Category Archives: Astronomy

Irish for a Day

We’ve come through one of the coldest, wettest winters in memory here in Arizona. Donna’s vegetable garden seemed almost dormant at times as the vegetables endured cold nights. Things finally took off near the end of February and she harvested earlier this month.

Snow on the Superstition Mountains, March 2nd

She replanted for her second crop, which we expect will grow much faster as we are enjoying warmer weather and longer days.

Donna’s second planting in her raised vegetable garden bed

She relocated the worm bin when she replanted. The worms are thriving and continue to multiply. The same goes for my second worm colony.

The highlight of the year came on Wednesday, March 15th, when my youngest daughter, Shauna and her husband Gabe came to visit from Bermuda. Of course they had our youngest granddaughter Petra in tow. We picked them up at the airport and they visited while we had snacks and a drink. We met our granddaughter for the first time. We hadn’t visited Bermuda since the COVID lockdown.

Later, I dropped them off at a nearby AirBnb. On Thursday morning, I picked them up again and we drove to west Mesa where Shauna had rented a car through Turo. She picked up a new VW Taos compact SUV. She said the car felt big to her – Bermuda doesn’t have many (any?) full-size cars. Everything is sub-compact there. It’s an island after all with narrow roads.

We came back to Viewpoint and gave them a tour of the grounds. We finished the tour at Fat Willy’s where we enjoyed lunch on the patio. Lucky for us, we claimed a table next to a propane heater – it was a bit chilly with the breeze. I mentioned the unusually cool weather – when they arrived on Wednesday, it was raining and we had a high of just 65 degrees. Thursday was only slightly warmer with a high of 69 degrees.

Donna, Petra and me by the golf course behind Fat Willy’s

Thursday afternoon, they headed west to visit with Shauna’s mother and stepfather in Wickenburg. My oldest daughter Alana and her husband Kevin were already there. They flew down from Washington to meet up with Shauna and Gabe.

Alana and Kevin will come here this afternoon and we’re planning to go out for sushi tonight. Shauna and family will come back to Scottsdale on Monday. They’re meeting friends and will attend a spring training MLB game Monday night. Donna and I will babysit Petra while they’re at the game.

I need to shift gears now and discuss my latest passion – astronomy and, more specifically, astrophotography. When the astronomy bug bit, I spent the first month or so looking at the moon and planets visually through my telescope. Then I decided I wanted to capture the images, not just gaze through an eyepiece. I started with the easiest target – the moon. Then I spent about three months working on Jupiter and Saturn.

Once I had the planetary imaging techniques figured out, I wanted to try my hand at deep sky objects (DSO). I don’t mean to imply that I mastered planetary imaging – far from it. But here’s the thing. Astronomy has seasons – who knew? We are past the optimum time for imaging planets now. The moon is available year ’round except for about a week or so out of every four weeks when it crosses the sky during daylight hours.

The winter is the time of year when nebula imaging hits its stride. Nebulae generally are invisible to the naked eye, but if you know where to point your telescope, they can be found and images can be recorded. The difficulty arises from the distance involved and the dim light they produce.

Our eyes see in real time – that is, whatever photons strike the rods and cones in our eyes are immediately transferred to our brain. A sensor in a digital camera can be used that way or it can be exposed to a particular light source for a longer time and accumulate the light photons, gradually making the resultant image brighter up to a point. It gets tricky when we are talking about deep sky objects that have a wide spectrum of colors and brightness.

Keeping the camera sensor on point for long periods of time requires accurate tracking. The earth is in constant motion. As it rotates, the celestial bodies appear to move across the sky. Modern astrophotography utilizes powerful software and carefully designed telescope mounts to track the object we want to capture.

There’s also the fact that the earth revolves around the sun. Remember, I said astronomy has seasons? That’s why. As the earth reaches different points in the elliptical path around the sun, different parts of our solar system and the universe are in view. The second quarter of the year is known as galaxy season. The earth reaches a point where most of the Milky Way is no longer visible in the night sky, opening up paths to distant galaxies. The summer is planet season. Then we return to nebula time.

Astrophotography, especially DSO astrophotography, is a very difficult hobby. It’s probably one of the most challenging hobbies I’ve encountered. Having said that, I love it. I’m learning so much. There are so many decisions regarding gear, software and which objects to target. There are no absolutes – that is, there’s more than one way to approach the hobby. An inexperienced amateur astronomer will require a few years to really grasp what they need and what works best for them.

My gear is evolving and I found that I need different software for DSO than what I needed for planetary imaging. Like I said, there’s much to learn. I’ve taken up the DSO challenge and I’ve captured a few objects. My first was late in January when I shot an image of the Andromeda Galaxy. In hindsight, it was a marginal effort. I then went after the Pleiades star cluster. I made some improvements there after a few attempts.

At the end of February I tried to capture the Orion Nebula and was moderately successful.

Orion Nebula

This led me to the Horsehead Nebula.

Horsehead Nebula

My final version of the Horsehead came from two sessions. First on March 3rd, I captured 46 sub-exposures of 120 seconds each from our backyard here at Viewpoint. Then, on March 12th, I captured another 44 subs of of 90 seconds each from darker skies at the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint. I learned how to combine the data collected from the two sessions in AstroPixelProcessor and the result is the image above.

My latest attempt came from our backyard and it’s the Rosette Nebula.

Rosette Nebula

The Rosette Nebula is 5,200 light years away from earth. It’s in the constellation Orion as are the Horsehead and of course the Orion Nebula.

I’ve arranged an outreach event next week for our astronomy club, East Valley Astronomy Club, here at Viewpoint. Members of the club will show up on Wednesday evening and I’ve secured permission to set up on the ball field at the north end of the Viewpoint complex. We’re inviting people to come out and look at the sky through our telescopes.

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day. Of course, everyone in the park was Irish for a day. I cleaned up Midget-San – it’s amazing how much dust finds its way under the car cover. I’ve had its battery on a float charger and the gas in the tank was stabilized, so I was confident about it running after spending many months stored on jack stands.

It fired up without any issues! We joined the St. Patrick’s Day parade in it. Donna threw candy to the people lining the streets of Viewpoint and made sure she found kids to toss the candy to. It was fun.

Lining up for the parade
Donna talking with a neighbor, getting ready to join the parade in Midget-San

There was a car show after the parade. I didn’t enter Midget-San because I didn’t want to commit to hanging around all day. I’ve done the car show thing with my old Corvettes in the past and I’m not up to entering anymore. But I like to look around!

Last night, our friends Chuck and Sue Lines came over and joined us for happy hour and dinner. Donna made her usual traditional St. Patrick’s Day dinner of corned beef, cabbage and carrots, champ potatoes and Irish soda bread. And Sue brought a grasshopper pie she made. We had a great time – good food and conversation with good friends. It doesn’t get any better.

As always, Donna keeps fresh cooked, nutritious, delicious meals on our dinner table. Here are few examples from the last couple of weeks. I’ll start with a batch of grilled chicken with tomatoes and corn.

Grilled chicken with tomatoes and corn

For another meal, she prepared braised chicken thighs and peppers over creamy polenta.

Braised chick thighs and peppers over creamy polenta

The next dish was very tasty. It’s garlic butter flank steak pan fried with baby potatoes and fresh herbs. Yummy!

Flank steak with baby potatoes and broccoli on the side

The weather has been much better in the last week, but it looks like we might have a wet, cold snap for a couple of days next week. I hope Wednesday is fair for the event with the astronomy club.

Backyard Bounty

I wrote about buying a new telescope mount in my last post. I ordered a Losmandy GM811G mount from Losmandy in Burbank, California. I wanted this mount for a number of reasons. It’s a proven, reliable design. It’s made in the USA. It’s made from machined aluminum, brass and stainless steel with a minimum of plastic parts. Replacement parts are readily available and support from Losmandy is great. And, unlike the Asian products, it’s been refined over the last 30 years. The Asian gear is obsolete after a few years as they constantly introduce new models on a regular basis.

Having to justify the expense of this equipment to myself, I did a lot of background research on the company and found some interesting stories there. When we were full-time RVers, I always enjoyed meeting people around the country and especially enjoyed success stories from self-employed people that pulled themselves up with hard work and ingenuity. Scott Losmandy falls into that category.

Scott owns and operates a machine shop called Hollywood General Machining (HGM). Under the HGM banner, he has a company called Porta-Jib. Porta-Jib caters to cinematographers and Hollywood movie production companies. Scott designed a track system that is portable and Porta-Jib builds an assortment of carriages that ride on these rails. The carriages are used to smoothly transport movie cameras through the set to film a scene. Some carriages are built to allow the director to be seated or stand while the carriage is raised to different heights so the director can survey the set or the scene being played. Some have articulating arms that can extend or retract cameras to suit the scene. The company is successful and well-known in Hollywood.

Meanwhile, Scott is also an avid amateur astronomer. He was disatisfied with the quality and cost of commercially available telescope mounts. In the late 70s or early 80s, he designed and built one for himself. It wasn’t long before members of his astronomy club wanted to know if he would build one for them. This led to a contract with the Celestron Corporation for Scott to supply them with mounts which they marketed and distributed. He formed the Losmandy Astronomical Products company under HGM. He invented a mounting plate that was sturdier and more rigid than the existing products and he made it universal to fit a large number of telescopes on the market. Today, many companies offer that design and it’s called a Losmandy dovetail plate.

In the 1990s, Scott’s new company broke away from Celestron and he began marketing and distributing the mounts himself. He also has a retail store, most of his sales are online nowadays. He is hands-on and adjusts each mount himself before shipping. Between Porta-Jib and Losmandy Astronomical, Hollywood General Machining is kept busy making parts.

The covid era caused quite a disruption in many manufacturing sectors. Hollywood shut down and movie production stopped. This meant Porta-Jib saw orders fall to almost nothing. Meanwhile, people stuck at home entered hobbies in unprecedented numbers – including astronomy. Losmandy Astronomical Products sales soared to the point of having up to a six-month backlog of orders to fill. By catering to two separate client bases, HGM was able to not only stay afloat, but thrive. Porta-Jib is picking up steam once again and Losmandy has whittled down the lead time for telescope mounts to about four to six weeks. I’m hoping to get a call by the end of next week telling me my mount is shipping.

I’m continuing my astronomical education – I devote hours every day to study. I started with our solar system and planetary/lunar observation, then astrophotography. Then I started learning the constellations and objects in our galaxy (The Milky Way). I’ve even reached out to distant galaxies. The techniques, equipment and software for photographing our solar system versus deep space objects are completely different and require new skillsets. Donna keeps saying that I’ve put in enough hours over the last six months to earn an Associate’s Degree in astrophotography!

We’ve had a pretty miserable winter by Arizona standards with extended cold, wet periods and only short breaks with clear skies and pleasant temperatures. This puts a damper on my astrophotography opportunities, so when they arise I tend to take advantage. Guys up north don’t have much sympathy for us desert dwellers when we complain of cold nights with temperatures dropping to 40 degrees. But to me, these temps feel very cold and I’m freezing when I have to spend hours trying to capture an image of a celestial body.

Cloudy skies can make a spectacular sunset

This week I decided to try my hand at capturing a nebula. Nebulae are fascinating to me and can be very challenging to image. There are five types of nebulae – emission nebulae, reflection nebulae, dark nebulae, planetary nebulae and supernova remnants. The first three listed all have irregular shapes. The planetary and supernova remnants are usually spherical. Planetary nebulae don’t have anything to do with planets – it’s a reference to their shape.

A nebula is mostly made of gases. The predominant gas is hydrogen alpha (Ha) followed by Oxygen III (OIII). Then there are other gases like sulphur and so on. They usually contain a certain amount of space dust as well. The Ha component appears red while the OIII appears blue. Dust can be brownish to almost black – dark nebulae are mostly dust that’s so thick light doesn’t pass through.

Nebulae can be the birthplace of stars. The gases combine into helium and other compounds creating mass. The mass creates a gravitational pull and over a period of millions of years can compress into a star. Supernova remnants are remnants of a dying star. In the final phase of a star’s lifetime, it turns into a red giant or a red dwarf before finally exploding, scattering matter in a swirling ball.

I went for the Orion Nebula (M42) in the constellation Orion. It’s located just below the three stars making up Orion’s belt, in the center of the stars forming Orion’s sword. In dark skies, people with good eyesight can see this nebula as a dim smudge. Most people would mistake it for a dim star. M42 is a considered a good beginner’s target because it’s easy to locate, relatively bright and fairly large. It’s over 1300 light years away from Earth and about 24 light years wide. It’s estimated to be three million years old.

To capture this image, I ran a series of 105-second exposures. I made 50 exposures and kept 49 – I had to discard one because an airplane or satellite crossed in front of my telescope leaving a white streak of light. It took about two and half hours to capture about 86 minutes of data. Processing the data into an image took me several more hours. It’s not the best image of the Orion nebula I’ve seen, but for a beginner’s first attempt, I think it’s more than good enough.

Orion Nebula – Messier catalog number M42

This was taken behind our house with much light pollution and a bright moon. I used a narrow duo-band filter to block unwanted light while allowing Ha and OIII bandwidths to pass. The telescope was my WIlliam Optic Z73 with a ZWO ASI533MC Pro camera.

Donna has almost completely harvested her first growth from the raised vegetable garden bed. She harvested collard greens, broccoli and tomatoes and is ready for round two – more tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, green beans, lettuce, spinach and herbs. She’s also staying busy with tennis and golf and has really upped her tennis game. Later this month, she’ll be rated by the tennis club. The rating process is important – it will determine which league she’s qualified for and what groups she plays with. I’m still coaching my pickleball clinic on Thursdays and playing two or three days a week – weather permitting.

For Valentine’s Day, I bought Donna a special treat – a box of chocolate covered strawberries! She tries to avoid too many sweets, but who can resist chocolate covered strawberries?

Donna hasn’t let up on her culinary skills. She made a couple of new dishes that were home runs in February. First up is a Japanese curry chicken. This took me back to my childhood – my mom made this dish and it was always a favorite.

Japanese curry chicken

Then there was an excellent grilled shrimp and sides of garlicky collard greens and cheesy grits.

Another chicken favorite was this chicken marsala plate.

Chicken marsala with broccoli and fresh bread

Another excellent shrimp dish was this one – it’s called citrus skillet shrimp seasoned with fresh orange from our tree, shallots and jalapenos served with broccoli from our garden. Lots of homegrown bounty.

Citrus skillet shrimp

One more dish – grilled fennel-crusted rack of lamb served with grilled baby bok choy and sweet potato mash.

Fennel crusted rack of lamb

We’re expecting rain this afternoon with a high of only 57 degrees. The rain will continue overnight and into Thursday morning with the cool temperatures hanging around through Friday. By Sunday the forecast calls for 70 degrees. Yay!

Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint – Revisited

My last post neglected to mention Donna’s performance with the Viewpoint Concert Band. They had their January concert – the second of the season. The February concert will happen next Saturday afternoon. Donna is no longer the “new girl” on clarinet. There are a couple of musicians behind her now in the clarinet section. She’s also a board member for the band.

Donna’s raised garden bed is producing some fine veggies for us. Some of the broccoli bolted, but we’ll be able to harvest plenty. We have lots of fresh, yummy tomatoes. She’s thinking about her next round of plants now. The worm bins are thriving and I’m ready to start harvesting worm castings.

Tomatoes ripening

My astrophotography efforts are really improving at a rapid rate. Donna figures I spend about 50 hours per week studying – that might be an over-estimation, but there’s much to learn. I’ve made a few more trips up to the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint to set up in darker skies. Light pollution puts a real damper on astrophotography efforts. It’s not impossible to capture good images from the city, but it’s a lot harder.

I took advantage of the darker skies at the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint. It’s less than half an hour away from home, but it’s much darker. There is a scale for rating light pollution called the Bortle scale. It’s numbered from one to nine. Nine would be looking up from the center of a large metropolis with tons of artificial light. A Bortle one area would be absolute wilderness with no artificial light. Our home at Viewpoint is a Bortle seven area, while Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint is a Bortle five. I captured the Andromeda Galaxy again and made a big improvement over my first backyard attempt.

Andromeda Galaxy

Andromeda is is the nearest galaxy to our Milky Way and is about 2.5 million light years away. It’s size is a mind-boggling 220,000 light years in diameter and it’s made up of an estimated trillion stars. The larger, brighter stars in the photo are from our galaxy and are much closer than Andromeda, whose stars appear as dust.

Donna accompanied me on my next trip to the viewpoint. She enjoyed a short hike toward the Needle while I was setting up, before it got dark. After dark the temperature dropped and she was too cold to stay outdoors, even with a blanket. She retreated to the Jeep and read her Kindle. Meanwhile, another astronomer showed up – his name is Marty. We compared notes and went about our business. I targeted the Pleiades star cluster (Seven Sisters or M45).

The first time I tried to capture Pleiades, I was pretty much clueless and approached it like I was imaging a planet. It was a failure.

Failed attempt at Pleiades – no color or nebulosity present

I’ve learned much and upgraded my equipment – both hardware and software. Deep sky objects cannot be captured with the same techniques used for planets. DSO requires accurate guiding to stay precisely on target during long exposures. My guiding software showed more error than I liked on the declination axis. I researched and learned how to tighten up the backlash in the geartrain and I made it better. I think the factory errs on the side of looseness to prevent any chance of binding.

ShyWatcher HEQ5 gearsets

Last Wednesday, I took another try at Pleiades and made a huge improvement.

Pleiades with nebulosity

You might find the term nebulosity unfamiliar. It’s derived from nebula (nebulae is plural). It’s an astronomy term for areas of space that emit or reflect light. They can be made up of gases, dust particles, ice crystals or any combination of these. They are precursers to star formation. Pleiades is about 440 light years away from earth.

In my last post, I mentioned the telescope mount is the most important piece of equipment – it’s more critical than even the telescope used. A poorly made or overloaded mount is a disaster that only leads to frustration and heartache. I learned this the hard way with my first gear purchase. Then I upgraded to a SkyWatcher HEQ5 German Equatorial Mount (GEM). I’ve been capturing deep sky images with my William Optics Z73 telescope and ZWO ASI533 cooled camera. This rig weighs about 10 pounds.

The HEQ5 mount is rated by Skywatcher at 30 pounds capacity. Most experienced astronomers say that is a stretch – okay for visual use, but for DSO images you shouldn’t exceed 20 pounds, 15 pounds is better. My AstroTech At115EDT with camera gear and guidescope push that limit.

So, I dove into the deep end again. I ordered a Losmandy GM811 GEM. It has a 50-pound capacity. Losmandy products are made in Burbank, California and are not mass produced like the Asian-sourced mounts that are most popular (due to price/value considerations). Scott Losmandy is the owner of the company and he, along with another technician or two build each mount by hand. I read that his company consists of five or six employees. They machine their own parts and assemble everything. It will take five or six weeks for my mount to be built – he always has a backlog of orders.

Scott is an avid astronomer and a retrograde lover of all things mechanical. He has a collection of old mechanical devices and he admires the ingenuity and quality of things built in the “old days”. He applies this thinking into the mounts he builds – no plastic, no castings – everything is machined from aluminum, brass or steel alloys. He does employ modern software for automated functions of the mount. His electronics and software are developed by a couple of guys in Germany.

Marty, the astronomer I met at Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint will buy my Skywatcher HEQ5 when my Losmandy mount arrives. Everyone will be happy!

Donna and I booked an AirBNB for two nights in May. It’s outside of Tucson and they have an observatory! They are good with me bringing my astrophotography gear to set up on their property. I’m looking forward to it.

Donna came up with a super idea for summer getaways when the valley heats up. She signed us up with Trusted Housesitters. It’s a website that lists housesitting opportunities. They charge an annual membership fee of $129 to background check and vet people for housesitting. They list houses for members looking for a housesitter and Donna peruses the listings to see what might be a fit for us. The people listing the house can look at our background from the bio we posted and decide if we would meet their needs.

Most of the time something like walking, feeding and caring for pets is involved. We don’t derive any income from it, but we have a free home to stay in and we can pick and choose where and when we want to do it. We just agreed to house sit in Prescott, Arizona in late June. Prescott will be much cooler than here in the valley. Additionally, this house is on a 12-acre property about 20 miles from town in a dark sky area. I will be bringing astronomy gear along!

Like most folks, we’ll be parked in front of the TV later today for the Super Bowl. I’m not real excited about it, but I hope it’s a competitive game. The weather has been nice – highs around 70. We should see upper 70s today, but another cold spell is forecast for next week, with warmer temps returning by next weekend.

A Big Step Forward

Daniel commented about the lack of photos in my last post. He was right – to paraphrase a boss I once worked for – “Too many words, not enough graphics.” Okay, here’s a recent photo of Donna’s raised vegetable garden.

Broccoli in the foreground, tomato plant in the back

This is a shot of the worm bin in the raised garden bed. When I feed the worms, I bury the kitchen scraps along with some used coffee grounds, ground egg shells and shredded cardboard. The used coffee filter is there to mark where I last buried the feed – it will eventually break down and be consumed just like the cardboard.

In-garden worm bin

When I fluffed the soil and fed that bin yesterday, every handful of soil had dozens of juvenile worms. I have no doubt the population in this bed exceeds 1,000 worms now and it keeps growing.

I also mentioned the external worm bin I created out of fabric garden pots.

20-gallon fabric garden pot, doubled up and converted to a worm bin

I started with 600 red wigglers in this bin. It’s about five weeks behind the in-garden bin, but I saw several worms yesterday that appeared to be ready to drop cocoons. I think a population explosion is about to erupt in this bin.

Worm habitat in the external bin

Look closely and you can see a few worms lounging on the surface. Worms do not like sunlight – red wigglers usually hang around below the surface to a depth of six to eight inches. In another month or two I expect to start sifting a pound or more of worm casting garden fertilzer from this bin weekly.

I started discussing astrophotography equipment in my last post. Astronomy can be as simple as looking up at night and maybe sketching the constellations – or maybe using binoculars to look at the moon or planets. Once you get a proper telescope, there are many paths you might want to follow. Photographing the night sky can become a long, winding road with many potential potholes and expenses along the way.

Once I went down this rabbit hole, there was no turning back. The sky is the limit when it comes to equipment and costs. It doesn’t have to be super expensive, but be aware – it ain’t gonna be cheap!

The mount for your telescope is arguably the most important piece of equipment. It needs to be very solid, reliable and have the ability to track the apparent movement of the celestial objects. This is not too difficult with the moon or planets – they are large, bright objects and can be followed fairly easily with a simple altitude-azimuth type mount. You may have to make periodic manual corrections after a few minutes of tracking.

If you want to image deep sky objects (DSO) like star clusters, galaxies or nebulae, you need a more sophisticated mount. A German equatorial mount (GEM) is most often used. This type of mount needs to precisely aligned with the celestial pole – north pole in the northern hemisphere. This type of mount tracks in two directions, one called Right Ascension (RA) and the other is Declination. This allows the mount to compensate for the rotation of the earth as it tracks the apparent movement of objects in the sky. Stars appear to “rise” in the east and “set” in the west. In reality, they only appear that way due to the earth’s rotation. Additionally, their position in the sky will be different as the earth revolves around the sun, making seasonal star charts necessary.

I have a SkyWatcher HEQ5 Pro GEM mount. It has two electric stepper motors to adjust RA and declination respectively. It has an onboard control unit to point at objects in the night sky and track them. This works okay – it’s more than good enough for planets and the moon – but it requires some manual correction. It comes with a hand controller to direct the mount. To use this, I fitted my telescopes with a red dot aiming device that I aligned precisely with the telescope. That way, I could easily find the desired object in the red dot non-magnifying lens, then fine tune the telescope position. It’s a big sky up there and it’s easy to get lost trying to find an object through the small field of view of a telescope.

Trying to find and track DSO targets is much more difficult. In the light pollution found in any populated area, many targets cannot be seen with the naked eye. A red dot device is useless if you can’t even see the object. Upgrades are needed.

First, I ditched the hand controller and I bypassed the onboard control unit of my mount. I now control it with a laptop, ASCOM drivers and different software. I have a program called Cartes du Ciel (French for Sky Chart) that I use to find my target. The target coordinates are then imported to a program called NINA (nightime imaging and astronomy – think of the second “N” as an acronym for “and”, like Guns’N’Roses). NINA is my main software and it directs everything else. I set up a sequence in NINA and it connects to Cartes du Ciel, then activates a program called EQMod to control the mount and another program called PHD2 that handles the tracking calculations. Once these programs are properly configured and working together, I can get the ball rolling with a few key strokes.

But, it’s not so simple. Now, instead of a red dot finder, I have a guide scope mounted on the telescope. The guide scope is a mini-telescope, the one I use is an Altair 60mm ‘scope with a focal length of 225mm. I have a ZWO brand ASI120MM mini-camera on it. This ‘scope doesn’t need to be precisely aligned with the main telescope as long as it is rigidly mounted and moves with the main telescope tube with minimal flexure.

The mini-camera is connected to my laptop and PHD2 uses this camera to identifiy stars. I run through a calibration sequence that allows PHD2 to “learn” how to keep a target centered in the frame. This can take up to 30 minutes to complete. Once that calibration is done, I start NINA and it points the telescope to the target I imported from Cartes du Ciel. Once on target, PHD2 identifies up to nine nearby stars and “learns” where in the sky we are pointing. It tracks those stars to keep them in position in the guidescope, thus the main ‘scope stays in proper position to track the target. Through EQMod, it will send tiny pulses of electricity to the mount stepper motors to keep the ‘scope on target. It’s pretty amazing.

Once this is accomplished, NINA starts the imaging process. Deep Sky Objects are very far away and usually faint – if you can see them with the naked eye or even binoculars, they look like cloudy smudges in space. To resolve them into a usable imge, it takes a lot of time to collect enough light photons emitted by the object onto the camera sensor. We need long exposures usually taking anywhere from 30 seconds to 10 minutes or more. This is why precise guiding is necessary. If we don’t remain aligned with the target, the apparent movement of stars across the sky from the earth’s rotation will make the stars turn from pinpoints into streaks across the image.

The next issue that arises with long exposure time is heat generated by the electronic sensor. As it heats up, anomolies start appearing – some hot pixels will develop and white spots can appear in what should be a dark area or color shifts will randomly appear. To avoid this, DSO cameras use thermo-electric cooling (TEC). This is usually done with a Peltier cooling device – it doesn’t use any gases or fluids, it totally electronic. My ZWO ASI533MC Pro camera has this type of cooling and I run it at 10 degrees fahrenheit. NINA monitors the sensor temperature and controls the TEC to maintain that temperature.

Planetary or lunar imaging is so simple by comparison, but it has its challenges as well. It took me about three months of continuous improvement before I had an image of Jupiter that I was satisfied with – it’s my header image for this blog now. I expect DSO to take at least a year before I can start recording useful images.

Friday night was the first time I got everything working as it should – all of the software calibrated and communicated together and the ‘scope found a target I couldn’t even see. I programmed a sequence of 50 exposures at 90 seconds each. In between each exposure, the software did something called dithering. This is where PHD2 moves the telescope a miniscule distance – the image shifts on the camera sensor by a few microns. This small movement allows correction of any hot pixels in the process, as they don’t continuously appear in the exact same spot of every frame. PHD2 then waits several seconds to make sure there’s no residual vibration in the ‘scope from the tiny movement, then it takes the next exposure. Some guys will run their ‘scope all night long to get the maximum amount of exposures to process into an image.

Processing the data acquired through the digital camera sensor requires another suite of software and it’s a whole ‘nother learning experience. I won’t get into that now, as I’m just beginning to learn.

Unfortunately, on Friday night, I wanted to check the status of my Bluetti power supply after a couple of hours. It provides portable power – 120-volt AC for my laptop. 12-volt DC for the ASI533MC cooled camera and several 5-volt DC USB ports. I pressed the wrong button and it cut off power, shutting my camera and USB connections off and killing my session after 23 of the planned 50 frames were shot. I was happy that I had everything working right up that point, but the lack of frames and exposure time meant the resulting image was poor. It lacked color and detail, but I felt like I made a big step forward and it will only get better from this point.

A weak image of the Andromeda Galaxy – 2.5 million light years from earth
Equipment used on Friday

If the forecast holds true, I think I’ll head out on Thursday or Friday to the Weaver’s Needle Viewpoint and try another shot at DSO from a darker area. I think I’ll use my AT 115EDT instead of the WO Z73 telescope. I have quick release mounts on both telescopes so I can switch the guide ‘scope and camera between them instead duplicating equipment.

I’m making progress on another front. It’s been three weeks since my gall bladder surgery and I’ve regained a lot of strength and stamina. The surgeon, Dr. Garner, warned me against doing anything strenuous or heavy lifting for four weeks. He said “Don’t do anything that makes you constrict your core or grunt.” I’m taking heed of that warning. Donna is helping me keep my strength up with her usual delicious, nutricious culinary skills.

Here is a rice bowl with salmon, cabbage, nori, cucumber and avocado drizzled with a sesame marinade as presented.

Sesame salmon bowl

And here it is with everything tossed.

Fresh collard greens from the garden.

Collard greens saute in olive oil with garlic, chicken broth and apple cider vinegar. Served with grilled shrimp with chile and garlic and cheesy grits.

Grilled shrimp, cheesy grits and collard green saute

We’re looking forward to a visit from Alana and Kevin – they’re coming down from Washington next weekend. In March, my daughter Shauna, her husband Gabe and my granddaughter Petra will visit from Bermuda.

Hopefully, next time I’ll have a better DSO image to share.

Edit: After playing around with Astro Pixel Processor I was able to slightly improve the Andromeda image.

Dirt and Sky

My energy levels and activity have been fairly low lately. Recovering from surgery is taking longer than I expected – I guess that’s what happens as you age. A couple of times per day I find myself overcome with fatigue and need a short power nap – but I’m making progress.

Speaking of progress, Donna’s raised garden bed is producing some good looking vegetables. She has tomatoes ripening, broccoli that looks amazing and collard greens along with a nice basil plant. It’s taking a bit longer for the veggies to ripen than we expected – the unusually cold weather has had a hand in that.

While the garden is Donna’s project, I manage the worm farming. We have an in-bed worm bin in the garden. The worm bin has openings in the sides that allow the worms to come and go freely and travel throughout the garden. I feed the worms in the bin, so the majority of them reside there.

The composting worms are red wigglers and they create an ideal soil with organic, natural fertilizer. The worms require a diet of nitrogen-based material – this is derived from kitchen vegetable scraps, peat moss and manure. They also need carbon based nutrients – I provide this by adding shredded cardboard to their bin. That’s right, they convert kitchen waste and cardboard into ideal garden soil. As they consume these waste products, they leave behind worm castings – a polite descriptor for worm poo. It contains beneficial bacteria as well as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium – the NPK values you see on commercial fertilizers. Worm castings are natural, organic fertilizer that will not burn your garden plants – you can plant in 100% worm castings to great effect!

I started Donna’s in-bed worm bin with 300 red wigglers from Arizona Worm Farm. These worms dispersed – probably because her garden soil had so many nutrients they didn’t need to stay in the bin to feed. I added 300 more worms two weeks later and I feed the bin regularly.

Worm reproduction is interesting. Worms are hermaphrodites – that is they have both male and female reproductive organs. But it still takes two to tango. Once they’ve completed the dance, both participants are fertilized. They each produce cocoons that can hatch two to five worms. So, let’s say that one-third of the original 600 worms have an encounter – that’s 200 worms that will produce cocoons. Let’s say that two worms survive from each cocoon. Our 200 worms just produced 400 offspring. I think this represents a low estimate of the worms’ reproductive activity. For the past few weeks, every time I aerate the worm bin and add food, I find bunches of young worms. I have little doubt that Donna’s garden houses well over 1,000 worms now and the population will continue to grow.

Worm colonies are self regulating – that is, when the population reaches a saturation point where food and space become less than abundant, they slow or stop reproduction. Pretty handy.

Five weeks after I started the in-bed worm bin, I created a separate external worm bin. I used 20-gallon fabric pots called grow bags. I doubled two together for strength, added some garden soil mix, peat moss, perlite and cardboard. I started this bin with 600 red wigglers with the intention of creating a steady supply of worm castings for Donna’s potted plants and whatever else she grows.

Enough about worms – let’s talk astrophotography. When I decided to pursue astronomy last summer, I didn’t really know what I wanted from it. Like many beginners, I figured I should get as large a telescope as I could afford and skip past the beginners’ “toy” telescopes. I’ll have to delve into a few ‘scope dimensions to explain this, but I’ll skip the math equations.

My first scope was a Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector – it’s what’s known as a catadioptic telescope – often shorted to cat or just SCT (Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope). The Celestron NexStar 8SE I bought has a large objective (that’s the front lens opening on a refractor or the mirror size of a reflector type ‘scope) of 8-inches (203mm). It has a focal length of a whopping 2,032mm. Objective diameter and focal length are factors in determining how much magnification the ‘scope can provide.

I had a lot of fun looking at the moon and planets like Saturn and Jupiter. But I also found out that high levels of magnification also means unwanted atmospheric disturbances are also magnified. I soon discovered that I was most interested in taking photographs of the celestial objects rather than observing them through an eyepiece.

I bought a dedicated planetary astrophotography camera and captured a lucky image of Saturn. That really got me excited about astrophotography. I soon learned how lucky that image was. Most of the time, I couldn’t get the moon or planets in sharp enough focus as atmospheric conditions like temperature gradients and higher level winds (jet stream) made the image go in and out of focus.

The moon and planets are bright enough to capture with very short exposures. The trick was to get focused as sharp as possible, then start capturing frames with short exposure times – around 10 milliseconds or so. I would take 3,000 or more frames. Later, I sorted these frames by quality level in a software program, threw out the poor examples lacking detail and combined the best images in a stacking program. This yielded acceptable results, but they were still lacking.

There are a lot of great YouTube videos where experienced astrophotographers offer advice and tutorials. I learned that most of them agreed that starting out with a large, high magnification ‘scope would only lead to frustration. They almost universally agreed that a smaller refractor-type telescope would yield better results and even forgive some beginner errors. This allows far less frustration as you gain experience.

So, I found a small William Optics ZenithStar refractor with a 73mm objective and 430mm focal length. This was a treat for lunar photography, but a little small for planetary use. If you wanted to go past our solar system, it would excel at some nebulae and distant galaxy images – but I was still working on planetary photography.

Then I found my Goldilocks ‘scope – not too big and not so small. I bought an Astro-Tech 115EDT. This has an objective lens diamter of 115mm and a focal length of 805mm. I love this scope and also my W.O. Z73. I’ve become a refractor guy instead of a reflector ‘scope guy.

Here’s how the three ‘scopes fit my needs. The small W.O. Z73 with a focal length of 430mm works for lunar and deep-sky objects (DSO). The Astro-Tech 115EDT with a focal length of 805mm works for lunar and planetary – it will also be useful for DSO. The Celestron 8SE with a focal length of 2032mm is good for planetary and deep sky if the atmospheric conditions allow it.

But wait, there’s more. With the 115 EDT, I can use an accessory called a Barlow that effectively doubles the focal length from 805mm to 1610mm. Barlows have plusses and minuses, but I won’t delve into that here. It gives me enough magnification for great planetary images. With the 8SE, I can use another accessory called a focal reducer that effectively shortens the focal length. I have a 0.63 focal reducer for it that shortens the 2032mm focal length to 1280mm. So I have a lot of options now – focal lengths of 430mm, 805mm, 1280mm, 1610mm and 2032mm. That’s why I have three telescopes – and five focal length options.

A few weeks ago, I went to an area with less light pollution and tried to capture a deep-sky image of the Pleiades – a star cluster also called the Seven Sisters. My planetary experiences were no help here. DSO are a different game and have completely different requirements. Instead of short exposures of only milliseconds, you need long exposures – several minutes for each frame.

These long exposure create new difficulties and requirements to overcome them. Due to the earth constantly rotating, you must be able to accurately track the celestial position of your target. Otherwise, stars would go from pin-points to streaks across the image.

Digital cameras use sensor chips to convert photons of light into electrical impulses that can be recorded as data and later decoded into images. Astrophotography cameras typically use sensors developed by Sony Corporation and they are available in many configurations. My planetary camera uses a small chip size and doesn’t require cooling as the short exposure times don’t create much heat in the chipset. However, it doesn’t work well for long exposures as the chip overheats and creates noise in the image – that is, unwanted artifacts and false color or random white points in an otherwise black portion of the image.

Astrophotography cameras for DSO have cooled sensors. They usually have a thermo-electric (Peltier) cooling system that doesn’t use any liquid or gas cooling medium, it’s strictly electrical. This increases the size and weight of the camera not to mention the cost.

I went for it and bought a cooled DSO camera and a host of other accroutrements to begin DSO imaging. I run the cooling system of my ZWO ASI533MC deep sky astrophotography camera at a temperature of -12 celsius – that’s right, below freezing – it’s about 10 degrees fahrenheit.

This post has become too long-winded, so I’ll continue the DSO journey in another post. I think I’m ready for a nap now.

William Optics Z73 and tracking ‘scope set up for DSO imaging – I’ll go into the set up details in another post

Buying, Selling and Trading

It’s been nearly a month since I added a post, so here are a few lines and pictures. In my last post, I went over my woes with the Celestron NexStar telescope mount. I’m happy to report the Sky Watcher HEQ5 Pro I replaced it with has been great. It’s a little harder to set up, but it tracks targets nicely and is very sturdy. I found a buyer for my old mount and shipped it off.

I used the Sky Watcher with the Celestron 8SE SCT telescope to image Jupiter. Jupiter is a harder target than I thought it would be. In fact, astrophotography as a whole is a lot harder to learn than I thought it would be. I’m not getting the detail I would like. There are many steps involved to capture a succesful image.

First you need to achieve focus on a distant object – hundreds of thousands of miles away. Then you have to find the right combination of gain and exposure time for your camera – kind of like setting aperture and shutter speed on a conventional camera. The rotation of the earth and the orbit of the object come into play – the target doesn’t just sit in the center of the frame. What we do is basically shoot a video recording where we can adjust the frame rate of the video and set the number of frames we want to record. I control the camera with a small laptop running a program called SharpCap, developed by a British astronomer.

Once you have accomplished that, the raw image needs to processed. There are some really smart guys that have developed software specifically for this. They are astronomy enthusiasts and many offer their programs as free-ware for amateur, non-commercial use. I use three of these programs to process my images.

The first is called PIPP – planetary image pre-processor. This program takes the individual frames and aligns them so the image is centered in every frame. I typically shoot 2,500 frames or so at a time.

Next I use AutoStakkert – a program written by a Dutch astronomer – to sort each frame by quality of the image. Then I choose how many frames I want to keep by rejecting all below a certain quality threshold. Autostakkert then “stacks” or combines these frames into an image. This is called “lucky imaging,” because we are lucky to get a percentage of frames with a sharp image, largely unaffected by atmospheric conditions.

The output from Autostakkert is then opened in RegiStax 6 for sharpening, de-noise and color adjustment. I may use Photoshop for a final touch up. Here are few pictures – crude compared to professional and many amateur results, but I’m learning and will get better at it.

Saturn
Jupiter

I bought a another telescope – I found it on the classified ad section of a site called CloudyNights. This is a completely different approach than my Celestron 8SE Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector. This one is a refractor type telescope – one of the oldest telescope designs. It’s simple and well-made with high-quality optics.

It’s from a company called William Optics and it’s model is ZenithStar 73. It has a 73mm objective lens, 430mm focal length and it’s relatively fast at f5.9. I mentioned quality optics – the objective lens in this telescope is ground from a material called FPL 53 optical glass. FPL 53 is made from a synthetic fluorite crystal grown in a lab by a Japanese company called Ohara. FPL 53 is a desirable material for telescope lenses.

W.O. Z73

When used visually with an eyepiece I can see the entire surface of the moon with this ‘scope and it is less affected by atmospheric conditions than the larger Celestron. More magnification requires a stable atmosphere for sharp images. The astrophotography camera I use increases the magnification of the image with this ‘scope though. Here’s a moon shot I took Saturday night.

Moon

I described this astrophotography session as a near disaster on Facebook. I think considering the real disaster that was hurricane Ian, my description is a bit of an over-reach. Here’s what happened.

I set up my mount and telescope behind our back deck, adjacent to the golf course behind our place. I use a small card table for a couple of small cases with some of the gear I use and also place a small notebook computer on it to record the image. My plan was to take a shot of the moon, then move to Saturn and finish the night with Jupiter. I wanted to try the Z73 ‘scope on the planets just to see what I could get with it.

After I captured the image above, I programmed the mount for Saturn. While the ‘scope was slewing toward Saturn, I heard water sprinklers start up. Oh no! The golf course decided to start watering at 8:30pm – I’d never seen them water much past 7pm before. I closed the notebook computer and ran it over to our deck, then went back for the rest of the gear. Donna was out and she started grabbing things as well. We weren’t quick enough – the sprinklers got us and my gear briefly before we could get everything out of range.

I’ll have to rethink my telescope set-up position for future sessions. This is not so easy – I thought I found the perfect spot to get clear views of most of the sky. Well, that’s probably more about astronomy than you ever wanted to know.

Donna went to Vermont for eight days, beginning on September 13th, to visit her parents. While she was away I decided to make another change. We’ve been using our 2015 Nissan Frontier for daily transportation. When I bought this truck, it was intended to be towed behind our motorhome as we traveled about. For this reason, I bought a used work truck with a manual transmission and no frills.

We won’t be towing behind a motorhome now, so why drive a beater and shift gears manually? I looked around for something more comfortable that we could live with. The best solution would be a company lease car – as a Volkswagen retiree, I have lease car privileges that allow me to select a new VW on a very favorable 12-month lease. However, in the current state of things, new cars are in very short supply and lease car choices are extremely limited.

I found a nearly showroom condition 2019 Jeep Compass with all of the bells and whistles and only 36,000 miles on the clock. So, we went from a manual transmission, noisy truck with manual roll-up windows to a loaded compact SUV with power everything. Of course, this means electronic control modules galore and lots of potential for things to malfunction, but you only live once. I traded our truck and put a dent in my savings as I don’t like to finance anything – we are debt-free other than the lease on our park model home lot at Viewpoint Golf Resort.

2019 Jeep Compass

Donna returned from Vermont on the 20th, so I’m back to eating like a king. Here’s a dinner plate she made. The main dish is parmesan crusted tilapia with cauliflower penne pasta and steamed spinach on the side.

Parmesan crusted tilapia

We’re past the monsoon season and humidity levels are back to a more normal range of 10-25%. The triple-digit heat is behind us as well with the forecast calling for low 90s and mid-to-high 80s for the rest of the month.