Tag Archives: astronomy

Perseids

It’s official.  Photographing meteors is hard.

Moon, Venus, Jupiter and star clusters. Morning of 12 August (Photo:Tim Jones)

Don’t look for meteors in the picture above, because there aren’t any.

My master plan last night, on the 12th August peak of the annual Perseid meteor shower, was to capture in one photograph all the good stuff above: Moon, Venus (bottom left), Jupiter (top) close to Hyades and Pleiades star clusters in Taurus, Orion rising – PLUS a nice Perseid meteor, preferably an exploding fireball, flying through the whole thing.

It doesn’t work like that unfortunately, and, by the time Venus came into view, the meteors had dried up for the night.

Anyhow – I did get something for four hours of clicking and coffee in the dark.  The first pic below is actually yesterday’s effort, but the rest were taken this morning between midnight and 4 a.m. outside Los Angeles.  A bright hazy sky has reduced the meteor trails to barely visible streaks – but they are there, some with red-green coloration caused by different chemical elements burning off at different times as the meteor enters the atmosphere.  Camera and exposure: Canon 7D on tripod unguided, 17mm lens, f.4, 30 seconds, ISO 400-640.

The Perseids are off their maximum now, but will be around for a couple more days if you want to try photographing one yourself.  Just point the camera anywhere in the sky after 11 pm or so.

Close-up of above meteor

Close-up of above meteor

Close-up of above meteor

Close-up of above meteor

Close-up of above meteor

Close-up of above meteor

Close-up of above meteor

Close-up of above meteor

 

 

Science Communication – Over the Garden Fence

science communication over the garden fence

Last week’s Public Attitudes to Science report from Ipsos MORI and BIS says a lot about how the  public feel about and engage with science.

The Summary is worth five minutes of anyone’s time.

But what came unbidden to my mind, as I pondered how informed or uninformed people are about science, was a visit from a neighbour last week, and a reminder that we don’t need to appear on the telly or be called Brian Cox to do our own bit for science communication.

Basically, the guy spots me over the fence messing around with my telescopes, and invites himself over for a look-see.  And, yes, he has been ‘Wonderised’ by Brian.

So I drop plans to photograph the ISS – I’ve got enough of those anyhow – and instead show him Saturn through the little ETX-90.  For a first view through a telescope we could hardly do better.

We talk about the earth’s rotation and why the telescope’s axis points at the pole – watching Saturn scoot across the view with the drive turned off.   We talk about the cost of kit, magnification, aperture, and what can be achieved with a pair of binoculars.

The forgotten ISS appears.  Ultra-bright.  Fantastic stuff.

The truth is that astronomy could have been designed for engagement, with other areas of science and engineering not lending themselves to a hands-on demo in quite the same way.  I’ve worked with everything from fluid mechanics, to ultrasonics, to high-power lasers and the thermodynamics of steelmaking slags.  It’s all fascinating stuff  (believe me :-P); and while earthbound, still somehow less accessible than the stars.

This is where good science writing steps in; but TO MY POINT: if you know something cool – don’t wait for an invite to the Royal Society or the BBC to share it.   And have a peep over your neighbours fence; you might see something interesting.  (But don’t get arrested either.)

Armchair Astrophotography

It’s a good few years since I took a photograph through a telescope, so I thought I’d share my latest pics.

Moon. ETX-90 prime focus, Canon 7D
Moon. ETX-90 prime focus, Canon 7D

The moon’s been presenting itself as a nice late evening target in our Westerly outlook this week, so that’s where I’m starting. These two are the best of the bunch from the last couple of nights (click for bigger pictures):

Moon, ETX-90, Canon 7D eyepiece projection (12.5mm ortho)

And in this video clip taken by eyepiece projection, there’s quite a bit of detail visible in the Mare Criseum (Sea-of-Crises) at top left:

[quicktime]https://communicatescience.com/zoonomian/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Moon_astro_7_4_11_eyepieceprojection2.m4v[/quicktime]

This longer clip shows a complete traverse of the moon across the field of view (no tracking):

[quicktime]https://communicatescience.com/zoonomian/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Moon_astro_7_4_11.m4v[/quicktime]

I’m particularly pleased with how the videos came out, capturing the fleeting moments of still air you need to look out for when observing live by eye.

The rig is built around an ultra-compact Meade ETX-90 telescope, picked up when I moved to London 10 years ago as a more suitable replacement for my 6 inch reflector.  All I’ve added is a connecting tube and T-mount to get the camera hitched up.

ETX-90 set up for astrophotographyETX-90 set up for astrophotography

My six inch reflector of yesteryear

Strictly speaking, you don’t need a telescope for astrophotography.  Here’s the Plough (Big Dipper) taken with a tripod-mounted standard lens:

Plough (Big Dipper) with standard lens

And these shots of an Earthlit  Moon and Venus are two of my favourites:

Moon and VenusMoon with EarthlightI’ve also had some luck in the middle ground using telephoto lenses, where the results have been surprisingly good: like these pics of a lunar eclipse, the International Space Station (ISS), and Jupiter with its moons; all taken with a 400mm lens – in the case of the ISS, hand-held:

Lunar Eclipse, 400mm lens, Canon 7D
International Space Station (ISS) and Jupiter
ISS with Jupiter through 400mm telephoto and digitally zoomed

International Space Station

 

 

18 megapixels of digital zoom  helps resolve the ISS into something other than an unrecognisable blob.

Jupiter with moons, 400mm lens on Canon 7D
Jupiter with moons, 400mm lens on Canon 7D
Jupiter with moons, 400mm lens on Canon 7D
Jupiter. Taken holding camera to lens of a spotting (birding) scope.
Jupiter. Taken holding camera to lens of a spotting (birding) scope.

But to resolve surface detail in objects like Jupiter, a true  astronomical telescope is called for.

Moon taken with smartphone through ETX-90
Smartphone held to eyepiece

I started by simply holding my smartphone to the eyepiece. Not a disaster, but I lost fine detail and the moon took on a weird pinkish bloom.

logitech webcam with lens removed
Webcam attached to telescope
Logitech webcam with lens removed
Webcam CCDs are very small

Attaching a digital SLR directly to the telescope gave better results, with the camera’s CCD (Charge Coupled Device) sensor at the prime focus.  I also experimented with an old Logitech webcam with the lens removed, but the background noise was too high and the small sensor size made for a very narrow field of view.

 

The Canon 7D gives a much nicer image, and can be operated totally remotely via the computer. Live images are fed to the laptop screen for easy focus and exposure control.

With the still pictures, I want to get to grips with the various image processing techniques for stacking multiple images.

Of course, none of this competes with the Hubble Space Telescope, but amateur astrophotography for me is  more about the satisfaction of seeing what a particular instrument can do, and learning along the way more about the various objects I’m photographing.

After the moon, my next target is Saturn, with the goal of resolving the Cassini division in the rings; and Jupiter, where I’ll be happy if I can resolve the Great Red Spot.

I’m also planning to take some guided wide-field photos of deep sky objects like the Orion Nebula.  But that requires dark skys and the telescope’s drives being sufficiently accurate and strong enough to support a ‘piggy-backed’ camera and lens.  All for another day.

The immediate issue, as the videos show, is just how bad the ‘seeing’ can be when observing at dusk from a building that’s been baking in the sun all day.  I need to find more open skys.

But for now, with the telescope’s motors whirring away on the balcony, I literally am the armchair astrophotographer.

 

Partial View of a Partial Solar Eclipse

Partial Solar Eclipse 4/1/2011. Leicester. This is full res.(click) of (c) below (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse 4/1/2011. Leicester. This is full res.(click) of (c) below (Photo: Tim Jones)

There were literally a few seconds at sunrise this morning when the clouds stayed off long enough for me to catch this partial eclipse of the sun by the moon from a hilltop in Leicester, UK, at around 8.30.

It clouded over completely within ten minutes – and is now snowing.  Fewer clouds would have been nice, but I consider myself lucky all the same.  The limb of the moon is clearly visible.  Following pics in chronological order.

Partial Solar Eclipse (a) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (a) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (b) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (b) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (c) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (c) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (d) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (d) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (e) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (e) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (f) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (f) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (g) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Partial Solar Eclipse (g) 4th Jan 2011, Leicester (Photo: Tim Jones)
Then the clouds close in (Photo:Tim Jones)
Then the clouds close in (Photo:Tim Jones)

SEE ALSO MY POST ON THE 20 May 2012 Annular Solar Eclipse HERE

Leicester University got a similar view: see here.

And some really nice pics from further afield in the Telegraph here.

Mark Edwards, near Rugby, had similar conditions to mine: here via BBC

Out Of The Archives – Telescope Tales

I’ve been amusing myself this evening scanning old black & white negatives and colour slides into the computer: strips of film that have languished in negative files on top of cupboards for years.  It’s a boring process, but punctuated with the reward of finding something I thought was lost, or a negative that was never printed.

developing tank developer fixer darkroom
Home developing. This is how we did it….
developing trays darkroom
when I were a  lad…..

Some of the pictures go back to 1973, and are an unwelcome reminder of my antediluvian origins.  But they’re also revealing of the state of technology at the time, and what I was doing with it.  All the black and white pictures in this post are from the archive.

zenith enlarger
This is not a telescope

The photographic process itself is a prime example: the relative time  and cost of developing and printing my own films being one reason many pictures haven’t been properly seen until now.

Things sure have moved on.  I asked my 15 year old nephew if he’d ever used film, and after clarifying I didn’t mean video tape, he confirmed he’d never touched the stuff.  Silly of me to ask really.

Regrettably, some of the more fun, not to say embarrassing, pictures from the archive are not suitable for public display.  But I’m happy to inflict the sci-tech oriented discoveries – starting today with these pics of my first serious astronomical telescope.

fullerscopes six inch reflecting telescope
Same paint job as the 200″ on Mount Palomar

The main components were bought in 1977, and this photo of the telescope in its observatory is probably from 1979.  The instrument is a classic Newtonian reflector of a design that hasn’t changed in hundreds of years.  It has a 6″ primary mirror, and was built by Fullerscopes of London, the same company that made Patrick Moore’s fork-mounted 15″.  The mount is a Fullerscopes Mk III German Type equatorial.  The ancillaries: motor drives, plinth, finder, camera attachments, and the observatory itself are home built.

fullerscopes six inch reflecting telescope

To be accurate, this was my second telescope, the first being an entirely home-built open-tube reflector in an altazimuth type cradle.  Constructed almost entirely from sturdy aluminium bar stock – largely because that’s what I had – it all proved a little unwieldy.  No photos survive – probably for the best.

Reflecting telescope made by Isaac Newton (Photo:Tim Jones, taken at the Royal Society)
Made by Newton (Photo:Tim Jones, taken at Royal Society)

The 6″ was mainly used for visual observations.  I later added an improved synchronous motor drive to the Right Ascension (RA) axis to make the instrument more suited to astrophotography, but as that happened in 1980, just before I left home for university and ever on, that feature was little used.

Warning – Telescope building aficionados, engineers, (and all other interested readers….!) only

Assembling, augmenting,  or building a telescope from scratch is an excellent engineering, as well as scientific, training.  To save money, I purchased only the RA axis worm drive from Fullerscopes, with a view to reverse engineering it and building a copy for the declination axis. Operations to do that included aluminium casting, worm screw cutting, and making my own integrated roller ball-bearings on the worm shaft (to remove any trace of play, and hence instrument movement).   Thankfully, my brother was building a model steam engine at the time, so a good selection of machine tools were available around the home.

Myford ML7 lathe. Every home should have one (here operated by my brother).

I realise now that some of these operations were quite sophisticated engineering tasks, particularly for a 15 year old – probably why things didn’t always turn out as planned.  I struggled to reproduce the 4.5″ phosphor bronze worm wheel (although the trick for cutting a worm wheel, by winding a tool-post mounted wheel into a spinning tap mounted between lathe centres, I find fascinating and elegant), and instead adapted an ex-military gun-sight for the declination axis.  That said, the worm unit I’d made was better than the original, and eventually replaced it.

screw-cut worm in ball-races / cradle
Great British engineering….

The RA motor connected to the drive worm via a gearbox, also homemade using mecano gears mounted in a solid block of steel, the centre of which had been milled out on the lathe and fitted with individually turned and reamed phosphor-bronze bushes.  The whole drive assembly was bolted to the plinth and linked to the final worm gear on a universal joint.  This all worked fine, unless the telescope was incorrectly counter-balanced, when teeth would expensively shear off the little mecano gear wheels.

Moon

Despite these set-backs, or perhaps because of them, it’s my firm belief that this activity set me up well to tackle life’s later challenges: like building my own research equipment and mending the car.

The telescope’s plinth and observatory have their own stories.  I’d read somewhere that telescopes need a rock-solid mount, and that plinths mounted in concrete are superior to tripods.  In the photo, you can just see the top of a 5ft x 5″ x 1/4″ steel tube, 2 ft of which is buried in a 3ft square cube of concrete.  The base of the observatory is covered in paving stones laid on sand, with a gap around the central concrete block to prevent footstep vibrations reaching the plinth.  The plinth was capped by a 7″ square x 3/8″ thick oxy-acetylene welded plate.  I remember this well, as the welder had to commission an unusually large nozzle for the job.  This was of course total overkill for a 6″ reflector; but I suspect I harbored secret fantasies of some day owning a more substantial instrument.

Lyra

The observatory was made from resin bonded plywood on a pine frame.  Originally designed as a run-off shed, I switched to the fold-off roof idea when the weight of the structure dictated a need for major railroad-type work adjacent to the observing area – effectively doubling the project’s footprint.  In practice, a south-facing aspect and relatively low observatory walls meant the compromise solution made little impact on sky visibility.  A telescope mounted permanently out of doors is always ready for action – an important consideration with UK weather –  with no need to wait for thermal stabilisation of the optics or to spend time aligning the equatorial mount.   It goes without saying that, like all the world’s great observatories, it was painted white.

I keep saying ‘was’, because Mount Tim was decommissioned in the early nineties, such that you’d never know the paved area had ever  been anything other than a regular garden patio.  Amusingly, the plinth proved immovable, save for the use of explosives, so was instead ceremoniously tipped on its side in a shallow grave.  I sometimes wonder what a future Tony Robinson might make of it.

Coming back to Fullerscopes.  Buying a telescope in 1976 was not like popping down the road to Curry’s and carrying it home under your arm.   When my father and I first visited Telescope House on the Farringdon Road, we were greeted by Dudley Fuller in person.  He’d formed the company a few years earlier by buying out the historic but failing maker of optical instruments – Broadhurst & Clarkson Ltd.

We talked about my telescope-making efforts to date, and what I needed from Fullerscopes.   He was wary of my plans to attach one of his diagonal mirrors to my homemade spider using glue (EvoStick No.2 – if I must!), but we agreed a package – including a Fullerscopes spider – and placed the order.  (The spider sits in the top of the telescope tube and holds a diagonally placed mirror that diverts light into the eye-piece.)  A month later, I returned to man-handle this tribute to Sir Isaac through the streets of London and back to Leicester  – by train.

What I’m using today: Meade ETX-90.

Telescope building was still being done in a traditional way.  Fuller explained that all the brass tube-work on his telescopes was hand made using Broadhurst & Clarkson’s original equipment.  That meant the brass sheet was rolled on an antique mill by hand, then soldered along the seam.  On my telescope, the solder seam is visible on the brass focusing mount and Barlow lens adapter tube.  The economics of this, particularly on parts destined for smaller instruments like my 6″, and at a time when Japan was starting to export mass-produced alternatives, must have been unsupportable.  I’m guessing that’s the reason the Farringdon road shop closed down in 2005 and Telescope House moved out of town.  It looks like they’re still trading though, with Patrick Moore’s endorsement into the bargain. (Telescope House website).  But they don’t seem to be making their own instruments any more – please correct me if you know different.

Meade ETX90
Meade ETX90

There’s a related and slightly surreal twist to the story here, concerning my move to London in 2000.  Needing a more portable telescope for out of city viewing, I visited Fullerscopes, now the UK agent for Meade Instruments Corp. of the USA, makers of the compact Cassegrain-Maksutov telescope I was after.  The odd thing was, when I got chatting to the guy who handed over the box, it turned out he had personally been involved in making the brass-work for my 6 inch reflector 24 years earlier!  It’s a nice story.

Anyhow, I hope that wasn’t completely boring and self-absorbed.   If nothing else, it may have given you an insight into what I was getting up to in my formative years.  You know, when I should have been out doing drugs, smashing up cars, and getting my underage girlfriend pregnant – like a normal teenager 🙂

Don’t forget to check back for the next exciting edition of Out Of The Archives……

Partial Lunar Eclipse 26th June 2010

Here are the three pictures I got early this morning before cloud set in.

The last in the series was taken at 10:35 UTC, about an hour before greatest eclipse at 11:38 UTC – when more than 50% of the moon was in eclipse.  Location – Los Angeles.  I suspect the colour fringing in the last shot is a camera artifact, rather than an atmospheric refraction effect, as the frame is exposure enhanced (to counter a rapidly misting sky).   :

3:09 PDT (10:09 UTC)
3:29 PDT (10:29 UTC)
3:35 PDT (10:35 UTC)

Source:NASA
Source:NASA

ISS Pass In Front of Moon

Here’s a nice sequence of exposures showing the International Space Station passing in front of the moon.  As seen from Los Angeles, 21.16 hrs on 23/06/10.

There’s no fixed interval between frames – just as fast as I could click, which is about 1 per second. Canon 30D 100-400 L zoom at 100mm. 0.6 seconds, f 7.1. 800 ASA.

Here’s an enhanced pic, just to bring out the stars in Scorpio, including red supergiant Antares at lower left.  M4 and M80 are invisible in the flare there somewhere.

Moon and ISS in Scorpio
ISS trajectory (credit:Heavens-above.com)

Interview with an Astrobiologist

Life on Earth and the possibility of life beyond the stars fascinates Dr Lewis Dartnell.

Is there life out there....?  (Photo NASA)
Is there life out there….? (Photo NASA)

I interviewed Lewis for Imperial College Radio, and this podcast is the full conversation.   We cover Dartnell’s core research in Martian radiation, the recently launched Kepler telescope, possible earth asteroid strikes.   Lewis describes how knowledge of conditions on other worlds might inform maintenance of the Earth.

The noisy aircon is regrettable; and as a result the sound quality is less than ideal.

Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, George?

The sun is shining, the outside doors are open, and from the window of the Royal Society library I can see the tops of trees along the Mall.

Michael Lemonick is introduced by the RS's Felicity Henderson
Michael Lemonick is introduced by the Royal Society's Felicity Henderson (photo, thanks Sven Klinge)

Today, at this first in a season of lunchtime talks at the RS, I’m learning from  Michael Lemonick some things I never knew about William and Caroline Herschel.

You can hear the audio and video (slides) yourself on the RS podcast page.  Lemonick’s book ‘The Georgian Star’ is published by W.W.Norton.Co.  In the meantime, this short commentary.

Michael Lemonick at the Royal Society (photo Sven Klinge)
Michael Lemonick at the Royal Society (photo, thanks Sven Klinge)

Sir William Herschel is best known as the discoverer of Uranus, a planet that did indeed in the days of William’s sponsor George III go by the popular name of George or ‘Georgium Sidus’ to be precise.  But discovering light blue planets that spin at a funny angle is only part of William’s and his sister Caroline’s  story.

Having moved to London from Germany, William Herschel the music teacher was enthralled by the stars he saw overhead whilst travelling between clients.  Disappointed with the telescopes of the day, he started to build a whole series of his own that would culminate in a 4ft mirrored, 40 ft long giant sponsored by the King himself.

William Herschel (photo WikiCommons)
William Herschel (photo WikiCommons)

Joined by his sister in Bath, both Herschel’s were professional astronomers in the pay of the King, making Caroline the first ever professional female astronomer (he on £200pa, she as ‘assistant’ on £50pa).

Between them they discovered 3000 galaxies, and Caroline alone identified 8 comets.  Uranus was mistakenly declared a comet on its discovery in 1781.  Impressively, the Herschel star charts were still in practical use into the 1950s and 60s.

catherine_herschel
Caroline Herschel

The Herschel’s were amongst the first astronomers to take an interest in the structure and evolution of the universe, rather than following the more practical motivations of the time – like enabling better navigation at sea.  William tried to measure stellar distance by the parallax method, but failed due to equipment sensitivity.  He was more successful at plotting out the shape of our galaxy – the Milky Way.

Herschel's plot of our galaxy (image WikiCommons)
Herschel's plot of our galaxy (image WikiCommons)

William Herschel is in some ways the father of infra-red astronomy, having discovered the infra-red region of the spectrum from its warming effect on bottles of liquid; he called them ‘calorific rays’.   As Lemonick pointed out, there seems some injustice in the naming of the James Webb space telescope due to launch in 2013, which will work predominantly in the IR spectral range (there is  a William Herschel telescope already on the Canary Islands) .

And lastly – I never knew this.   It was the common belief of the time, shared by Herschel, that all the planets were inhabited, with the sun just another planet – albeit a particularly bright golden one.

The logic extended to a belief that the luminescent surface of the sun was the visible top side of clouds and, charmingly, that sunspots were holes in the cloud through which – presumably with a powerful enough telescope – one could view ‘sun people’.    Those were the days…..