Mike's Astro Photos

Here’s a wide field shot of M100, the galaxy in the center of the picture. There are several other galaxies in this picture. Can you see them?

Messier - 100

I had to head out to the West Coast this week for some business development meetings.

Mike in San Fransisco - April 22, 2010

It was a pretty productive week…

Mike at Google Head Quarters - April 22, 2010

Lots of finds are being made out in Wisconsin. At least ten have been reported so far and I’m sure there are more that haven’t been announced yet. This fireball event is a meteorite hunters dream come true. Everything worked out as perfectly as one could want: multiple cameras from different sides of the track captured direct sightings of the fireball, 1000s of witnesses saw it, three radar returns spanning more than 25 miles were captured. The radar returns alone told hunters exactly where to go and that is the main reason why meteorites were recovered 22 hours after the fall. For fun I plotted the track based on the radar data and two videos. For the videos I used the US Bank video from Milwaukee and the police dash cam video from the Howard County Sheriff.

Here are two pictures of the doppler radar data:

Wisconsin Meteor Doppler Radar Data - April 14, 2010

And here’s a close up:

Wisconsin Meteor Doppler Radar - April 14th, 2010

For the videos, the first thing you have to do is figure out where they were taken from. I knew one video had the Milwaukee US Bank building in it. Using 3d buildings in google earth I was able to determine with a pretty good approximation where the first camera was. I then used the 3d buildings to line up the shot to determine the azimuth readings. Here’s a view of downtown Milwaukee where I think the camera was located.

US Bank Milwaukee Fireball - April 14, 2010

For the second camera I don’t know the exact location so I just picked a random place. Using these three data sets and my interpretation of the witness reports I have plotted the ground track for the Wisconsin Meteor. This is certainly not exact, but I think it might be pretty close.

Wisconsin Fireball Ground Track - April 14, 2010

There are meteorites in and around the town of Milfin Wisconsin. Mike Farmer thinks there are thousands of them.

Here’s a picture of Bode’s Galaxy and the Cigar Galaxy. Some scientists believe these galaxies are close enough to each other that the gravity from M81 (the one of the left)  deformed its neighbor causing star formation to increase by 10 times. The galaxies look pretty close to each other but are actually separated by 130,000 light-years.

M81 & M82 - April 18th, 2010

Here’s a closeup of the galaxy pair.

M81 & M82 - April 18th, 2010

Here’s a map of the fireball observations reported to the The American Meteor Society. Over 150 people reported their sighting to the AMS. Thousands of reports have also been submitted to facebook and twitter.  Considering there were very nice radar returns and excellent video coverage and that multiple stones (i’ve heard 3) have already been found, the witness reports are far less important than in other falls. Its still interesting to see all of the reports plotted and how far this thing could be seen.

AMS Reports For Wisconsin Fireball

I’ve uploaded the Google Earth KMZ file for the AMS reports for the Wisconsin Meteor. To get this file to work you have to have Google Earth downloaded and installed on your computer. Once Google Earth is installed, simply download the link and it should automatically load up in Google Earth.

A 131 gram Wisconsin Meteorite was recently found by Mike Farmer. Congrats Mike!

http://www.rocksfromspace.org/Farmer_Meteorite_Hunter.html

The first meteorite from the Wisconsin Fireball was recovered less than 24 hours from the time of the fall. Check out the story on Universe Today.

No its not the BMW M5, its Messier’s M5. M5 is one of the larger globular star clusters in our galaxy. Its about 24,000 light years away from earth and thought to hold 100,000 to 500,000 stars.

M5 - April 14, 2010

Hundreds of reports of a fireball in the sky above Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Illinois are flooding news and police stations, blogs and social networking sites. A few videos have already been posted online:

Awesome Video of Iowa Fireball

Web Cam Fireball Capture

Traffic Camera

Information is still poring in on this one. It looks like there is already a lot of data and witnesses which makes the initial meteorite recovery outlook pretty good.

Here are a few news stories

http://addins.kwwl.com/blogs/weather/archives/8863
http://blogs.woodtv.com/2010/04/14/gigantic-meteor/
http://bit.ly/9YE7WS
http://ow.ly/1yFHQ

I’d guess there will be some meteorite hunters flying out to Iowa tomorrow.

Here’s a photo of M44 an open cluster in the constellation Cancer. To the naked eye the Beehive Cluster looks like a nebula in the middle of the constellation.

Beehive Cluster - March 20th, 2010

This picture was taken with a William Optics FLT 98 Refractor and a Canon 20Da camera.

I was getting ready to go meteorite hunting today and I just had to put my boots on. I had two rare earth magnets and put one in each back pocket so they wouldn’t stick together. I have this nice felt lined red box with a handle and a metal clasp that I carry some of my meteorites in so I can show them to landowners and teach them what to look for. I grabbed the red box and headed for the garage. As I turned around the doorway one of the magnets in my pocket stuck to the clasp on the box and as I moved, the box opened and a 1kg Canon Diablo fell on my toe. It hurt like $%!+, but I still went out hunting. Would this be considered an impact event?

Meteoritoe

Here’s a quick snap of Arcturus. This is a single 30 second exposure using the new William Optics telescope. I’m still waiting on some mounting brackets before I will be 100% with the new scope, so the content production is a little slow right now.

arcturus

Here’s a photo of the Waxing Crescent Moon on March 20th, 2010.

Waxing Crescent Moon - March 20th, 2010

Here’s just the moon at full size cropped from the big image.

Waxing Crescent Moon - Full size

I took this picture while testing out the focus and trying to align the scope. When I reviewed it the next day I spotted what looks like a satellite streak in the upper left corner.

Star & Satellite

Here’s a picture of NGC 2244 I took using the new telescope. I’m really still figuring things out with this new scope, trying to get it setup, get polar alignment right, get focusing right — basically re-learn everything I’ve learned in the last year with the other scope. I was able to capture this photo on the third night of using the new scope.

Rosette Nebula - March 7th, 2010

Photo Details
Optics: Willamoptics FLT 98
Camera: Canon 20da
Exposure: Multiple 18×3 minute exposures, flats, darks
Software Processing: Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop Elements