Sun fun and Hartley 2

These contributions are again from Paul. 

Sun Fun

Sunday 241010 11pm

Three active sunspot regions were clearly visible one due west, one in the north west quarter and one towards the east. The latter contained at least four small sunspots. There were two other interesting regions with possible sunspot or filaments, one near the south west limb and one on the west, hard to resolve.
Plages surrounded four of the regions I saw. Broad filaments were located in the north east and south west quarters
Prominences occured around the limb, the longest one due south. A busy Sun indeed again.

Comet 103P Hartley

Sunday 241010 1.30am

Another composite of 5 x 5min images stacked on the head and processed in Photoshop. As green as green can be, because of cyanide gas released as some of the core sublimes.

Comet Hartley 2 and the Sun.

I have been asked by a friend, and member of my local astronomical society, Macc Astro Soc.
If I can post a couple of observing reports, together with a picture, taken recently of C2003P Hartley 2 and a drawing of the Sun. Drawn using a Coronado PST, by Mr Paul Canon.


Sun Sketching
20/10/10   10.49am
The Sun was very active  on Wednesday. There were four  sunspot regions in the disc. Each region was surrounded by a large plage. Two large broad filaments were in the north east quarter with a smattering of smaller ones scattered around the disc. South east there was a plage region with a large filaprom visible. Around the limb there were groups of prominences, but not on the south west limb that I could see. The largest prominences were along the south east limb. Two unusual ones were near the north pole, one hanging above the limb the other looking like a tree trunk with a single branch.

Comet 103P Hartley 2
12/10/10 12.10am
A go at Hartley through the murk  early Tuesday morning. 5 x 5min images stacked on the head and   processed in  Photoshop. The comets tail in this image is towards the north east off the central core. The  coma around the core is very large, but diffuse and requires processing to bring it out.

NGC7331 Galaxy in Pegasus

On Tuesday I had a major breakthrough with my astro-imaging. For years I have been struggling getting my guiding sorted out, I began to give UP as I wasn't really getting the results which I had hoped for, when I bought my Losmandy G11.

Then two weeks ago I decided that I would try again, only this time use my CCD, an Atik 16ic and drift align my already reasonably aligned mount. This I did, and I managed to take a series of one minute test exposures of NGC7331 in Pegasus. Everything was looking very good.

On Sunday I decided to dig out and restore, my fifteen years old 60mm finder scope, that has been modified and now has a rack and pinion focuser, to use as a guide scope.

The biggest advantage in using this scope is it's small light weight design, and whopping field of view, which will make finding guide stars easier.

On Tuesday during a spell of very sunny weather, I came home to a clear sky and started to get everything ready.
Shortly after sunset, I was happily slewing and synchronizing on Beta and then Epsilon Pegasi, then onto NGC7331. This galaxy was visible near the centre of the CCD chip, and it was only a matter of seconds before I had it in the middle.

The next test was the guide scope, and would it focus with my QHY5 guide camera!

I attached the camera and powered up the guiding software that I use, PHD.

I didn't have to worry, because I was able to focus on a faint guide star in the area, so I begin my calibration run to get the guiding ready.

I am happy to say that I can auto guide, and at the moment I can take guided exposures of 3 minutes with know trailing.

To prove this, here is an image of NGC7331 with  a cluster of m+14 background galaxies.

The exposure length is 1hr 45min guided with PHD and QHY5 and short focal-length 60mm guide scope, and imaged through my Orion Optics SPX 200-800 F4 with an Atik 16ic and IR block filter.

Western Veil, NGC6960 Super Nova Remnant in Cygnus.

Sunday night was once again clear. If I had a pound for every Sunday when the skies are clear. I would be rich by now.

The skies where I live were fantastic, with the Milky way faintly visible to the unaided eye, and together with that. You could also see the NAN, NGC7000, together with all of Aquarius, and the small and often over looked constellation of Equuleus. NLM was an estimated m+4.8

I looked firstly at C2003P Hartley, and noticed how much it had brightened since my last observation. I then moved over to some favourite dso's and started with M15, and then M2. Both were superb through my 24mm Panoptic and 10" Dobsonian (x50).

I then decided to have a look at the Western Veil; NGC6960. I could see 52 Cygni so I new that I could find it.

I used a wide field eyepiece, my 35mm Celestron Ultima, together with my Lumicon OIII. I centred the star, and found the Veil almost immediately.

The view at 35x magnification was just right, and I managed to make a drawing with out to much trouble.

Here attached is my drawing.



I packed UP shortly afterwards because I was tired, but happy.

M57

Last night after a day of very heavy rain, the skies where I live, finally cleared for an all to brief period. I was able to get out under a very damp sky and try my hand at drawing.

For many years now I have been using an Atik16ic for imaging and capturing deep sky object's to process and then store away on a DVD. At the end of the day all you have are a lot of pretty picture's that look nice, but at the end of the day that's all they are, picture's. And together with the problems involved with imaging, I was beginning to find it very stressful and it was slowly becoming less enjoyable with every session.

I've been looking at the work of members of the Webb Deep Sky Society, whom I am a member off, who are using video cameras and drawing what they see.

I would like to get back to basics and draw what I am looking at, using my Atik16ic and my 8" F4 Newtonian from home and my OD250 10" when away from home. The big advantage with using my CCD from home; it cuts through light pollution and acts as an electronic eye. And allows me to still look at deep sky objects.

One other advantage of doing this, you don't have to worry if you're stars are slightly elongated with each CCD image, due to a poorly miss aligned mount.

Last night as I said, the skies did eventually clear, and I got out and took the cover of my Losmandy G11, and soon had it fired UP and slewing, with my 8 inch f4 "AG" to the field where messier 57was.

It is remarkable how sensitive the CCD is over the human eye. With the exposure's set to 60 seconds, M57 was very clear and sharp with it's magnitude 13 central star  clearly visible. The camera is UN-filtered except  for a IR-block filter.

Despite the short exposures last night. I think that I was seeing stars between magnitude 13 and magnitude 14, whilst with the unaided  eye I was lucky to see magnitude 3.5.

Below is my drawing made at 19:07ut.

I found this way to be very relaxing and enjoyable night. And I certainly hope to do this again and again.

I would have made some more, but as is the norm, it clouded over shortly afterwards and I packed UP muttering to myself.