. These result from counter rotating winds systems similar to those that produce the “belts and zones” on Jupiter. The Cassini Division between the outer A ring and the inner B ring is clearly visible.
On August 27, 2004, Mars was the closest it has been to Earth (34.65 million miles) in 60,000 years. This opposition was a major opportunity to photograph the “Red Planet”. I spent many nights in July and August 2003 hunched over my laptop computer and Sony video tape recorder trying to capture live video images of Mars that I later processed with Registax. One of best images is shown here.
The south polar ice cap is visible in the image below. The dark sideways “X figure” is part of the Syrtis Major feature. Below it is a light colored, roundish oval feature called the Hellas Basin.
In July of 2010, I spent some nights capturing sequences of Neptune and its moon Triton. I wanted to make a movie of Triton orbiting counterclockwise (retrograde) around Neptune. Another interesting feature of this movie is the size of Triton compared to Neptune and how close it orbits Neptune.
The “Amphitrite Hypothesis” conjectures that a planet named Amphitrite (mother of Triton, son of Poseidon =Neptune) and an orbiting moon (captured KBO =Kuiper Belt Object) entered the outer Solar System and had a close encounter with Neptune. In the process, Neptune captured the KBO which became its moon Triton. Amphitrite was accelerated by the exchange of angular momentum and went on to plow into Uranus tipping it on its side.
It is easy to distinguish the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn from Stars because they are bright and they move relative to the star background. Fuzzy comets are distinguished from fuzzy deep space objects such as galaxies and star clusters because they too move from night-to-night relative to the star background. The famous Messier Catalogue was compiled by Charles Messier to identify those fuzzy comet-like objects that were not comets.
Very distant, small planets such as Neptune and Uranus or objects such as Pluto have long orbital periods. For example, Neptune takes 165 years to complete one circuit around the Sun. In 2011, Neptune will complete one orbit since it was discovered September 23, 1846. To “see” these seemingly slow moving objects, you must plot their position or to take multiple images of these planets. This is also true of the bright visible asteroids such as Vesta and Ceres. The movie here illustrates the movement of Ceres over a couple of hours.
The Moon has always fascinated me and I followed NASA’s preparation to go to the Moon from Alan Shepard’s ride on the Mercury rocket Freedom 7 in May 1961. I cut my college classes to watch the TV broadcast of Shepard’s and later John Glenn’s rides of the Mercury-Atlas rockets. I was a junior in high school when Sputnik 1 was put up by the Russians and I remember my dad and I going out at night to try to see it; we never did. Of course, Apollo 11 was a thrill and I remember watching it on TV during a severe thunderstorm at Fi and Jerry Choate’s trailer; Jerry and I were graduate students at the University of Kansas.
