Over the moon? Definitely.

Tonight I got my first look at the moon through my scope. It was spectacular. Seeing something that you think you know so well in such a different light is amazing. You can see every crater, every sea, every hill.

I even managed to get a semi-decent shot by holding my camera up to the eyepiece. 

This is the view through the 25mm ep. The view through the 10mm was brilliant too, but unfortunately I couldn't get a decent shot through it... I need to work on my afocal imaging...

But I've found an old webcam that I don't use anymore, so I'm going to attempt to modify it for planetary imaging in the next few weeks! 

The best part of tonight though, was my Dads reaction. It took a bit of coaxing to get him to come outside for a look, but he was blown away by the view. His exact words were 'Oh good Jesus, I didn't think you'd be able to see that!' Delighted!

Astronomy is so exciting!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DNA Day

59 years ago today, the 25th April 1953, molecular biologists James Watson and Francis Crick published a paper in Nature which suggested a structure for DNA.

(Source, via Wikipedia)

Their paper 'Molecular structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid' provided a brilliantly simple answer to the question of how genetic instructions were both stored inside organisms and passed from one generation to the next. It described Rosalind Franklin's discovery of the structure of DNA, and had a major impact on the field of biology, and genetics in particular.

(Watson and Crick with Maclyn McCarty. Source, via Wikipedia)

Watson and Crick, along with Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".

(Source)

The full paper has been made available online and can be viewed here, with an annotated version here.

Earth Day 2012

In honour of Earth Day 2012, here is the most distant image ever taken of our beautiful home, photographed by the Voyager 1 spacecraft.

Carl Sagan said it best:

"From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. 

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. 

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. 

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

SATURN!!!!

So after last nights ISS adventures, I headed back out with my telescope. It was an absolutely beautiful night out, hardly a cloud in the sky and not a breath of wind.

My objective for the night was Saturn.

Unfortunately, from my garden much of the south-eastern horizon is blocked by a huge hill, houses and trees. It would be a while before I was able to see the planet, so I decided to do some Messier-hunting for a bit. M42 was my first Messier object, spotted on my first night out with my scope - it's a fairly obvious one, being visible to the naked eye, and utterly beautiful in a scope. Last night I went for something different.

I took a quick flick through Turn Left at Orion, and pretty much went for the first one I opened. M37, an open cluster located in Auriga. It took almost an hour of lining up, focusing, checking Stellarium and then starting over before I finally spotted it in my eyepiece. It was an incredibly faint fuzzy blob (why they're referred to as 'faint fuzzies', I guess) but the satisfaction of finally finding it was immense! I'm so glad I didn't get a GoTo mount now, I love the chase!

And what was I looking at? Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia:

'M37 is located in the anti-center direction, opposite from the Galactic Center as seen from Earth. Estimates of its age range from 347 million to 550 million years. It has 1,500 times the mass of the Sun and contains over 500 identified stars, with roughly 150 stars brighter than magnitude12.5.

At its estimated distance of around 4,500 light-years (1,400 parsecs) from Earth, the cluster's angular diameter of 24 arcminutes corresponds to a physical extent of about 20–25 ly (6.1–7.7 pc).'

It's 4,500 light-years away. So the light I was seeing started it's journey 4,500 years ago. And the cluster I was looking at is approximately 25 ly across. That's 250 trillion kilometers. Amazing stuff.

(Source, via Wikipedia)

(Note: This is not how it looked in my scope!)

By the time I had recovered from the rush of finding my first real Messier object, Saturn was up! With more than a little excitement, I swung my scope around and lined it up in the finder. I looked first with the 25mm and then with the 10mm ep, and frankly, there are no words to describe the feeling of finally viewing those rings with my own eyes. It was easily the most awe-inspiring thing I've ever seen. 

The seeing was perfect, the view pin-sharp and crystal clear. I just stood for a while whispering 'Wow' to myself before running inside and dragging my parents out to look. I called my sister down from her bed too. They were all amazed. I jumped around with excitement, and my sister hugged me. It was a seriously brilliant moment. But it was really cold, so they went back inside pretty quickly...

(Stellarium screenshot - Teeny tiny, but so beautiful)

I stayed out for another 2 hours or so. It was just spectacular. I couldn't quite believe what I was looking at. Saturn. The rings. Two visible moons (Titan and Rhea). It's been nearly 24 hours now, and I'm still struggling to articulate quite how it made me feel. Everyone should see it, at least once.

It's really there!!

More ISS pics!

Lovely clear night here tonight! Just popped out for the first ISS pass of the night!

(Faint ISS passing by Venus)

(Drawing a line alongside the chimney)

(Dang that streetlight is annoying)

(Disappearing over my roof)

I'm heading back out now, with my telescope this time!

Fingers crossed for a good first view of Saturn!

APOD

Today's Astronomy Photo Of the Day is amazing.

(Source)

It shows the flight deck of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, and follows on nicely from this post about the interior of the Space X Dragon crew vehicle. 

This 360° panorama of the interior of the Discovery is also worth a look. 

It's just incredible to look at them next to something like the Gemini space capsules, which were so tiny and cramped in comparison.

(Source)

This pic is from the Gemini 8 mission, which is an incredible story in itself. It stars Neil Armstrong in pre-Apollo badassery!

The rest of the photos in that series are also pretty amazing.

Manned spaceflight is endlessly fascinating to me...

Nifty timelapse!

I've been spending a lot of time watching timelapse videos online the last few days. They're incredibly beautiful and very relaxing to watch... especially when it's stupidly cloudy outside! 

So a few days ago I came across this one, which is still beautiful, but technically very interesting and cool. 

When you're watching a regular timelapse of the stars, it appears as though the stars are moving across the field of view. Obviously this effect is due to the rotation of the earth on it's axis, and so it is the earth moving and not the sky! 

This timelapse takes this concept and turns it on it's head, literally, and shows the earth rotating instead of the stars. And it makes for a very beautiful video. 

It was filmed at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, which is, surprise surprise, in the Southern Hemisphere, so you can see the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds in the video! Really lovely!

International Space Station Pass

The International Space Station has been passing over my part of the world recently. Tonight's pass was particularly bright and high in the sky. So naturally I took my camera out for a spin!

Here's the space station passing over my house. Pretty awesome stuff!

And bonus shot of the ISS passing behind a lamppost. These lampposts are the bane of my life when I'm stargazing...

Probably need to fiddle with the settings a bit for a better shot, but I decided to take my camera out about 6 mins before the pass... so I'm pleased!

Space is cool!

Skywatcher Explorer 130P Review

So I recently decided it was time to buy myself a telescope. After years of staring at the sky with just my eyes, and occasionally a pair of cheap binoculars, I wanted something more powerful, and with more upgrade potential. I did tons of research, read hundreds of reviews and eventually settled on this, the Skywatcher Explorer 130P.

(And a right beauty it is too!)

I'm going to try to write a short review, from the point of view of an absolute beginner. Its mostly over-excited rambling though... I've taken some Stellarium screenshots to give a rough idea of what you can see through the scope.


Retailer
I ordered the scope from First Light Optics, an astronomy retailer based in Devon, UK. Shipping to Ireland was a little more expensive, but FLO have a brilliant reputation for customer service so I decided it was worth it. I ordered the scope on a Friday night, and received an email on the following Monday explaining that my scope was out of stock, but that they hoped to be getting it back in within a month, and that I was free to cancel my order at any time, should I want to. Four days later, I got another email saying that my scope was due in the next Monday and would be shipped to me immediately. When it shipped, I was sent a FedEx tracker number, and was able to track my scope and get an idea when it would arrive. FedEx sent it to France for a few hours, for a little holiday I guess, but it arrived in perfect condition this morning! So major thumbs up to FLO for excellent service and keeping me up to date with what was happening!

(Here's me next to the box for scale. My dad's a great photographer...)

First Impression

Once I got the many boxes, bubble wrap and tissue open, the scope itself was surprisingly easy to put together. Screw the tray to the tripod, secure the mount, attach the tube rings to the mount, and then (gently) plonk the OTA into the rings and secure. And that's pretty much it. 

As simple as it is to put together however, the equatorial mount is somewhat less than intuitive to use. Despite the extensive amount of reading I had done before I ordered my scope, I was baffled by the mount and it took me a while to even figure out if I had it the right way around. For the record, I did... and I think there's only one way it can all go together. Next up it polar aligning it, but I'll have to wait for a clear night as Polaris has to be visible.

It is, of course, cloudy today (Friday) - new scope curse and all that, but I practiced getting the scope set up for the next clear night. I aligned the red dot finder, balanced it and practiced with the RA and DEC controls. The red dot finder works well and is very simple to align with the scope - aim it at a distant spire or lampost, check the eyepiece, make a few minor adjustments and and you're done. You can dim the red dot for night-time use too.

First Light!

It's now Tuesday, and the sky finally cleared! I dragged the scope outside around 9pm (it lives in my conservatory for now, so it's already close to cool enough) and set it up. I didn't polar align it tonight, as Polaris was behind a cloud when I started, so that'll have to be a project for the next night. So I ended up lifting the tripod around and aiming in the general direction of what I wanted to see, using the red dot finder to center it in the eyepiece. The RDF worked like a charm, just point and go. 

First things first, the tripod. It could be a bit sturdier, as the scope suffers from the shakes when it's touched, whether from focusing the eyepiece or just bumping off it. It settles down reasonably quickly though, and there's a few things you can do to dampen the wobbling. Adding weights to the tripod helps, along with anti-vibration pads. I've heard of people putting sand in the tripod legs to stabilise it too, but I haven't tried that yet. It was pretty windy tonight so the scope was a bit on the shaky side, and that combined with the wind making my eyes water was giving me slightly blurry vision. So it was a less than ideal night for stargazing, but I was too excited to wait!

I aimed at Jupiter first, and wow, what a view! Jupiter is past it's best for viewing right now, being pretty low in the sky but it was the object I was most excited about so I had to give it a try. And honestly, I was blown away. I could clearly see Jupiter as a disc, surrounded by four moons. And when my eyes stopped watering (it was the wind, not run-away emotions, I swear!) and the wind died down, I could see faint banding. This view alone was worth the price of the scope.

It's still pretty small, about the size of a pea held at arms length, but it was absolutely amazing. I used the 25mm ep first, and then the 10mm for a closer view. I've read that the supplied 10mm is not great, but to my (extremely unexperienced) eyes, it was amazing. I kept the scope on Jupiter until it went behind a cloud just above the horizon. 

(The moons were smaller than this in reality, but this is a good approximation of how Jupiter looked using the 10mm eyepiece.)

Next I moved onto my second target, M42, the Orion Nebula. Again, the RDF performed well, despite the nebula appearing fairly dim from my light polluted garden. It was another serious wow moment. The dust clouds were incredibly beautiful and I could make out 3 or 4 stars in the trapezium. Mind-blowingly beautiful. Again, I stayed with M42 until it got too low in the sky.

(There were fewer stars visible in my sky, but again, it's an approximation of what size the nebula was using a 10mm eyepiece.)

Then I just wandered around the sky for a bit, it's amazing how many stars you can see through the scope. I aimed it at a patch of sky that appeared dark and empty, and when I looked through the eyepiece, it was filled with stars. Next, I headed for M45, the Pleiades, my favourite star cluster. From my garden, with the naked eye, you can just about make out 5 stars in the cluster. With the 25mm ep, the field of view was filled with hundreds of stars. Gorgeous.

Finally, I swung the scope upwards and aimed at Venus. A lot of people say that Venus is slightly underwhelming through a telescope, but it was beautiful. I could see a very bright, perfect crescent shape. Lovely.

(Once again, this is how Venus looked using the 10mm eyepiece. Small, but beautiful!)

So all in all I spent about 2 hours outside. I stayed out until my hands were frozen and the sky had pretty much clouded over. It was a wonderful 2 hours. The telescope easily surpassed my expectations, and performed brilliantly, despite the somewhat less than optimum conditions. I still haven't quite figured out the equatorial mount, but that'll come with practice I guess. I absolutely cannot wait for the next clear night!

250 euro is not a bad price for the universe.

Star Trails!

My telescope arrived!!!!

And I accidentally let the clouds out when I opened the box so I haven't had a chance to take it out yet... but I'm working on a review that I'll post once I get a good nights viewing.

So in the meantime, I thought I'd post my first ever attempt at any kind of astrophotography, star trails. I took this about a year ago as part of my Project 365. I had no idea what I was doing, basically just aimed at the sky and crossed my fingers, but I quite like how it came out!

Orion's Belt is visible in the centre and the sword is just below that. You can even see a distinct difference in colour between the red-orange Betelguese and the blue-white Bellatrix, the left and right shoulders of Orion.

I'd love to get to a decent dark sky sight and try this properly...