Sunset and Venus

Another clear night - the Moon really was getting in the way though. More galaxy imaging and first light on a Canon 40D with filter removed using a standard lens. Venus was apparent at sunset.

Happy New Year

Arrived in Spain yesterday afternoon to blue skies and sunshine and set up for a Galaxy imaging run. I obtained sky flats and managed to get over 320 X  30 second galaxy images after checking alignment and setting up a new T-Point  model. I also had a problem with images suddenly becoming GIFs instead of FITS! I had to check the Software Bisque support groups to identify that a setting had mysteriously reset itself to cause the problem. Why it did that suddenly I have no idea - it had never happened in all the years I had been using CCDSoft! . I stopped imaging in the early hours of today when I realised that I had been up for over 20 hours  -  having flown from Manchester to Murcia and then driving the 110 km or so to Cabrera. 

Today's job is to blink these with library images in Grepnova to see if I can find any new supernova in these images.

Six of the 320 images taken last night

Black Redstart

Images from Sierra Cabrera

Above and below - a Black Redstart (Redstart means Red Tail)

  

Galaxy Selection

I have started a new library of reference images based on their recession velocity and thus distance. Galaxies that are too far away will have supernovae that are too faint to image in 30 second exposures. Using a maximum recession velocity of  13000km/s and a Major Axis of at least 2 minutes of arc I have compiled an initial list of galaxies( that I call group A ) which works out at 1666 galaxies. I have ordered the list by increasing Right Ascension and have manually produced a text file (after much fiddling with Excel) and imported this into Orchestrate. This means that I can start an imaging session at any RA value depending on the Local Sidereal Time and the RA range visible. I am in the process of generating other lists based on the same and smaller Major Axis Values(MA). One advantage of Orchestrate is that it is possible to cut out chunks corresponding - for example - to a particular hour of RA for MA > 2 minutes - and combine this with - for example- the same hour of RA and a smaller MA - or other combination if required. The source catalogue for the data is the 3rd Reference Catalogue of Bright Galaxies by De Vaucouleurs otherwise known as RC3 so I started with a list of 23000 galaxies from which I am generating my imaging session scripts. I had initially hoped to do this using the Sky6 Data Wizard but that could only be used with databases already in the Sky6 catalogues. Self generated Sky Databases could be produced but they did not work with Data Wizard so I could not filter galaxies by recession velocity. SkyX evidently will do this and I note that an earlier (RC2) catalogue is included (less galaxies). I recently purchased SkyX but am struggling to work out how to use the renamed Data Wizard for my purpose. Thus the manual production and filtering of RC3 for Orchestrate.

Galaxy Imaging

Now that I have resolved the issues with the Paramount and the C14 I can run automated galaxy imaging sessions and last night managed to image 227 galaxies as part of the supernova search programme. The Moon started to seriously get in the way about 1 am local time so I gave up. To build up my new galaxy library I am tempted to let the telescope run all night and go to bed one moonless night but it is always a risky strategy! It is certainly quite a bonus not to have a dome to rotate!

This is one of the galaxies imaged  - PGC 9795

Over the past 2 weeks I have imaged almost 1000 galaxies and will start another cycle of the same galaxies to see if any supernovae have occurred as well as starting a new cycle to increase the size of the galaxy library.

Galaxy PGC 10052 was also imaged.

 This Barred Galay is PGC 2901

22nd November 2011 - Weather improving?

The telescope is still unused but the sun is shining at the moment - time for a coffee in the garden - I am keeping the raincoat on the telescope at the moment.

Spain 2011 to 2012

I arrived in Spain at Cabrera at about 9pm on Tuesday evening after a very long journey down from Bilbao following a 2 night boat journey from Portsmouth via the Bay of Biscay.(15th November 2011). The sky was clear and Jupiter was shining like a beacon in the dark sky.

The next day was clear and I was able to start unloading my truck to get ready to set up the telescope.

The optimum site for positioning the telescope was by the swimming pool - a convenient spot at top left.

The following images show some of the sky from that position

 The telescope was eventually set up in that position - as it has been raining in buckets since Thursday it is still not polar aligned. This is it undergoing slew testing from my "control room " in the house. This is a convenient corner with two windows allowing me to monitor the telescope and some of the sky! It is controlled by 20 metres of active USB cable with a splitter at the telescope end that connects to telescope control, the SBIG ST9XE Camera (not yet connected) and the TCF focuser. I use the TCF software for focusing as I have been unable to get CCDSoft to accept the connection as yet. I am hoping for a clear night tonight - the latest satellite image below (1400 hrs UT 21st Nov11) does show some gaps but it is by no means certain that I will be able to align the telescope and mount!!

I had a loud welcome from 6 Red Legged Partidges today at the back of the house - one shown below.

Off to Spain!

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I am planning to spend much of the winter in Spain again. I will be returning to Sierra Cabrera in Almeria once more but will be in an improved location in the village of Cabrera. Although last year's site was pretty good it had a limited view to the south. This year's location gives much better southern views which looks away from the nearby village of Turre and has much darker skies. The terrace shown below (images courtesy of Santiburi Properties)will be the location of the telescope.

The image below shows one obstruction - Eagle Rock which used to be the nesting spot for the Bonelli Eagles which can still be seen regularly around the Cabrera skies. The skies surrounding this however are open and dark - with regular clear weather all winter.

Otters at Martin Mere

Here are some images of the otters at Martin Mere that I took earlier in the year.

Beaver Webcam at Martin Mere

It is fascinating to watch the Beavers at work during the hours of darkness at Martin Mere. Go to this link to see them in action through the night vision cameras.