Takeaways from the recent AIC meeting

The “Advanced Imaging Conference” is a biannual meeting held in San Jose California and is dedicated to astroimaging enthusiasts from around the world. It is probably the premier meeting of it’s kind and was started in 2004 by some of the most well known astroimagers. I attended the recent meeting last month and had not been to one prior to this since about 10 years ago! There were well over 200 attendees at the conference this year. A lot has changed. For one thing, many more people are doing this now and doing it very well. Equipment has become more accessible and less costly. Changes in technology continue to evolve as you would expect. My 4 takeaways from this conference:

1. Transition from ccd to cmos camera sensors (for astronomy). This is a technological shift that seems to be driven right now mostly by economics rather than any quality improvement objective for the astroimaging community, so the hope is that over time the developers will figure out how to optimize these for astronomy. Basically you have these 2 types of sensors, CCDs or charged coupled devices and CMOS or “complementary metal oxide semiconductor”. Both sensors convert light into electrons but do it in different ways. Both sensors have been around for awhile now. The CMOS sensors are found in your typical digital camera, smart phone etc. In a ccd sensor the charge is transported across the chip and read at one corner of the array. An analog to digital converter then converts each pixel’s value to digital. In CMOS sensors transistors at each pixel amplify and move the charge with more “traditional” wiring. Each pixel can be read individually so there is more flexibility there but what that means for us going forward I do not know. At this time what I do know is this: CCD sensors create high quality, low noise images. CMOS sensors at least right now are noisier. Because of the transistors next to each pixel in the CMOS the light is hitting those and those photons will be lost resulting in less light sensitivity. The positives on CMOS side to me appear to be economic right now. They consume minimal power compared to CCDs and can be manufactured on any standard silicon production line so are very cheap to produce. Since the astronomy community is a relatively tiny niche market, there is really no incentive to continue to produce the more costly CCDs and so they are gradually being phased out.
2.  Direct drive telescope mounts. These are very interesting because they employ motors which are connected directly to the load without any intervening gears, worms or any other mechanical transmission elements. This eliminates things like periodic error which occurs in a gear driven motor. Supposedly they are way more accurate than anything with gears. I spoke to some folks using these who claim the tracking, which is the main challenge when viewing/ imaging astronomical objects in space, is flawless and obviates the need for any guiding which we typically do now. In other words now we have to use a star away from the target to focus on and the mount adjusts during your exposure to keep that star centered. These new gearless mounts may not require that.
3. “System on a chip”. Typically when we are imaging we have a ton of equipment we need to operate and traditionally we have been using laptops or desktops to do this. We connect a thousand devices to the usb ports and have to navigate those. Smart folks have come to realize that you don’t need cumbersome Windows based computers just to run astronomical equipment. You can have tiny motherboards such as the Raspberry Pi or similar that can be mounted on your imaging platform and not have to deal with the heavy hardware. No more hassles with regular system updates or a million processes running in the background to eat up memory and interfere with the astronomical activities. I think this was the coolest thing I saw at AIC and potentially the most beneficial. I mean the thought of ditching Windows and the big hardware I have to leave on all the time in the warm room is very compelling! This is probably the one area I am going to pursue!
4. I got the sense from the attendees I spoke to that many are leary of permanent observatory set-ups nowadays and either are going portable or renting telescope time online. Global weather is constantly changing, light pollution increasing and other factors we cannot anticipate come into play. A portable setup enables you to travel to any site potentially where seeing and darkness are optimal. Many more online telescope rental sites have been established where you can use top of the line equipment and have access to the best skies on Earth!

New direct drive mount from Software Bisque which is designed for 400 pound loads!

 

Vendor area at the recent AIC meeting.

Anyway those are my take home points from the recent AIC meeting!

Thanks for reading!

Dr Dave

Omega Centauri revisited

Omega Centauri is the largest globular cluster we can see from Earth. This view is similar to how it appears through a pair of binoculars although the individual stars, due to their tightly packed configuration, are not resolved visually. You can see it with the naked eye in a dark site and it is close to the size of the full Moon! Containing as many as 10 million stars packed at the core to within only 0.1 light year apart, it lies about 16,000 light years away in the constellation Centaurus. Interestingly it is really a southern hemisphere target. I had no idea it was visible from my observatory location in Mayhill, NM until one morning in February at around 5 am I was out on my deck with a pair of binoculars and while panning the skies near the southern horizon a huge ball of stars popped into view! It was the largest collection of stars I had ever seen! I knew right away that’s what it had to be. I checked the sky charts for that time and confirmed yes it was there! Apparently it skirts the horizon at this location in late winter, early spring and reaches a maximum altitude of a whopping 8 degrees above the horizon! It is only visible for just under 2 hours. By comparison the largest globular cluster typically visible for most northern hemisphere observers in the late Spring and Summer directly overhead is the so-called Great Hercules Cluster in the constellation Hercules and has “only” a few hundred thousand stars!

The image above is the fully processed version which is only about 1.5 hours of data. The full resolution version and further details can be seen by going to the “My astroimages” link to the lower right.

Thanks for reading!

Dr Dave

Space weather and the Northern Lights

As many of you know the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis occur because the Sun constantly ejects energetic particles that enter Earth’s magnetic field and interact with molecules in the Earth’s atmosphere. Electrons in those molecules become energized and emit colorful light in the sky, often green because of the presence of Oxygen. The closer you are to the magnetic pole, the more often you will see this phenomenon. As luck would have it, my recent transition to part time work, which consists of 2 weeks a month covering hospitals in need, generally outside of New Mexico, I found myself in Hancock MI or the “Upper Peninsula”. I say luck because I discovered I was a lot further north than I realized (48+ N latitude) and as I found out from the locals, the Northern Lights were not infrequently observed from this location! The town sits on this spur of land jutting into Lake Superior which looks as big as the ocean. Huge swaths of deciduous trees can be seen which at this time are rainbow-like with color! Reminds me a lot of Northern New England where I spent most of my life. So it is cold but very picturesque.

Fall colors in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Similar to Vermont for example but a lot more trees. This was close to the peak.

Enter modern technology , where you can download any one of a million phone apps which can tell you when Northern Lights are visible from your location and text you alerts accordingly. Data is from the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) The “Kp-index” is the global geomagnetic activity index that is based on 3-hour measurements from ground-based magnetometers around the world. Each station is calibrated according to its latitude and reports a certain K-index depending on the geomagnetic activity measured at the location of the magnetometer. The values range from 0-9. 9 is probably after a huge solar eruption such as a coronal mass ejection or giant flare. In those cases you probably can see the northern lights very far south. Hancock is located in the 5 range. In other words when the Kp is predicted to be 5 or above you should be able to see auroral activity from the Hancock area. That really isn’t that high. Most of the time the activity is around Kp=3 so the events in Hancock can be observed even a couple of times per month in the Fall and Spring!

Map of auroral activity 3 day forecast from the NOAA site. For this date a week or so ago, the activity was best seen north of the continental US

 

Geomagnetic map showing where you can see Northern Lights depending on Kp values. The black “x” marks the location of Hancock MI. This falls dead on or even slightly above the green Kp=5 line. Notice that even at Kp=9 we aren’t going to see anything south of Colorado!

 

27 day forecast showing that on the morning of Oct 24 and 25 there is a projected magnetic activity level of 5! I will be arriving in Hancock for my next assignment on that night! Let’s hope for clear weather.

And so it was on the morning of Sept 28th, there was a predicted auroral event for the Hancock area. At 3:30 AM I was about to head out the door when I got called to the local hospital for a consultation (Darn! Always happens at the worst possible time!) . No matter, luckily I was done by 4:30 and I then literally raced to Calumet Waterworks Park which sits on the Lake Superior shore, only about a 30 minute drive. My phone is bleeping with text alerts. It’s pitch dark out. I could not tell where the lake was from the forest. Finally I found the park sign so I knew I had arrived. I got out of the car and looked up. Crisp, clear dark skies! I was thinking to myself: “Geez, I bet these are like Bortle 2-3 skies at worst. Might be a great imaging spot”. But this was a scouting mission just to see if I could see the aurora and confirm the accuracy of the forecasts. The pictures will have to wait. Plus it was cold and I wasn’t really dressed properly for an extended stay unfortunately. I see the constellation Gemini to the East and that gets my bearings. I head north and see a fence, actually almost bumping into it. It is totally ink black out there and hoping there are no bears around! I can hear what sounds like the ocean with gentle waves hitting a beach. Lake Superior! Then through some sparsely aggregated trees looking north it was dead obvious, like a huge fog bank eerie and white, right over the lake in the distance. I knew it wasn’t fog because after several minutes of dark adaptation I could see huge arcs of white light shooting upward, to about maybe 50 degrees of altitude. Unquestionably this was it! The Northern Lights! There was no discernible color but I could not stay out there longer than about 20 minutes. Yes, the forecasts were 1000% accurate! Next day my wife and I drove out to the park so I could see it during the day. There is a wooden staircase to the right of the fence that goes down to the beach. About halfway down there is a landing which is big enough for a tripod and camera! Next time!

View to the North at Calumet Park! No obstructions. Right about where the thin clouds are is where I saw the Northern Lights.

 

This is the staircase from the park area going down to the beach. The blue arrow points to the landing where I can set up a tripod for next time 🙂 The fence I saw at night is about 30 feet or so on the right between the clumps of trees

Thanks for reading!

Dr Dave

The “Black screen of Death” and other trials of the remote imager

The “Black screen of death” appears on the PC called “observatory” in the TeamViewer app. This is the desktop operating Pier 1, 16″ scope. This turned out to be a failed motherboard. “Observatory 2” controls Pier 2 and “Station” is basically providing info on the UPS backing up the router.

Let’s talk about the “black” screen of death. Not the blue screen that perhaps some of you PC users are familiar with. No, the black screen is perhaps a little more unsettling as it means you have lost communication with your remote computer and perhaps your equipment is now running exposed to the elements with no way of intervening! I use the Team Viewer application which is free and I think pretty robust. It has been very solid over the last couple of years anyway. They do have down times for maintenance which they inform you of ahead of time and very rare unanticipated downtimes which they are very quick to address. I have seen only one of these which lasted about 3-4 hours. Once you set your remote computers up and you open the Team Viewer application the computers typically appear with a small blue screen icon. That is a good thing! That means your computers are good to go and when you double click on the blue icon you go right to your remote computer screen for whichever computer you are using. When the computer icon is black that means something is wrong. On the Team Viewer screen you can see how long the computer(s) have been inaccessible. This can be helpful in diagnosing the problem. The following are the typical reasons:
1) All computers are black- this means that you could be in the middle of an internet reboot especially if the down time has been short, say less than 10-15 minutes. In that case once the internet is rebooted, the computers will come back online. You just need to wait “patiently”. Alternatively the downtime could be much longer, say a couple of hours or more. This is likely due to an extended power outage, one that has gone beyond the life of whatever backup battery you have hooked up to the computers. In that case you have to wait until power comes back on. Hopefully there is not an imaging session in progress! It is also possible that some event occurred to disrupt power at the observatory such as a lightning strike.
2) One computer is black- this means that something is wrong with that particular PC. You can try to cycle power to it to see if it will reboot but usually there is a major hardware issue. If you only have 1 remote computer you can check to see if your network is still operating by trying to access one of your monitoring cameras for example. These are typically not PC driven and can be checked from a mobile device app. In my experience on the 2 occasions this has happened the reason was a computer system board or “motherboard” failure. This occurred on both the Pier 2 laptop and Pier 1 desktop within about 6 weeks of each other! Now it is possible there could be something quirky with the Teamview app on the remote computer. This does happen to the “station” laptop (see above image) which is not involved with any of the observatory equipment but communicates with the main back up battery . This battery provides backup to the router specifically. I haven’t figured out exactly why this occurs periodically but I think it may be occurring when the laptop restarts after system updates. Something to sort out going forward but not a show stopper if that computer goes offline because I know how to fix that.

The “black screen of death” is only one of the many potential pitfalls in this battle we call “remote imaging”. Since this past Spring I have had to address the following:
1) Failed roof control. We discussed this in earlier posts but this required changing the entire system.
2) Camera on Pier 2 malfunctioned. This occurred when during camera rotation a cable connecting the imager to the guider was inadvertently pulled out and shorted the camera circuit board. That was just a dumb but costly mistake when I had the cable tethered to the main cable
3) 2 motherboard failures in 6 weeks as discussed above.
4) Circuit board on the MX+ mount on Pier 2 malfunctioned and required replacement.
5) Both RA and Dec cam knobs had to be replaced on the Pier 2 mount (MEII) due to excessive wear.

Fortunately both the laptop motherboard and the MX+ circuitboard were under warranty, but still a fairly expensive 6 month duration of problem solving; not as much as it would have cost having a hosting site run your equipment (see below). I understand why people are moving away from “doing it all” with this remote imaging stuff. I get it. Managing the equipment side, data collection and data processing can be very frustrating. Between the hardware breakdowns, software glitches, and not to mention the weather not cooperating when your in the middle of finishing a project can be very frustrating. Despite having 2 imaging platforms and operating this for about 15 months now I have completed only 5 projects. Every week there is something else to fix. But despite all of this, when you get that moment when things are working and you get that “Wow” result, it makes it all totally worth it! I would say that people like myself are in the minority these days. Most people are either forming teams where 1 or more are handling the equipment side and one person is processing the data, or you have the situation where you bring your equipment to a dark sky “hosting” site such as a Deep Sky West etc. where you have a team of people managing your equipment and you just operate it remotely. This does cost quite a bit; a few hundred dollars per month typically. There is also the option of paying for data and using a remote site such as iTelescope or Chilescope or any one of the 100 or so of these sites in operation now. Finally I think most people who are doing astroimaging these days are using smaller setups they can travel with to dark sky sites and doing everything on site. Everyone will have their reasons for doing what they do. It’s all good. For myself, I feel lucky I can operate equipment from a dark site that I don’t have to set up every night I’m using it , I can operate it from another location and don’t have to stay up with it all night and have 2 platforms I can use potentially simultaneously. If I want to travel to a dark site with smaller stuff I can do that too at some point. So if you are like me and are thinking of “going remote” remember you have to get used to expecting the unexpected and like a Hall of Fame football coach once told his Superbowl winning QB: “you can’t be afraid to go down in flames”. Be sure to check out the “Going remote” page and of course thanks for reading!

Dr Dave

Perseids meet the Zodiacal light

The annual Perseid Meteor Shower peaked earlier today. However I was able to catch a better showing from Mayhill NM on the morning of the 11th, yesterday. While the Moon is waxing and near full, it fortuitously set just before 4 am and the dark skies over the Sacramento Mountains followed! The Earth passes through the debris trail left by comet Swift-Tuttle every year at this time. The direction of travel is toward the constellation Perseus, hence the name. The meteors appear to originate from a central point in that constellation. Just after 4 am on the 11th Perseus was nearly overhead, so most of the meteors were seen closer to the horizon. I saw approximately 20 in the hour before dawn! Now the other phenomenon featured at the same time was a triangular glow of light originating from about the position of sunrise. This can be seen in a dark site either just before dawn or just after sunset. Zodiacal light (also called false dawn when seen before sunrise such as this) is visible in the night sky and appears to extend from the Sun’s direction and along the zodiac, straddling the ecliptic or the plane of the solar system (red line in image below). Sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust causes this phenomenon. Zodiacal light is best seen during twilight after sunset in spring and before sunrise in autumn, when the zodiac is at a steep angle to the horizon. You can see in the Stellarium capture below the steep ecliptic angle and the constellations of the zodiac beginning with Gemini. At any rate, a welcome moment of visual observing from the astronomer’s living quarters at Orion’s Belt on the morning of August 11th!

View to the South/ Southeast on the morning of Aug 11 a little after 4am. Unfortunately the screen reproduction is undersized by this site’s server but you can see the constellation Perseus marked with an ‘X’ near the top which is where the meteors appear to originate from. The white triangle is the Zodiacal light and red line is the ecliptic, running through the constellations of the zodiac. You can see Gemini is rising at the base of the triangle. Taurus is next “in line” along the red line. The bright red star Aldebaran is shown there, and if you go further up you will run into Pisces. Orion is at the lower right center

This is kind of how the zodiacal light looked, about an hour before dawn. Courtesy of earthsky.org.

Thanks for reading!

Dr Dave

A Horse with No Name

One of the things you begin to realize after imaging various regions of the universe is that space is not empty! It’s filled with dust. In fact if there were no dust, we would not have a night time here on Earth. The second completed project from Orion’s Belt Remote Observatory is entitled “A Horse with No Name” which harkens back to the early 70’s and the song from the band ‘America’. The “Horsehead nebula” is one of the most fascinating regions of our galaxy and is part of the Orion Molecular Cloud which is a huge star forming region toward the constellation Orion. I have reproduced the detailed description below with a few edits, courtesy of Wikipedia. For a full resolution version of the image you can use the link on the lower right under “My Astro-images”

Image captured from Orion’s Belt Remote Observatory Dec 2018-Feb 2019

The “Horsehead nebula” is a complex star forming region 1200 light years from Earth toward the constellation Orion and consists of emission, reflection and dark nebulae. The deep-red color originates from ionized hydrogen gas (Hα) predominantly behind the nebula, and caused by the nearby bright star Sigma Orionis. You can see the blue diffraction spike from the nearby bright star. Magnetic fields channel the gases, leaving the nebula into streams, shown as foreground streaks against the background glow. A glowing strip of hydrogen gas marks the edge of the massive cloud, and the densities of nearby stars are noticeably different on either side.
Heavy concentrations of dust in the Horsehead Nebula region and neighboring Orion Nebula are localized into interstellar clouds, resulting in alternating sections of nearly complete opacity and transparency. The darkness of the Horsehead is caused mostly by thick dust blocking the light of stars behind it. The lower part of the Horsehead’s neck casts a shadow to the left. The visible dark nebula emerging from the gaseous complex is an active site of the formation of “low-mass” stars. Bright spots in the Horsehead Nebula’s base are young stars just in the process of forming. (Courtesy Wikipedia)
Capture info:
Location: Orion’s Belt Remote Observatory, Mayhill NM
Date: Dec 2018
Telescope: RiDK 400mm
Camera: SBIG STX 16803/ AOX
Mount: Paramount MEII
Acquisition: LRGB Ha: 5, 5,6,5,7 hours respectively. Luminance 10min; Red, Green, Blue 12 min; Ha 15min
Filters: Astrodon Gen 2 (3nm HA)
Processing : Pixinsight

Thanks for reading!

Dr Dave

Reflections on Apollo 11’s 50th

As this blog is devoted to “space exploration” (with ground based telescopes), I would be remiss in not devoting at least one entry to one of the most compelling achievements in human history. Where were you on July 20,1969 (Assuming you were alive then of course and old enough to be aware of the event)? I was 8 years old at a sleep away camp in Maine. We were scattered in sleeping bags on the floor of the camp’s cafeteria. There was one television in the center of the room. I was pretty close to it. I remember it was late at night. Definitely past our bedtime but the camp counselors let us stay up for it. The only visual I remember was when the lunar module camera came on as Neil Armstrong was climbing down the ladder. Lots of brightness and shadows. I saw movement which looked like an astronaut’s glaringly bright spacesuit against the darkness of the background and the dark shadows below at the foot of the lunar module. The movement stopped and then I heard a voice which was probably one of the most famous one-liners ever: “that’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind”. I don’t think I heard the actual words at the time. Years after that I would periodically watch the documentaries, visit the museums, read the stories and just be in complete awe and amazement at how humans were able to do this with such seemingly rudimentary resources. If you have ever seen the lunar module in person it looks like a 3rd grade diorama project! What it all means to me is that when people have a certain collective will and focus, even the impossible is possible.

The Apollo 11 (2019) documentary produced this year and available on Amazon as a $6 rental I thought was the best beginning to end presentation as it showed much of the video taken during the mission which was unavailable at the time. I enjoyed the prelaunch original CBS broadcast with Walter Cronkite which is on You tube. The commercials, especially, bring you 50 years back in time!

Since the Moon landing 50 years ago, many lament about the fact that no humans have ventured back into space, beyond the space station. However, many discoveries have been made. Space telescopes have contributed enormously to our knowledge of the large scale structure of the universe. Hundreds of planets outside our solar system have been identified. Space probes have landed and explored Mars, visited Pluto and beyond. Of course, no one has been discovered waving back at us yet but perhaps that will come soon.

At any rate, the Moon, which is usually an object that just gets in the way of deep space observations 2 weeks out of every month, has special significance today!

Thanks for reading!

Dr Dave