Mike's Astro Photos

Here’s a picture of the winning field goal kick from last nights Ravens vs Steelers game in Baltimore. Man it is nice to start the week out with a victory over Pittsburgh. HURA!

Ravens vs Steelers - November 29th, 2009

A Russian astronomer sent out a notice about a newly discovered nova and requested images of Orion between Nov 16th and Nov 19th. Turns out I have 4 pictures of Orion from Nov 17th and the nova was captured in my images! I will post an update with the Orion Nova picture once I have more info and have been able to successfully identify the nova.

While reviewing my meteor shower pictures I found an image of a faint meteor I had originally missed. I haven’t plotted the picture in a star chart yet, so I’m not sure if this is a sporadic meteor or a Leonid. So it turns out I caught at least 2 meteors during the recent Leonid shower, bringing my total meteor picture count up to three.

Leonid - November 17th, 2009

The above image is a crop out of the big picture. Here’s what the full image looked like.

There was big news in the meteorite community last week when a huge bolide was seen exploding over Utah. Multiple cameras caught the meteor as it burst in the skies. Below is a compilation video from youtube that shows the sight from four different security videos.

After a week of gathering information and plotting the trajectory, senior scientist and meteor trajectory expert Rob Matson has estimated the meteorites from this fall have landed inside a secret US military base the size of Rhode Island called Dugway Proving Grounds. The US Army claims to use this gigantic base to test chemical, biological and radioactive weapons and says they have blown up thousands of bombs in the area (and continue to do so). The base is considered so dangerous large parts of it are off limits even to Army personnel. UFO theorists call the base Area 52, in large part because of the UFO sightings that have been reported over or around it. Rumor has it the Roswell UFO wreckage and government alien research program was transferred from Area 51 to the Dugway Proving Ground after its cover was blown in the 1950s.

Here’s what the US General Accounting Office has to say about Dugway Proving Grounds:

“Dugway Proving Ground is a military testing facility located approximately 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City. For several decades, Dugway has been the site of testing for various chemical and biological agents. From 1951 through 1969, hundreds, perhaps thousands of open-air tests using bacteria and viruses that cause disease in human, animals, and plants were conducted at Dugway… It is unknown how many people in the surrounding vicinity were also exposed to potentially harmful agents used in open-air tests at Dugway.”

Dave Rosenfeld, president of Utah UFO Hunters, has this to say about Dugway:

“Numerous UFOs have been seen and reported in the area in and around Dugway…[military aircraft can’t account for] all the unknowns seen in the area. It might be that our star visitors are keeping an eye on Dugway too…[Dugway is] the new area 51. And probably the new military spaceport.”

The new military spaceport? So maybe that wasn’t a meteor after all…

Sunday night was a great clear night. The crescent moon set early and the clouds stayed away until about 1:00 AM. I used my auto-guider for the first time since setting up the new observatory and it worked out pretty well. I was able to guide an object and keep it centered for well over an hour. I was averaging a little less than a two arc second error rate which should be improved when I perfect my polar alignment.

Here is my first picture of Messier 15, a globular star cluster hidden in the constellation Pegasus. This image is the result of 3×5 minute exposures and 1×1 minute exposure. I manually stacked the frames in Photoshop.

M15 - November 23rd 2009

For comparison sake, here is a picture of M15 from the Hubble telescope. Its a little nicer than my first attempt, but considering my rig didn’t cost $1,500,000,000 to setup, I think I did alright.

Mike with some Jawas

My in-laws gave me tickets to Starwars In Concert as an early Christmas present. The show was amazing and like nothing I have ever seen before. Anothony Daniels (C3p0) was the host and it was a thrill to see him in person. We had great seats so close to the stage I could easily have pegged Daniels with a thermal detonator.

The music was performed by a live symphony orchestra while a cleverly edited remix of the movies played on screen behind the stage. Each song was centered around a specific character, event or theme and Daniels introduced each song by telling a story about the character or event. The video footage playing during the song was a cut and mix of conceptual art and footage from all 6 of the films. It was a very stimulating and interesting way to see Star Wars and by the end of the show it felt like you had watched the entire saga in a little under two hours. I was reminded by Daniels that the ‘odds of successfully navigating an asteroid belt are approximately 3720 to 1′. I think finding a piece of an asteroid in Lancaster are slightly worse than that.

Props from the original movies apparently taken from George Lucas’s private collection at the Skywalker Ranch were setup throughout the concorse. It was a great display with all of the usual suspects and well over 20 exhibits. Live characters from a Star Wars fan club walked around the halls in full costumes. The costumes were great and the club was well prepared. There were no-duplicate characters present (except for storm troopers) and all characters were well represented.

Visit the Star Wars in Concert website to check show times and watch some videos. The tour is about 1/2 over but there are still available dates. If its in your area, I highly recommend it. Even the non-star-wars-fan would be impressed.

Thanks to my in-law’s connections at Lucas Film, I got VIP tickets and was able to access the show a couple of hours early. This let us look at the exhibits before the crowds arrived and we even got to watch the orchestra warm up a little. Here are some pictures from the show.

Jedi Master Yoda

Tusken Raider

Storm Troopers

X-Wing Pilot

Jedi Couple

Darth Vader Fighting Youngling

Mike With Chewbaca

C3P0 - Human Cyborg Relations

Anthony Daniels on Stage

Wife Getting Force Choked

Original Score - Written In Pencil!

Here’s are a few quick video clips I took before and during the show:

I setup for the Leonids meteor shower last night and was able to capture a picture of one of the meteors. I focused my camera on Procyon thinking it would be a good spot to catch something. I set the camera to shoot repeatedly and waited. As I waited I stared at Procyon, after a few minutes just like that a bright meteor flew out of the sky, its starting place looked to be exactly at Procyon. I waited for the exposure to finish and then eagerly checked the small camera screen, but I didn’t see anything! I was very upset. I started looking at my camera settings and noticed my focal ratio was way to high — f/5. I dropped it down to f/3 (as low as it can go) and continued to shoot the rest of the night with no results.

This morning I was reviewing my pictures on the computer and I saw my Procyon meteor in all its glory. I was so happy! The streak left by the meteor was too faint to see on the camera screen, but I could clearly see it on the computer. I have ordered a new camera lens that has a f/1.4 ratio which should be much better for future meteor shower pictures.

This is my first ever intentional meteor photo. Not as exciting as the last one, but still pretty good for an amateur like me.

Leonids Meteor - November 17th, 2009 12:30 AM

For reference purposes: I was using a Canon 20D, piggy back mounted on my telescope with ISO 800, f/5 focal ratio and a 60 second exposure.

UPDATE: Robert Lundsford from the American Meteor Society let me know that because of the location of the tail on this meteor, it is considered a sporadic meteor and not a Leonid. I plotted the picture in a star chart to understand what he was saying and I now see what he means. To be a meteor associated with a shower, the meteor has to radiate from a specific central point, in this case Leo. I’m curious to know if sporadic meteor rates increase during a shower though, meaning was this meteor caused from the same dust field that creates the shower, or something totally unrelated.

Here is the star chart plot of the picture. Click to enlarge.

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star found in the constellation Orion. When viewed with the naked eye, Betelgeuse is visibly bigger than most stars in the sky and has a clear orange color. This star is so big if it were in our solar system it would stretch out to Jupiter, swallowing up Mercury, Venus, Earth & Mars.  Betelgeuse is a relatively young star but due to its enormous size its life span is much shorter and it will end in a super nova, some scientists believe soon enough to be witnessed by human civilization. At 640 light years away from Earth, Betelgeuse is visibly big inside the telescope.

Betelgeuse - November 7th, 2009

I finally got my pier up and running and had a perfect night to break it in. Orion is just now starting to come out again and I figured I would have a go at my favorite nebula. Here’s a quick process of four frames ranging in exposure time from 30 seconds to 1.5 minutes. I was not auto guiding and my polar alignment was a little off (still working things out).

Orion's Nebula - November 7th, 2009