The Age of Origin - Star Clusters

After taking a look at galaxies and then nebulae, it is time now to see some of the star clusters that I have photographed in the last few months with my Celestron Origin telescope.

I'll start off with the closest of the bunch, the wonderful Pleiades (also known as The Seven Sisters and Messier 45):

At at distance of just over 400 light years, the Pleiades is the second closest star cluster to Earth. It is easily seen in the night sky and is a part of many sky myths from across the globe. The cluster looks good the the unaided eye, as well as through binoculars and telescopes. 

It is an open star cluster. Open clusters typically have a few hundred to a few thousand stars. 

In addition to the many stars seen here, there is also a prominent reflection nebula--essentially dust that is illuminated by the light of the stars in the cluster. When I was a kid it was widely thought that the dust was left over from the formation of the cluster, but now we know that it is unrelated to it.

The cluster's apparent diameter is too large for me to capture all of it in a single image, so I will return to build a mosaic hopefully later this year. 

The open star cluster known as Messier 46 is ten times farther away than the Pleiades:

This cluster also features an added treat. Just on the left edge of the cluster is a small planetary nebula. Like the dust in the Pleiades it is unrelated to the cluster itself, but makes for an added bonus when observing in this part of the sky.

Further out is the famous Double Cluster in Perseus:

The two clusters are NGC 866 (at top) and NGC 884 (lower middle) lie some 7,500 light years from Earth.

At a distance of just 6,000 light years, Messier 4 in Scorpius is clearly an all together different type of star cluster:

It is a globular star cluster. These clusters contain hundreds of thousands of stars. Many of these clusters are the remnant cores of small galaxies that have been/are being consumed by our Milky Way galaxy. 

Messier 4 can be easily seen with binoculars just west of the red supergiant star Antares, in the heart of Scorpius.

Further out lies Messier 13, the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules:

Messier 13 is about 22,000 light years from Earth. M13 is the finest globular star cluster in the northern sky. The Southern Hemisphere has some finer ones, but they are too far south for me to be able to photograph them.

Also in this image (near the lower left) is NGC 6207, a spiral galaxy located some 30 million light years from our Milky Way galaxy. 

Finally, here's another globular star cluster, though it is so far away it hardly even looks like one.

 NGC 2419 is sometimes called the Intergalactic Wanderer, though it does indeed orbit the center of the Milky Way galaxy. It is located 275,000 light years from Earth. That puts is 12.5 times farther away than M13!

It has been unusually cloudy of late, but I will be posting more astrophotos in the near future. 

The Age of Origin - Nebulae

Here's the second of my three initial posts looking at some of my astrophotograpy from the Celestron Origin smart telescope. Today, its nebulae. Star clusters will be next.

Let's start off with a popular target from the Northern Hemisphere's winter skies: the Horsehead Nebula. 

That's the Horsehead Nebula, also known as Barnard 33, at center. It's a dark cloud that's in front of a red cloud of hydrogen gas that lies some 1,300 light years from Earth. To the left of it is a blue-white reflection nebula known as NGC 2023. In the upper left is the Flame Nebula (NGC 2024) and immediately to the right of that is the star known as Alnitak. Alnitak is the left-most star of Orion's Belt.  

Almost three degrees to the east of the Horsehead is Messier 78, an amazing complex of both dark and reflection nebulae located at about the same distance from Earth as the Horsehead Nebula.

M78 is at center and NGC 2071 to the left, but clearly they are part of the same region of space. Both have stars embedded within clouds of gas and dust.

The Rosette Nebula in Monoceros is much larger than the Origin's field of view but I shot a series of overlapping images to create this mosaic. 

This is a region of star formation that has an open star cluster (NGC 2244) at center that's surrounded by a ring of glowing hydrogen gas that's leftover from its formation.

No visit to the winter skies would be complete without a look at Messier 42, the Great Nebula in Orion. 

M42 is almost too bright, but I think that this image captures it nicely. You can see clouds of dark nebulae, blue reflection nebulae and red hydrogen gas. 

Planetary nebulae are created when a Sun-like star that has evolved into a red giant sheds its outer layers into space. 

Messier 27, the Apple Core Nebula is one of the brighter planetary nebulae:

It's located about 1,200 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Vulpecula, the Fox. 

Unlike any of the previous images in this post, this image was taken using the nebula filter that Celestron sells to go along with the Origin. The remaining images here also make use of the nebula filter, including the Helix Nebula below:

The Helix another planetary nebula and is about half as far away as M27, which is why it is larger in the sky. 

Great targets for summer evenings include Messier 16, the famous Eagle Nebula:

At the center of the Eagle nebula lies the famous "Pillars of Creation" that has been photographed by both the Hubble and Webb Space Telescopes. The pillar-shaped dark features at center within this nebula are a part of this nebula which is creating a new cluster of stars.

At the end of their lives massive stars explode as creating supernovae. A supernova is an expanding cloud of star guts. The Veil Nebula is a part of the Cygnus Loop supernova remnant. The western part of the Veil shown here is also sometimes called the Witch's Broom Nebula:

The supernova that created the Veil Nebula exploded between ten and twenty thousand years ago.

A star that has not yet exploded, but someday will, is Wolf-Rayet 136, a massive star that has shed some of its gas creating what is known as the Crescent Nebula (NGC 6888):

That's WR 136 at center. It lies some 5,000 light years from Earth and when it explodes it will be bright enough to be seen in the daytime. Alas, we don't expect this to happen anytime soon.

Finally, here's perhaps my favorite nebula, Messier 8, the Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius:

Like M42 above, if you are observing in an area free from light pollution the Lagoon Nebula is just visible to the eye. Through a telescope its a grayish cloud associated with an open star cluster. 

There's a famous image of the Lagoon Nebula that was one of the first color images of space. It taken before I was born with the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory. You can see it on my old Palomar Skies blog from when I worked at the observatory.
 

The Age of Origin - Galaxies

It's no secret that I am a big fan of smart telescopes, so I was quite interested when Celestron introduced their new Origin smart telescope last year. I was able to get one in November and I thought I would use this post to show off some of the images that I have taken with it. This post will focus just on images of galaxies.

Most of the images here are less than an hour of observing time and have minimal post processing by me, showing off how impressive the Origin is at capturing the cosmos. 

One of my first targets was Messier 31, the Andromeda Galaxy. 

Two of its satellite galaxies are visible. M32 on the right and M110 in the upper left. 

The Origin has a wider field of view than the Unistellar telescopes that I have been using, but its not big enough to catch all of M31. Later this year I'll try a mosaic to try to capture the full view.

Also located within the constellation of Andromeda is the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 891. At a distance of 32 million light years its 14.5 times farther away than M31, so it looks somewhat lonely in space.

NGC 891 has a nice dust lane that cuts across it and may be somewhat similar to our own Milky Way galaxy.

NGC 253, the Sculptor Galaxy, is located 12 million light years away and is a nice target:

Located at about the same distance, but in different part of the sky is a great pair of galaxies Messier 82 and Messier 81 in Ursa Major.

That's M82 on the left. M82 is classified as a "starburst" galaxy due to a period of rapid star formation, which is likely the result gravitational interactions with M81 at right.

Two galaxies at once is nice, but how about three?

 Here are the three galaxies of the Leo Triplet.

That's NGC 3628 (the Hamburger Galaxy) at left, Messier 66 in the lower right and Messier 65 is above that. At a distance of 42 million light years M65 is the furthest of the three, while NGC 3628 is the closest with a distance of "only" 35 million light years.

Looking further out into space and you can take in many galaxies at once. Here's a portion of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies known as Markarian's Chain.

The view is dominated by two giant elliptical galaxies: Messier 84 near the top right and Messier 86 near the center. Respectively they are 66 and 57 million light years away. Numerous other galaxies of the Virgo Cluster can be seen as well.

I have yet to shoot even more distant galaxy clusters, so I'll end with two galaxies that just look good.

 

That's Messier 51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, at right. Its spiral arms spin out to the left to a smaller galaxy, NGC 5195. The two galaxies are interacting and located some 28 and 25 million light years away respectively. M51 was the first galaxy discovered to have a spiral shape is a beautiful target.

My next post will show off some of the nebulae I have photographed using the Celestron Origin. 

 

Exoplanets!

 I did a lot of citizen science observations during my sabbatical last fall. I was especially interested in trying to use my time to make observations of exoplanets.

My exoplanet observations were all made using the transit method. These planets are impossible to see directly but they can still be detected. As an orbiting exoplanet passes directly in front of (transits) across the face of its star it makes a mini-eclipse and blocks a small percentage of the star’s light. This can be measured even with small telescopes, making this technique the most successful method for studying exoplanets. A typical exoplanet observation lasts from four to five hours, though some are shorter, and others are longer.

Over the course of the semester, I attempted to observe sixteen exoplanet transits. Due a variety of factors (weather, equipment failure, etc.), not all of them were successful. All of my observations were made with a Unistellar eVscope2. A summary of my exoplanet observations is included below along with other findings about these exoplanets.

A note about exoplanet names. Most of them are terrible acronyms of the survey the first discovered the exoplanet, followed by a letter, which indicates the order of discovery within that particular system (starting with the letter b). As an example WASP stands for Wide Angle Search for Planets. WASP-33b refers to the first planet (b) within the 33^rd system discovered by that survey. Some exoplanet names are acronyms within acronyms. TOI is TESS Object of Interest. TESS is the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

XO-7b               Observed August 23/24, 2024 & October 5-6, 2024

A graph of the science results is generated for each exoplanet observation. The graph for one of my two observations of XO-7b is above. Note that the dates are given in Universal Time (essentially, the time in Greenwich, England) which is why these graphs don’t always agree with the local date.

XO-7b is a gas giant planet that orbits a spectral type F star that is larger and hotter than the Sun. It is located 764 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Draco, the Dragon. It is an example of a “hot Jupiter” type planet, as are the majority of exoplanets that can be observed with a small telescope. It is located very close to its parent star, at a distance that is just 4.421% of the distance Earth is from the Sun. It orbits its parent star every 2.9 Earth days! The planet is smaller than in mass (0.709 times Jupiter’s mass or 225 times Earth’s mass), but larger than Jupiter in size. Its larger size is because the tremendous heat that it receives from its star essentially inflates the planet giving it a radius that is almost 1.4 times that of Jupiter’s. The calculated temperature for the planet is 2,678^oF. 

TOI-1518b                     Observed August 27/28, 2024

Note: there were clouds at the end of the observation.

TOI-1518b is a gas giant planet that orbits a rapidly rotating F-type star, which is larger than the Sun (1.95 times the Sun’s radius) and 2,750^oF hotter than the Sun’s surface temperature. It is located 737 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Cepheus, the King. The planet has a mass 2.3 times that of Jupiter and a radius that is 1.9 times that of Jupiter. More massive gas planets tend to be smaller as the extra mass causes more compression from gravity. The fact that TOI-1518b is so large indicates that it is inflated due to the temperature caused by how close it is to its star. It orbits its star every 1.9 days in an orbit that is just 3.89% the size of the Earth-Sun distance. The planet is considered to be an ‘ultra-hot’ Jupiter. Its dayside temperature has been measured to be 5,367 ^oF! It is believed to have ionized iron vapor in its atmosphere.

TOI-1259 Ab                 Observed September 24/25, 2024

The TOI-1259 is a binary star system. The system is located 385 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Draco, the Dragon. TOI-1259 A is a spectral type K star that has a radius 71% of the Sun’s and is about 2,000^oF cooler than the Sun. The other star, TOI-1259 B, is a white dwarf. The white dwarf is a distant companion, being 1648 times farther from A than the distance between Earth and the Sun. White dwarfs are essentially dead stars. In this case TOI-1259 B would have begun as a star that was more massive than A (1.59 times the mass of the Sun) and burned through its hydrogen fuel at a faster rate. It now has a mass of 0.56 times the mass of the Sun. Astronomers have determined the age of the white dwarf, and thus the age of the system, which is thought to be 4.8 billion years (Our solar system is 4.6 billion years old.).

The exoplanet is named TOI-1259 Ab. It is a gas giant planet with a mass is 0.44 of Jupiter’s but it is slightly larger than Jupiter in size (1.02x Jupiter’s radius). It orbits star A every 3.5 days at a distance of 4.07% of the Earth-Sun distance.

Observations at Palomar and Keck suggest that the planet receives extreme heating on its dayside which is both causing some of its atmosphere to escape to space and also driving extreme winds that blow from the dayside to the night side of the planet. The equilibrium temperature of the planet is estimated to be 1,190 ^oF. 

WASP-33b                    Observed September 25/26, 2024

WASP-33b is a gas giant exoplanet 398 light years in the direction of the constellation of Andromeda. It orbits a variable star which is larger (1.5 times the Sun’s radius) and nearly 3,000^oF hotter than the Sun. It orbits the star every 1.2 Earth days (!) at a distance that is just 2.39% of the distance between the Earth and Sun. Unlike most planets, WASP-33b has a retrograde orbit, meaning that it does not revolve in the same direction that its star rotates. It has a mass that twice that of Jupiter and is about 1.9 Jupiters in radius. The temperature of the exoplanet is 5,790^oF. Researchers using the Hubble Space Telescope have detected titanium oxide, a major component of sunscreen, in the atmosphere of this planet. Iron and silicon have also been detected in its atmosphere.

WASP-2b                      Observed September 27, 2024

WASP-2b is a hot Jupiter-type gas giant planet that orbits a K-type star located 500 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Delphinus, the Dolphin. The planet’s host star has a mass that is 85% of the Sun’s, it is 82% of the Sun’s radius. It is 1,154^oF cooler than the Sun. The planet has an orbital period of 2.2 Earth days at a distance that is just 3.1% of the distance between the Earth and Sun. Its mass is 93.1% of Jupiter’s and it is slightly larger than Jupiter in size. The planet has a density similar to that of water. The temperature of the exoplanet is 1,855^oF. Spectroscopic observations suggest that it has a cloudy atmosphere. 

WASP-93b                    Observed September 28/29, 2024

WASP-93b is a hot Jupiter-type gas giant planet that orbits an F-type star located 1,208 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Cassiopeia, the Queen. This star is both larger and hotter than the Sun.

The planet has an orbital period of 2.7 Earth days and orbits at a distance that is just 4.2% of the Earth-Sun distance. It has 1.47 times Jupiter’s mass and is 1.7 times Jupiter’s radius.  The planet’s equilibrium temperature is estimated to be 3,000^oF.

HAT-P-32b                    Observed October 4/5, 2024

HAT-P-32b is a gas giant planet that orbits a type F star located 943 lights from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Andromeda, the Princess. The planet has a mass that is just 68% that of Jupiter. It orbits its star at a distance that is just 3.3% of Earth’s distance from the Sun. Its close distance to its star has inflated the size of the planet making it nearly twice Jupiter’s radius. This in turn means that the planet has a low density. All of the “hot Jupiters” observed so far have densities lower than water’s 1 g/cm³, meaning that they are made of light materials (in our Solar System only Saturn, which has a density of 0.69 g/cm³ has density lower than water). HAT-P-32b has a density of just 0.1085 g/cm³  this is low enough to almost put it into the category of “super-puff” (yes, that’s a real thing) exoplanets, which have densities less than 0.1 g/cm³.

TIC 362220946.01     Observed October 10/11, 2024

TIC 362220946.01 is a possible exoplanet that was first observed by NASA’s TESS satellite. It was thought that this planet has an orbital period of 8 days and a mass that is 23 times that of Jupiter. I was one of nine observers from the U.S. and Mexico who looked this system in an attempt to confirm its existence and the possible orbital period of the planet. The results were inconclusive but there are suggestions that this could perhaps be a binary star system instead of a planetary system. Further observations may help to solve this puzzle.

WASP-77 Ab                Observed October 24/25, 2024

WASP-77 Ab is another “hot Jupiter” type gas giant planet. It is located 343 light years from Earth and orbits a Sun-like star in the constellation of Cetus, the Whale. The star is part of a wide binary system, where the other star is a spectral type K star that is smaller and cooler than the Sun.  has a mass 1.67 times that of Jupiter and is 1.23 times Jupiter’s radius. It orbits its star every 1.4 Earth days at a distance of 2.3% that of the Earth-Sun distance. The planet has a calculated temperature of just over 2,600^oF.

TOI 6881.01                 Observed October 31, 2024

The exoplanet known as TOI 6881.01 orbits a star that is 2,559 light years from Earth in the direction of the constellation of Perseus, the Hero. Its star is larger, hotter and more massive than the Sun. The planet orbits its star every 1.9769 days. The planet has a calculated equilibrium temperature of almost 3,100^oF. The planet has a mass that is essentially the same a Jupiter’s and a radius 1.44 times that of Jupiter, making it another “hot Jupiter” gas planet that has expanded from the extreme heat from being right next to its star.

TOI-5571.01                 Observed December 4, 2024 & December 18, 2024

TOI-5571.01 was initially detected by NASA’s TESS satellite, but its observations were widely spaced in time and so the orbital elements of this exoplanet were highly uncertain. Early observations suggested that the exoplanet could have an orbital period of 731 days (2 years) but was more likely to be something shorter. My observation was part of a campaign by Unistellar to help pin down the exact orbital period of the planet. My observations the night of December 4 (my birthday!) did seem to catch the exoplanet transiting in front of its star (though it was low in the sky), which may indicate that the planet’s orbital period is potentially 66 days, but further observations are needed. 

The Sun and the Moon in Motion and Jupiter too!

 This fall I have been on a sabbatical from my teaching and focusing on lots and lots of backyard astronomy. 

One of my early observing goals was to capture the Sun every day for an extended period to show its rotation. I was able to image it every day for 17 consecutive days - from August 20th through September 5th. I then aligned the images to produce this animation showing the Sun's rotation:

Another interesting way to look at this is to add the images together, which produces this:

This nicely shows that sunspots occur in parallel stripes on either side of the Sun's equator.

I have also been able to shoot the Moon on consecutive nights to show its changing phases and the effect of lunar libration (a kind of tilting and rocking). Here's how the Moon looked from October 7th through the 15th, as it went from a waxing crescent to nearly full:

You should be able to see that the Moon looks to be somewhat growing in size - not just the amount illuminated by the Sun, but larger. This is because the Moon's orbit is not a perfect circle and over the nights I shot these the Moon was moving towards Earth.

And then after a few nights of clouds I was able to capture the Moon again from October 18th through the 27th, showing it moving through its waning phases:

Again, I think you can also see here that the Moon appears to be getting smaller. That was because it was moving away from Earth in its orbit.

I don't usually have the opportunity to stay up late (or get up early) enough to shoot the waning phases, so this was a treat.

I had another stretch of clear nights again in November and I was able to capture the Moon from November 6th through the 14th as it moved from a waxing crescent to full.

Finally, here's Jupiter and its moon Europa as they looked the night of December 14th.

This is about an hour and 20 minutes of motion showing Jupiter's Great Red Spot rotating out of view to the right, along with other cloud features in Jupiter's atmosphere. Europa is the spot of light to the left of Jupiter.

April 8th's 'Smart' Total Solar Eclipse

This post comes about three months later than it should but, as they say, better late than never. I had an amazing trip to Hamilton, Texas to witness the total solar eclipse. I did my best to both capture the eclipse and to travel light. The photo is me with my Unistellar Odyssey Pro telescope and a DSLR camera at left.

 

 

The Odyssey Pro is Unistellar's newest 'smart' telescope. It's a small lightweight telescope, with a primary mirror just  3 1/3", but it takes super images. Last fall Unistellar improved their software to make solar observing much better but this was going to be the first time anyone had tried using a 'smart' telescope for observing a total solar eclipse. So how did it do? 

All-in-all, it did pretty well. 

Thankfully, during the first half of the eclipse the weather was mostly cloudless. The telescope had no trouble finding, focusing (it has auto focus) and tracking on the Sun. But as the eclipse progressed and the Sun began to take on more of a crescent appearance the tracking wasn't very good and I had to manually correct the tracking to keep the Sun in view. 

My biggest concern was totality. How would the telescope and its software handle seeing the Sun when the Sun didn't look like it normally does? Would the exposures be okay? Color was a big concern too. As I have mentioned before the color that the Unistellar telescopes and app give when imaging the Sun is artificial. The telescope's sensor sees farther into the infrared than our eyes do and that adds extra red to the image making the uncorrected image look sort of lavender in color. The app changes the color pallet to give the Sun a more pleasing yellow color. How would it look during totality?

Yellow. Very yellow.

Thankfully, this yellow color cast was easy to correct in Photoshop and I was able to get images like the two below. 

Visually, the eclipse was amazing. Ethereal, even. The large red prominence seen at the bottom of the image above was very easy to see with unaided eyes and the corona was fantastic. 

There was no way for the Odyssey telescope to capture much of the Sun's corona as its field-of-view is far too small. That's why I brought my DSLR. 

I have now seen two total solar eclipses and I don't really feel that any image can adequately capture the beauty of the corona, but I am happy with this image.

After totality, I was so euphoric that it was difficult to remember to keep taking images of the Sun to complete the time-lapse sequence I was shooting, but then the clouds rolled in and it no longer mattered. Still, I was happy to get the entire first half of the eclipse plus totality and that's all that mattered. 

I would rate the experience as a total success. Using a 'smart' telescope allowed me to travel with far less gear than most people who photographed the eclipse and I am happy with my results. The next total tolar eclipse isn't until 2026 and I am sure that by then the technology will be even better.

Disco Sunspots!

 Back in October I posted about using a disco ball to observe a solar eclipse. It turns out that you can also use a disco ball to safely observe sunspots too. Here's how I did so earlier today.

Really all you need is a disco ball, a place to secure it in the sunlight and a shadowed area to project the image of the Sun. Here I have my disco ball sitting on a tripod for a Unistellar telescope. I aligned the disco ball so that it reflected an image of the Sun into my house and nearly 70 feet down a dark hallway on to a sheet of white paper. Here's the result:

It's not a great image, but you should notice a definite gray smudge-like area on the projected image of the Sun. That's a big sunspot that is visible on the Sun today. I also imaged the Sun with a Unistellar Odyssey Pro telescope and solar filter. I got this image which I rotated to match the orientation of the projected image above.

As you can see, that's the same sunspot group in both images. This is another confirmation that a disco ball is an excellent tool for safely observing the Sun.