A Dark Sky Comparison

I was recently in the Mayhill area of New Mexico and really enjoyed the dark skies there. The stars and winter Milky Way were just fantastic. While I knew it's much darker in NM than at my home in Melbourne, I thought I'd take dark sky comparison photos to see the difference.

My new Canon PowerShot S95 camera has their high performance low light HS System that would be great for this type of picture. I set the camera to full manual mode: ISO 3200, f/2.0 and 15 seconds. Using a photo tripod I took a series of images around
the horizon. To the eye, the horizon was completely black. But the camera revealed this low broad light dome from nearby Cloudcroft. But the sky darkens quickly up from the horizon. Also note part of the Milky Way is easily visible rising from the
horizon on the right side of the picture.



Returning to Melbourne I took a similar image from my back yard using the same camera and same settings. I shot the photo to the west, which is my darkest part of the sky. I live on the north side of MLB and it really doesn't seem too bad for this area. This is where I do all my astro imaging and I've taken some nice pictures from here. But this photo shows how not dark it really is! In fact, if it weren't for Orion in the sky, I'd think this was a daytime photo!



It's not surprising then that my better astro photos are the stacked images taken with really long total exposure times. Stacking many images reduces the noise to the low levels needed to pull details out from the very edge of our skyglow.

Rick Young
Feb 28, 2011

Newest Toy

I used these 15x70,s to find Comet McNaught last week,

(p.s. ~ the new banner looks GREAT!!!)

MAS Banner Arrives

The new MAS Banner was delivered to the club by Peter during the May meeting. The picture shows Peter and Phil holding our large banner during its presentation. The attractive banner is printed on both sides and is made with a heavy duty vinyl material that should hold up well in use. In addition to the dual MAS logos, the banner also includes SAS, FIT and BAS logos along the bottom. Thanks to Peter for getting the banner made for us!

Delta 4 Slices the Night Sky

Space Coast living has a unique benfit: we get to watch missile launches. They are always different and always impressive. Even though we're 20 miles south of Cape Canaveral we got a great view of the Delta 4 night launch on Dec-05. A great rumble really topped it off. The Delta 4 vehicle carried a WGS 3 satellite to geosynchronous orbit.

For this picture I attached a Canon 40D DSLR to my table top camera tracking mount to keep the stars from trailing during the long exposures. The missile trail was captured with a 4 minute exposure. ImagesPlus was used for most of the image processing. The constellation lines were added with Photoshop to make it easier to see the apparent path of the missile through the sky.

Milky Way Star Clouds

A few weeks ago my wife and I were visiting family in rural Iowa. The population is pretty thin in this farming area so they have fairly dark skies. I was fortunate to have a couple of clear nights and took this picture on that second night. The picture is looking across a hayfield to the south with the Milky Way arcing up into the sky. Sagittarius is near the horizon, with stars of Scutum, Aquila, Sagitta, Serpens and Ophiuchus visible. Many Messier objects are also visible.

This image is a stack of 25 one minute exposures taken with a Canon 40D. I used a Canon 17-85 EF-S zoom lens set to the 17mm position (28mm equivalent). That gave me a very wide field of view. Star tracking was done with a small unguided tabletop GEM with a battery powered RA drive motor attached. I carried all this equipment with me on the airplane. It kept the TSA inspectors busy. Processing was done with ImagesPlus and Photoshop.

"IT'S OFFICIAL !!!" Here's our New Club Logo ...

Show and wear it proudly!

M33 Pinwheel Galaxy

M33 is commonly called the Pinwheel Galaxy in Triangulum. The reason is obvious! It’s 2.5 million light year distance is actually pretty close for a galaxy and it’s quite large in the sky. Unfortunately, even though it’s larger than a full moon, it’s difficult to view due to its very low surface brightness. Viewed with a C8 from my house it’s barely visible. If you’re in fairly dark skies give it a try though. It’s nearly overhead in the early AM right now but it’s moving to the late evening skies quickly.

For this image I combined 34 subs of 2-minutes each for a total exposure time of 68 minutes. I used a Canon 40D DSLR with the Televue NP101is 4” refractor. Guiding was done with an M8C CCD camera through an ETX-90. Image capture and most of the processing was done with ImagesPlus with a little help from Photoshop.

M27 Dumbbell Nebula

This is a picture I took of planetary nebula M27, the Dumbell Nebula, a few hours after the night-time launch of Discovery. The cloulds blew away after the launch to provide me with a very clear sky. I really enjoy the color and symmetry of planetaries. The image is a stack of fourteen 2-minute subs for a total exposure of 28 minutes. It was taken with an unmodified Canon 40D DSLR through a Televue NP101is refractor. Guiding was done with a Starlight Xpress M8C through an ETX90.

Banner Design

I want to combine some of the features of Ron's entry with some right-sized lettering to make the banner. After all, the logo won't stand alone, unless we are making T-shirts (not a bad idea). Here's a rough draft of a banner format:

...Phil

Sept 4th Apollo Moon Party

Save the date, Friday Sept 4th 2009! For a special Apollo Landing Site Moon Party immediately following the NEW Space and Astronomy Public Lecture Series hosted by Dr. Fiorella Terenzi.

http://www.brevardcc.edu/astrolectures

What: Apollo Landing Site Moon Party (full moon)
Who: BAS/MAS/SAS
Set-up Time: 7:00pm
Moon Party: 8:30-10:30
Location: BCC Cocoa Planetarium & Observatory
Refreshments will be served

Lecture Info:
Sept. 4 '09 "Moon, Mars, and the Stars: The Constellation Program and the Future of Space Exploration". Panelists: Robert D. Cabana, NASA KSC Director and Astronaut; Russell Romanella, Director, International Space and Spacecraft Processing Directorate, NASA KSC; Jon Cowart, Manager Exploration Systems, NASA KSC.