Looking North

Another Beautiful Night

A waxing crescent Moon graced the early evening sky on March 13th. I was curious to see if my Seestar telescope could capture earthshine on the Moon. It did. After raising gain high enough, the lit crescent was overexposed while dim earthshine appeared on the rest of the Moon as you can see in the single snapshot below.

I returned gain to a default value and recorded a 90-second AVI video of the crescent. Then I stacked and wavelet sharpened the best 100 video frames from the approximately 1,000-frame video to produce the following image of the properly exposed crescent.

Although it was interesting to see how well Seestar performed with lunar imaging, image quality was far below what I can achieve with larger telescopes.

It was then time to turn the telescope north and try long exposures of two galaxies. Face-on spiral galaxy M101 in Ursa Major is shown in the next image, a 90-minute exposure.

It was disappointing to see how even a 90-minute exposure was insufficient to raise faint details above background noise. Maybe my somewhat light polluted suburban sky is just too bright.

Then I moved to the other side of the Big Dipper's handle to find galaxy M106 in the constellation Canes Venatici. In the 60-minute exposure that follows a faint halo extending on either side of the brighter swirling center is barely visible above background noise.

In the same field of view as M106 above you can see a 13th magnitude galaxy, NGC4248, in the upper left corner.

Tonight's last target was globular Cluster M5 in the constellation Serpens. This globular showed up very well in the 15-minute exposure shown below.

March 13th was an unusually fine night with all five light polluting neighbor spotlights miraculously off.
 

Comet!

Galaxies and Glitches

On March 10th bright comet 12P/Pons-Brooks was located in the constellation Andromeda. By the time the sky darkened about an hour after sunset the comet's altitude above the western horizon was getting lower. Unfortunately, the comet wasn't visible from my usual back yard observing site because my house blocked the view. So my granddaughter and I moved the Seestar telescope to my front porch. We crouched down behind a bush which shielded us from both a streetlight and a strong wind. We were astounded to see how well the comet's image built up during three trial exposures. The best image, shown below, was produced by a 7-minute exposure which shows the bright green head and some of the tail.

This is the best comet image I've ever captured! The next evening on March 11th I tried a longer exposure to reveal more of the dim tail. During a 14-minute exposure the comet moved appreciably relative to stars causing the head to smear out. So the 7-minute exposure above turned out to be best.

Only a brief observing window existed between the time when the sky became dark and the time when the comet set behind a rooftop across the street from my porch. After the comet dropped out of sight each night I took a couple quick images of M31, the Andromeda Galaxy, just out of curiosity. On March 10th I pointed toward the galaxy's center and captured the following 7-minute exposure.

The Andromeda Galaxy is too big to fit within Seestar's field of view. In the image above dark dust lanes are visible. Also, M32, a small companion elliptical galaxy, appears as a fuzzy bright object on the left edge. The following night I aimed slightly below the galaxy's center and took a longer 20-minute exposure to produce the next image.

Some dim details in the galaxy's outer regions are beginning to show in the previous image. I'll have to wait a few months for Andromeda to get higher in the sky before trying for longer exposures. The galaxy's altitude ranged between 21 and 17 degrees for the images above.

Up until March 10th my Seestar had operated flawlessly. For some mysterious reason it would not start up on March 10th when I initially pushed the power button! What the hell?? After several repeated unsuccessful attempts I went to get a screwdriver to open the battery compartment. While I was away my granddaughter pressed the small reset button on the bottom. Apparently, the reset fixed the immediate startup problem because Seestar powered on normally afterward. But now another glitch appeared. The Seestar app on my Android tablet seemed to have trouble connecting to Seestar's internal wifi. The app would say connection had been achieved, but then it contradicted itself when I closed the connection dialog windows. When the dialog windows were closed, the app said it needed to connect with Seestar. This had never happened before! After several connection attempts the app finally acknowledged an established connection, but why in the world would it start misbehaving like this? I always hold the tablet very close to Seestar while connecting, so distance isn't a problem. Fortunately, once a stable connection was made Seestar seemed to operate normally for the remainder of these observing sessions. 

After capturing M31 on March 11th I eventually moved the telescope from the front porch to it's usual backyard observing position. Anticipating interference from neighbors' spotlights, I installed a newly acquired lens hood and erected some light-blocking barriers around the telescope. As the night progressed it turned out to be one of those rare occasions when no spotlights glared, so precautions were unnecessary. The first image acquired was the following 60-minute exposure of galaxy M51, the "Whirlpool Galaxy". I was surprised to find this 60-minute exposure not much better than a previous 25-minute exposure taken on March 7th. It made me wonder if longer exposures were worth the effort.  

Edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 4565, the "Needle Galaxy", in the constellation Comas Berenices was my next target. It showed up nicely in the following 30-minute exposure. A small 14th magnitude galaxy, NGC 4562, sits at the end of a curved string of 5 stars to the right of the brighter galaxy. The separation between the two is about 13.3 arc minutes.

Although I previously captured globular cluster M53 alone on March 7th, I wanted to see if I could include a nearby dim globular cluster together with M53 in the same field of view. The next image is a 30-minute exposure with bright M53 at the top and diffuse NGC 5053 at the bottom. They are separated by 57.7 arc minutes.

My final target for the night was planetary nebula Abell 21, also known as the "Medusa Nebula". I installed the light pollution filter for this object and took the 60-minute exposure shown next. Stars look slightly out of focus. Perhaps I should have engaged the autofocus before starting the exposure. As I've found in other nebular Seestar images, the red color looks disappointingly dull compared to images produced by experts.

Observing conditions on March 11th were near perfect - no Moon, no clouds, and all neighbor lights were off. But I'm getting nervous about the increasing number of glitches occurring in Seestar operation.
 

Dodging Clouds

Dodging Lights

Contradicting a cloudy forecast, large sky areas were clear on the evening of March 7th. I quickly set up my Seestar to take advantage of moonless conditions. One clear area included the constellation Cancer where two bright open star clusters reside. The Seestar seems to capture these star cluster types better than other celestial targets, so I pointed the small telescope there to begin.

Open star cluster M44, the "Beehive Cluster", is often recommended for observers with binoculars. The Seestar image of M44 shown next captures the pretty collection of stars with only a 3-minute exposure.

M67, the second prominent open cluster in Cancer, is familiar to me from my variable star monitoring days at Randolph College's Winfree Observatory. M67 contains a sequence of standard stars used to calibrate photometric measurements. Within M67 is a closely spaced group of stars resembling a tiny dipper with handle. Can you see the small 9-star dipper-like feature just right of center in the next image, a 6-minute exposure? (Click on the image to enlarge.)

Moving away from Cancer, I continued to search for targets in cloud-free regions. Next was a pair of dim galaxies in neighboring constellation Leo. In the next image Galaxy NGC 3507 is the 11th magnitude spiral galaxy on the left, and NGC 3501 is a dimmer 13.6 magnitude edge-on spiral galaxy about 12.6 arc minutes to the right of NGC 3507. A 62-minute exposure was needed to show this dim pair.

It's hard to predict how troublesome neighbors' outdoor spotlights will be for astrophotography on any given night. March 7th was not a good night because four out of five possible offending spotlights were randomly turning on and off during my observing session. These lights shine directly on my telescopes. The Seestar is so close to the ground that I can block some glaring light by erecting barriers around the telescope, but it's a constant battle.

Next, I moved north where clouds approaching from the west had not yet covered Ursa Major. My exposure of the famous "Whirlpool Galaxy", M51, was cut short because clouds did eventually move closer. The next image shows the resulting 25-minute exposure. I hope to try a longer exposure in the future.

Hazy clouds began appearing across most of the sky as I moved to one remaining clear area in Coma Berenices where globular cluster M53 looked like a promising target. Clouds began to interfere even here in this last clear area, so I was forced to settle for the 15-minute exposure shown in the next image.

Because the Seestar is so easy to use and set up I managed to get five decent images this night in spite of dodging clouds and lights.

 

 
  

Gaining Experience

Seestar Limitations

Although it was clear on February 19th, an unfortunate 83-percent illuminated gibbous Moon significantly brightened the sky. Because cloudy conditions were forecast for many future days I took this opportunity to use my new Seestar automated telescope in spite of natural lunar light pollution.

The Horsehead and Flame Nebulas were well placed near the meridian. I employed a light pollution filter and captured a stacked image equivalent to a 92-minute single exposure. The resulting imperfect image was framed nicely as you can see below.

At some point during the 92-minute exposure a neighbor's spotlight was turned on and glared directly onto the telescope from the side. The combined effect of moonlight and spotlight left a diagonal brightness band running from upper left to lower right across the image. Clearly, it makes no sense to attempt long exposures of dim nebulae on moonlit nights! Thus ends lesson number one. It would also help to have an extended lens hood to block some surrounding neighborhood light. I've ordered a lens hood for the Seestar.

Even though moonlight brightened the sky, clouds remained absent. I thought bright stars might be more appropriate targets. I was curious to see how certain red stars would show up in Seestar images. The next disappointing image is a 5-minute exposure of the pulsating semi-regular variable star, Y Canum Venaticorum, also known as "La Superba". It is supposed to be one of the reddest stars in the sky, but,  as you can see, it looks more yellowish/orange than red.

Actually, only the outer halo of the star is yellow/orange in the picture above. The central part is overexposed into a white color because red, green, and blue pixels all have the same overexposed maximum value. This was lesson number two: try shorter exposures to reveal more color in bright stars. I'd like to try capturing other red stars by trying shorter exposures and trying dimmer candidates than "La Superba".

Cloudy days drearily persisted until a very brief one hour window opened in late afternoon on February 25th. An enormous sunspot had been growing on the Sun, and I was hoping to get at least one image. I quickly set up the Seestar and managed to record one decent 90-second AVI video clip of the Sun before it dropped below a neighbor's roof. The next image is a stack of 100 frames from a 1,080 frame video.   

Giant sunspot 3590 is above center. It produced several powerful solar flares in the days before this picture was taken. It would have been a great target for my dedicated hydrogen-alpha solar telescope, but clouds made imaging impossible. Five smaller sunspots can also be seen. Arranged diagonally down in order from top to bottom on the left are sunspots 3595, 3594, 3592, and 3591. Sunspot 3586 is about to rotate out of sight near the limb on the upper right.

A Seestar software update provided new magnification options for solar imaging. I tried recording a video using the new 2X magnification, but found the final processed image disappointing. There was no increase in detail, just a slightly bigger overall image. The default 1X magnification gave a more pleasing image. So final lesson number three was to ignore magnifications higher than the 1X default. Now I'm settling in for another extended period of clouds.