Flare on the Sun’s disk

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:24:42 +0500

This snake like feature stayed for some days on the sun’s surface.. I think i made a video of this earlier but have not processed it yet. Again this zoomed up image is via using 4X barlow which is showing a lot of fine detail. The magnetic loops are beautiful here.

I tried to make a quick colored version but that takes out many fine details so putting up this B/W image. May be i will try to carefully color this image later..

Prominence Animation

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 11:18:26 +0500

This was shot on 26th October, 2011. There were 100 AVI files which i recorded in about 45 minutes. Each file was of 1,000 uncompressed frames. The gap between them was of about 10 seconds. To go really close to the sun i actually used 4X barlow which was sitting around for years doing almost nothing for me.

This is about 10 seconds long but the processing took 6 hours! I have made this animation with 10 frames per second and it still looks like a movie.

Making animations is tedious yet i enjoyed it a lot.. More will be coming up for sure.

Lunt60 dedicated H-Alpha Scope

Fri, 7 Oct 2011 16:59:28 +0500

Yes my observatory got a new upgrade with a super great halpha telescope. Its main advantage is that it will not show you anything else but only the sun.. but that it does so remarkably.. look at the above image.. It is so nice to see the sun naked! Brighten up your displays and you will see the ‘fire’ on the right edge more clearly.

I will be learning how to use the other ‘Doube Stack’ lens which is so far being difficult to control.. They say it is the one that shows “WOW... WOW!” views.

Astrofest on 08th October, 2011

Fri, 7 Oct 2011 16:14:57 +0500

Okay so Khwarizmi Science Society has arracnged another Falakyati Mela at ‘The Learning School’ Kot Radha Kishan, Kasure. Its about an hours drive from lahore and we are expecting more than a 1,000 people there.

The format will be as usual.. First my presentation, which i have tried to make more engaging than the previous ones. then the astro/lunar poetry session and/or Q/A session. Meanwhile i will be setting up the scope there. Main object will be our Moon and perhaps Jupiter as well.

This is a free event as always and you can come to see the moon with C14 and a high resolution camera on a big screen.

You should reach there by 17:00.. It will continue till 21:00.

Contact me: umairasim@gmail.com

Theophilus & Cyrillus

Sun, 28 Aug 2011 14:22:48 +0500

Here is an image of about the same sized craters; the one in the center is Theophillus (98.6 km) and the one at lower right is Cyrillus (98 km). I was having this AVI file for many months now and Registax it last night.

I found the below image on google and marked the imaged area with yellow border.

Moving clouds

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 11:12:59 +0500

Sky has not being cooperating for quite some time now. Even if it gets clear the transparency remains quite bad here. A few days ago when i was just siting in my observatory, i used an iPhone app “Reel Moments” to capture the above video of the clouds. Exposure setting was at 2 second of interval and the video is at 30 frames per second.

I loved to see the movement of corpuscular rays and all sorts of shades of gray in the moving clouds. Some birds are shot in a couple of frames as well.

Sinus Iridium

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 10:30:54 +0500

One of my most favourite areas on the moon.. the view from a 2 inch, 15 mm eyepiece shows breathtaking details of this huge crater. Specially the amazing Jura Mountains seems.. well.. amazing :)

It has taken a while for me to understand how to image such a dynamic “Terminator” area. With a dedicated planetary camera and a lot of experimentation with the exposure, gamma and brightness settings has taught me how to stay away from over exposed pixels and to bring out details in the dim areas.

This image was taken from DBK31 color camera at 30 fps, 675 gain and 120 gamma. Registax6 was used with about 150 alignment points. I used “Photo Measures” for iPad to write the details in the image. Its a great yet simple software, typical of Apple experience.

Petavius Crater

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 13:34:42 +0500

The most beautiful crater on the eastern limb of the moon, Petavius has many paculiar features, a broad rim, multiple central peaks and an unusual rille.

I was hoping to get good data on this AVI file and recorded 10,000 frames at 30frames per second but somehow half of the file decided to go completely black so i was stuck with about 5,000 frames. The above image is a stack of 1,500 frames. Registax 5 and CS5 were used to process this image.

Jupiter and one of its moon

Tue, 1 Feb 2011 14:11:29 +0500

Seeing is not cooperating at all.. this is the best i am getting so far from my city Lahore, Pakistan. I think this is the best i could do with 30fps. I have bought another camera which will extend it to 60 fps but it has not yet arrived in pakistan.

Also my current planetary camera is a color camera and it works okay to some extant but the new one is a mono version and that should get me more ‘resolution’ in the frames. I am certainly hoping to ‘kill’ more seeing problems with this new tool..

Jupiter, weird GRS

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:25:43 +0500

Jupiter’s surface is always changing.. Now notice a dark curve on the left of the‘Great Red Spot’, probably a storm being eaten away. More images from those blessed with good seeing are needed to see what really is going on around the GRS at the moment.

Got this image from an AVI file, which was shot at 30 frames per second two hours ago. Used Registax and CS5 for the processing. I tried a lot of techniques that i know to get details on the surface and eliminate the noise in the data. Seeing is Bad here, though transparency is average.

Still sitting in the observatory and tranferring 106 GB of un-processed lunar data from the external firewire drive to my ‘super computer’. A lot of processing hours are ahead folks...

First attempt on Saturn storm

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 12:17:55 +0500

Waited for 03:00 AM in the morning and went upstairs in the cold (but not dark) night. Saturn was high in the sky but when i saw it in my telescope, seeing was bad. Here is a short clip i made with DBK31 camera.

Youtube upload has further distorted the video quality. At the time i checked the presence of the high speed Jet Stream and yes it was way too high:

No storm could possibly be seen in the video. But aligning and stacking in Registax showed the dim storm in this image:

Wavelet was not being very helpful.. I tried what i could to improve it and the image at top is what i could get from this noisy data.

Now waiting for better seeing and fog free skies...

Broadcasting Partial Solar Eclipse, January 4th, 2011

Mon, 3 Jan 2011 02:56:46 +0500

This year is beginning with a big event, a Solar Eclipse. It will be a partial eclipse and will be visible from lahore, though a few percent of the sun disk will be covered by the passing moon.

I will be broadcasting the whole event from my observatory, if the fog and clouds would give way during the eclipse. It will be, once again, on the channel of Khwarzimi Science Society. I will be using Mallincam HyperPlus Colored Astronomical Video Camera and a Thousand Oaks Solar Filter. I may also use Solar Continuum Filter.

You can watch it on the “Night Skies Network” at “Khwarizmi Science Society” channel or at this page also. The following will be showing the Solar Eclipse and you can also join in the live chat.

Crescent Moon

Sun, 2 Jan 2011 20:14:36 +0500

New moon is always very hard to spot with the naked eye and not so easy with the telescope either, so i found when i tried to image a new moon in the afternoon of 7th December, 2010.

First difficulty was that i cannot image the new moon after the sunset because the walls of my observatory allow me to observe above 25 degree altitude and the new moon is always close to the sun. This meant that i must have to get the moonlight in the telescope while the sun was still up. This was potentially very dangerous for my equipment because if i was not very careful and the sunlight passed through my telescope, it could have damaged my optics and fried my CCD camera. I do own a solar filter to safely view the sun but it can only show so little light and mounting this filter would have totally blocked all the moonlight from entering the scope.

The sky was, as always in lahore, quite hazy that day. I tried to see the moon with 12*50 binocular but after searching hard, i gave up. Then with the cover still on, i GOTO my telescope to the moon and put my eye in the finderscope. The moon was supposed to be in there but still i did not see it. It was all daylight in the field of view.

Now i was waiting.. for the sun to go down the western wall of my observatory so i can safely remove the cover of my telescope. The main imaging camera ST9XE was attached on the other end and it was cooled inside, 20 degrees below freezing point. I already had put 3nm Halpha filter in front, to suppress the dalight as much as possible, in the hopes of getting fair contrast of the moon.

As soon as the sun went down, i removed the front cover of the scope and got a 1 second test exposure.. and waited for the image to download from the camera. It does not take long and in a second the first image appeared.. and.. there it was a small part of the crescent moon. I adjusted the exposure to 1.6 seconds and then shot step by step all the parts of the moon.

Just recently i made the above mosaic from 11 images, in photoshop. Many craters are visible at the edge of the moon.

This shows that i can, to some extent, image the first day moon from my imaging setup. I will try to do this for the Eid day or Ramadan.. would be interesting to fuel the controversy :)

PRE LUNAR ECLIPSE MOON BROADCAST

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:50:31 +0500

M43 Nebula in S2

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 11:44:44 +0500

This is a 5 hour exposure.. all through Astronomik S2 filter.. M43 nebula shines the most in S2 light among all the narrow band filters. Even though the sky is bad these days, ranging from 16.30 to 17.50 mag per arcsec2, i managed to get some fine details in this nebula. Processed in Maxim DL and Photoshop.. I am planning to get other narrowband data to get a colored final image.

Invisible Moon..

Wed, 1 Dec 2010 21:20:06 +0500

Just a souvenir.. the image on the left is UV light and the right is Infrared light. You would not see this light with your eyes with or without an eyepiece.. so watch these images closely.. may be any extraterrestrial is visible in UV or IR :)

Search for planetary nebula in M15

Sun, 28 Nov 2010 11:29:52 +0500

Last night i was imaging M15 with only 2 minutes of sub exposures and got 86 images in total. I was internally autoguiding at 11 Hz, which means that the image was being corrected 11 times a second (I so wish i could go beyond 30 or 40 Hz to kill the seeing.. I need a 30 inch scope for that). Clear filter and Hutech 2” LPS light pollution filter were used for the acquisition. The sky aound M15 was at 18 magnitudes per arcsec square, when i started the imaging and got 16.88 when i took the last image, which means the sky background was okay and . All went fine.. i did not loose the guide star, no cloud interrupted the imaging session. Only that my eternal enemy the smoke from the ‘Packages Factory’ was blurring the sky above me since i could smell the distinct ‘flavours’.

When autoguiding is performing flawlessly i am free to move out of the observatory and go downstairs.. talk to my kids.. watch youtube or just simply show the desktop of the observatory’s computer on my iphone to my family and torture them with the details of how great autoguiding is :) They try their best to make me happy.

Okay back to imaging: The calibration (cleaning of the images) is not perfect, because after the calibration i could still see unwanted pixels response. The only filter i used in MaXimDL was the digital development filter which is so very important for processing of the globulars. Then the combined image was brought in CS5 and i tried to compress the noise as much as i can.. some enhancements and the above image was ready to display.

There are only four Planetary Nebulae, found in the globular clusters. Pease-1 is one of them and is also the first PN found in a Globular cluster. I wanted to see if i have got it in my image. First step: whats the location of Pease1 in M15?

I found this website which helped me a lot in locating the exact position of the nebula. Pease1 is very tiny just a couple of arcseconds in size. This is very hard to image because the seeing should be good enough for the stars to stay where they are and last night’s seeing was not at all good. I could see the guidestar jumping all over in the autoguider window and AO8 was doing its best to tame it.. The best it could do was to get me at the minimum of 2.31 arcseconds per pixel, the worst frame was 3.06 arcseconds per pixel. I knew i wont be getting any structure of this nebula.

Okay so the above mentioned site has this picture:

This image was taken at the same camera angle that i was using.. following is my image:

Another good image is available here:

Now i could find the stars nearby and found the nebula in my image

So there it is.. the first ever nebula discovered in a globular cluster. Okay.. it does not seem a nebula in my image but still it is a nebula.. you can check your references :) Colored image? perhaps i will attempt it but M15 is getting low in the west everyday and i dont think i will be able to get enough time for a colored image. Better yet i should attempt a 1 minutes exposure.. the sky background is already very bright here.. for these images the best value was 1219 ADU and the worst.. well 2873.. ouch.

And before i close this.. This is ‘Where is M15’.

Update:
One of the most significant tools astronomers, both professional and amateur, rely upon is the use of various band-pass filters. These belong to mainly two categories: Broadband filters and Narrowband filters; the control to pass or block certain wavelengths give enormous advantage to know what processes are happening so far away, in the heavenly bodies.

Every object emits maximum light at certain wavelengths. Planetary Nebulae emit most of their light from doubly ionized oxygen, better known as OIII (O3). Which can be recorded by the use of an OIII filter which will allow wavelengths from 494-506 nm to pass through and block all other light of M15 cluster. This should greatly dim the stars BUT should not dim the light of any planetary nebula.

Thinking on these lines, on the night of 28th November, i tried Astronomik OIII filter, which has a transmission of 95% from 496-501nm, on M15.

Transmission graph of Astronomik OIII filter

Since very little light would be coming in, i increased the sub-exposures to 15 minutes. I got 12 frames, 11 with 15 minutes and one with 10 minutes, making a total of 2 hours and 45 minutes of OIII emission from M15 cluster.

My current imaging setup gives me a very challenging f-ratio, F12. Two hours and 45 minutes are not enough with a use of 12nm filter. Though i tried my best with good calibration data and photoshop but still the combined image is noisy.

But i was not going for a neat and clean image.. I was after the planetary nebula.. Did i get it? Yes i did. See the following images:

Image with Clear/Luminance filter Image with OIII filter

Above images mark the exact location of the planetary nebula in M15 cluster. The left image shows all the stars with their usual brightness, but on the right the stars are all faded away but the spot where Planetary Nebula is located is seen very bright. Finally, this confirms that it is a planetary nebula.

Now i really want to get the more than that but I am already at the image scale of 0.93 arcseconds, i know i will not be able to get any structure of this nebula.. since the seeing and transparency is not good from my city but for more we are blessed with Hubble.

Mountains of Far Side?

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 02:15:32 +0500

This view was in full sunlight and at the edge of the limb i saw many mountains peaking out.. So captured about a 1000 frames, just to show these mountains. Are these from the far side or in the middle ground? I wish i knew a way to find out..

One more unknown Area on the moon

Sat, 20 Nov 2010 14:25:47 +0500

This file was also made on 25th September, 2010. And i have no idea what this region is.. But still its a bit out of ordinary area of the moon.. specially the mountain in the back.

I only had about 1000 images in this file so it is a noisy frame..

Unknown Craters on the moon

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:57:31 +0500

I found some old AVI files which i had not processed earlier. The date on the data file is 25 September 2010 and the time was round 10pm. Recently i processed it and as you can see it turned out pretty good.

It is hard to believe that ‘weathering’ has anything to do on the lunar surface but it sure does happen there all the time. Of course atmosphere is not the culprit but rather the tiny micrometeorites constantly are rounding up the fine rims of the crater walls and the presence of “Lunar Regolith” is also all due to this weathering phenomenon. Craters in the bottom of this image clearly shows this weathering effect. Look how round the rims are.. certainly not the overflow of lava.

In the background a raised mountain is also visible.. Now we don’t often see this kind of “Hight Representation” in lunar images.. Only the lunar limbs offer such beauty.

Now i have tried StarryNight but could not find out the names of these craters.. If i remember correctly, this region is on the eastern limb.. Anyone up to the challenge?

Jupiter and the moon, IO, in ultra-violet radiation

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 11:16:59 +0500

This is the first use of my Astrodon UV Filter or Venus filter as it is famously called. This is an amazing filter and least used among amateur astronomers because of its very limited uses. It has an average transmittance of 98 % from 325nm to 381nm. No human eye can see this light and below 320nm the atmosphere blocks the UV completely. I was hoping to image Venus with it but my main CCD camera got ill once again (i reconnected the external guider, while it was working!) and i had to send both CCDs to SBIG USA, seems a regular thing for me now :)

I did used UV filter with the eyepiece (okay..just for fun) at Jupiter and my own two ‘ccd detectors’ were completely dark. so does it prove i do have a UV filter :)

Jupiter is a big planet and the comet shoemaker levy9 impacts indicated that the planet’s ultraviolet absorbing gases or aerosols are more extended, more absorbing than the absorbers of visible light. The above image is a stack of 60 frames, each one second long. I kept the whole exposure for two minutes because Jupiter does not allow more due to its fast rotation.

This is the UV image of Jupiter taken from Hubble. It seems they ignored the planet and went for specific imaging setup to capture aurora in UV.

I should also dream big!

In my image, on the right is the moon IO. While processing Jupiter it was not visible and i used Photoshop to brighten it up.

Next, I should use Barlow lens to get a higher resolution image. May be i will capture aurora at Jupiter :)

Comet Hartley Movie

Thu, 7 Oct 2010 11:02:47 +0500

I had taken my telescope out of the observatory once again for WSW 2010 and yesterday put it back on my rooftop. After the basics: leveling, balancing and polar alignment, i attached my main imaging train with the C14 and i was ready to image my first comet.

It was late though.. i took my first image at 00:52 of 30 sec with clear filter and was quite surprised when in the second image the comet moved its place so i thought to make a quick clip of its movement and here it is..

These are 21 images, each 30 seconds long without any filter (have not even yet installed LPS filter) and autoguiding. Finding the comet is very difficult at F/12 and after a few aligning at few stars i connected my scope with StarryNight, then clicking at Comet Hartley i gave the command to slew at the comet and lo and behold it was in the frame.

I have only calibrated with Bias and a couple of Dark frames.. I did not have anytime for flats or any fancy image processing stuff. You can see how much the comet moved in just about 10 minutes. I wonder how on earth they capture a colored image of a comet with colored filters.

According to StarryNight this comet is 0.155 AU from earth and shinning at 5.27 magnitude and still coming close to us and will be nearest on 21 Oct.

Here is the combined image:

A clip of GRS and europa transit

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 10:55:55 +0500

Here is a clip i captured of Europa Transit and the great red spot. The original and uncompressed file is 770MB and the above compressed clip is only 332kb so it has lost a lot of data but still worth to watch it ‘live’.

For those who dont know, the ‘shaking’ of Jupiter is because of earth’s atmosphere; its the same phenomenon that makes the stars twinkle.

Its the original clip and i have enhanced it in anyway. Earlier i posted the stacked and processed image which you can see has much much better view of the planet.

GRS and the shadow of Europa

Sun, 26 Sep 2010 10:31:11 +0500

Jupiter is the real center of attraction these days. First it is closest to us since 1963 and will not come this close until 2022.

Next Callisto went into the shadow of Jupiter 3 days ago and it wont happen again until 2013. I was broadcasting this whole event on http://www.nightskiesnetwork.com/ at Khwarizmi Science Society with my C14 and KSS’ colored Astronomical Video Camera, Mallincam HyperPlus. A lot of people around the globe, came in to see this broadcast; NSN is really a blessing for astronomers around the globe.

Yesterday, Europa passed infront of Jupiter and shortly after the beginning of this transit, GRS popped in and here is the image i grabbed.

This is one of the best images of Jupiter i have captured so far. I used Hutech LPS 2” filter along with IR blocking filter and also Televue Powermate 2X Barlow. Spent good time on collimation and focused the optics with Bahtinov Mask to make it as accurate as possible. Seeing was good last night and i have captured quite a few AVIs, may be i will try to make a Giff image in a few days.

KSS 9th AstroFest

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 10:57:05 +0500

We are having another great night under the stars in Lahore at LUMS on 17th of September, 2010. This will be a paid event and all the collected amount will help the flood victims.
---------------------------------------------------------
Sponsors & Collaborators:
Spades Society, LUMS. All proceeds will go towards the relief fund for the flood affectees. The ticket is Rs. 200.
Registration: Open to all.
Date: 17 September, 2010
Time: 5:30 pm to 9 pm
Venue: LUMS, Library Grounds, Opposite Sector U, DHA, Lahore
---------------------------------------------------------
As always, we will be displaying live telescopic views on the big multimedia screen. Main targets will be Moon and Jupiter but since KSS owns Mallincam HyperPlus, the best Astronomy color video camera in the world, we will also try to show Ring Nebula and M13 and perhaps M31 as well, our nearest huge galaxy.

So, be there..

(As always our star gazing events are weather dependent. I will inform here and at FaceBook if we cancel our event on 17th September before13:00)

Mare Insularum with The Mighty Copernicus crater

Thu, 27 May 2010 23:11:16 +0500

I am always impressed by the beautiful mosaics people make of the moon. They can capture a huge area with good surface detail in high resolution images. This is my first attempt of a lunar mosaic.

On 25th May, i captured four AVIs with the Planetary CCD camera DBK31 (at 25 uncompressed frames per second), each containing about 5,000 frames. I then processed it in Registax5 and stacked about 2,000 images, combined and further processed it in Photoshop CS4. A slight cropping was done for the misaligned images.

Processing took a lot of time.. Using Macbook Pro at its maximum performance, I have spent about 15 hours (in 3 days) on the Registax5; to date, this is the maximum i have used on Registax5.
After processing in CS4 and my weird processing routine, the tiff file was 211MB!

The processing was done to mainly show the ‘ray system’ of this area. The biggest crater is Copernicus Crater, below which are Reinhold and Gambart. On the far left is Kepler Crater with its own beautiful ejected rays. Between Copernicus and Kepler, Mare Insularum resides. On the left of Copernicus, there is T.Mayer crater and Carpatus mountains. Above which are the craters Pytheas and Euler. In the top right corner, western part of Mountain Wolff (yes with the double letter) and at the end of it is the crater Eratosthenes, named after the first man to ever calculate the circumference of the earth somewhere around 300 BC.

There are many other craters of various sizes, with single, double and multiple rings but of course the most impressive feature is the rays emanating from Copernicus..

Hope you will like this image.

UPDATE: (May 29, 2010)

Today i found this image at LPOD archives. Interestingly this has the same framing of my mosaic.. and looks super in color. I would love to try lunar image in false color such as this one:

Eskimo Nebula in Colors

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:49:30 +0500

Earlier i posted a short exposure of Eskimo Nebula.. here is the RGB added to it. It is the result of death of a sun like star and is located about 3,000 light years away. Here is more about it.

M13 - Colored

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:52:54 +0500

So i finally found sometime to process LRGB data of M13 and here it is. Again i tried to resolve as many stars as possible in the core. There are many many “out of place” Blue Stragglers in M13 and are easily visible in this image.

M13 - Globular Cluster

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 00:10:56 +0500

An hour long exposure of an Alien Cluster.. Still have to get color data yet but i processed the luminance files anyway, to keep my blog alive :)

I was being careful not to blow out the core stars. The subs were of 2 minutes and being auto-guided on the internal chip of ST9XE camera, by SBIG Adoptive Optics, AO8. The corrections were being applied at 1 Hz.

Eskimo Nebula

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 15:21:26 +0500

This is my one of my most favourites so last night when i started imaging this Nebula i became so impatient that i am posting this 21 min exposure here :)

Telescope: Celestron C14 @ FL 4200, F/ratio 12
Camera: SBIG ST9XE @ -15C, Image Scale: 0.962
Adoptive Optics: SBIG AO8
Filters: Custom Scientific, Clear
Exposure: 180 Seconds Subs

Trapezium - A Short Exposure

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 20:07:11 +0500

Here is a short exposure (LRGB: 6min, 3min, 3min, 6min) of Trapezium region, a total of 18 minutes. I was being very careful in processing it as “True Colours” as possible so i used Astrodon’s RGB Weight Calculator. Also i tried to keep the dignity of Trapezium Stars intact without over exposing the surrounding nebulosity.

What i specially liked is that even with this short exposure, the imaging setup still managed to show the Bow Shock (Brighten up your display if you dont see it) in front of a famous star LL Ori (marked with the arrow). Here is more about Bow Shock. Hubble captures this so beautifully:

Here is the complete Hubble image

Equipment & Imaging Details:
Telescope: Celestron C14
SBIG ST9XE @ -20 C
Autoguiding with AO8 at2 Hz with Internal Guiding
Custom Scientific LRGB Filters

Focal Length: 4200mm
F/ratio: 12
Image Scale: 0.962 arcseconds

Pitatus Crater

Tue, 9 Mar 2010 14:04:36 +0500

The largest crater in the picture is Pitatus, about 100 km wide, with a fractured floor. On the western side, below Hesiodus crater, there is a double ring crater which seems very interesting to me, there are not many of them on the lunar landscape. Is it possible a second hit made the inner ring?

There are a couple of half lava filled crater up there and a fault line on the west of Hesiodus.

‘Race Tracks’ on the Moon

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:53:29 +0500

This is one of my most favourite areas on the lunar surface and through the eyepiece it looks stunning. Above is the composite of two images, which i got from stacking 1,000 frames each file. The combined magnification is around 1,800 times.

In the middle is the strange HIPPALUS crater and here is an orbital view of this area.

Sirius B, Nearest White Dwarf

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:36:31 +0500

Few days back, i tired to see if my DBK31 camera can image our nearest white dwarf, 8.6 light years away, Sirius B. The results (right image) were interesting and in the final processed image, i could see Sirius B (about 8.5 magnitude star), a left over bright core of a long dead huge star, as a speck right under Sirius A (brightest star in the sky with a magnitude of -1.46).

The test image was a stack of 3,000 images and was quickly processed with Registax5.

Next night was cloudy and on the night of 14 February i was all prepared to image the ‘pup and the dog star’ as it is famously known.

Saturn in the eastern evening skies

Sun, 14 Feb 2010 14:46:08 +0500

Saturn has started to appear in the eastern skies; though low at altitude but its rings can be easily seen with a small telescope. I imaged this picture last evening when the clouds thinned out for a while. Not much to see here, Cassini devision is discernible but no equatorial belts are visible.

Planet Mars

Wed, 3 Feb 2010 15:58:30 +0500

Equipment:
Telescope: Celestron C14
Mount: Losmandy Titan
Camera: The Imaging Source DBK31
Filter: Astro-Engineering IR Cut
Barlow: Televue 2X

Imaging & Processing:
Frame Rate: 30 fps
Exposure: Auto
Time: 120 sec
Software: Registax 5, Photoshop CS4

Solar Eclipse Viewing session

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:12:51 +0500

Khwarizmic Science Society and Lahore Astronomical Society has arranged a session to watch the Solar Eclipse tomorrow.. Details are as followed:

Time: 11:30 AM - 01:30 PM, Friday, 15 Januray 2010.
Location: Jogging Track behind the Centre for High Energy Physics, Quaid-e-Azam (New) Campus, Lahore.

Here is the Map of the Location. We will be Safely observing it through C14 telescope with Solar Filters attached and through a big eyepiece.

Its an open event so anyone can come there.

Partial Solar Eclipse on 15th Januray, 2010.

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:20:28 +0500

This time it will be an Annular Solar Eclipse but from my hometown we will experience 32% of the Sun being eclipsed by our nearest celestial neighbour. Here is an Image from NASA webpage and you can se the details by clicking this image:

Montes Apenninus

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 20:13:22 +0500

Sometime in December 2009, i imaged this beautiful area in Infrared and did the processing but for some mysterious reason completely forgot this file. Found it today and posting it now.

Apennines is one of a kind region on the moon, visually it is stunning in good seeing and higher magnification. A lot of detail can be seen here.. Partial Eratosthenes Crater is in the bottom left of the image.

Jupiter with Great Red Spot & Red Spot Junior

Sat, 9 Jan 2010 14:59:27 +0500

One thing i hate about ‘Starry Night’ is that it is always completely wrong about predicting the position of GRS!

Okay so now after making a quick review about my favorite program, here is the image i took of Jupiter when it was 25 degrees (2.5 times the atmosphere) from the horizon yesterday evening. Lo and behold, ‘Red Spot Jr.’ is here and IO on the left and Europa on the right.. Pretty nice :)

Happy Birthday Jupiter!

Fri, 8 Jan 2010 10:40:39 +0500

So yesterday was the Birthday of Jovian System, how could i miss This party! so i tried to rush back home to my observatory but got late and just managed to get a glimpse on how Jupiter and its moons were looking when they were celebrating their 400th Birthday :)

On the night of January 7, 1610, Galileo in Italy first time in human history saw Planet Jupiter and “three fixed stars” which he later discovered as the moons of Jupiter.

Plato Crater

Fri, 8 Jan 2010 10:07:47 +0500

Sky conditions are getting worst in Lahore, with ever increasing fog which reflects so much city lights and does not allow precious heavenly photons to pass through.

Hence a low resolution image of the Moon.. but still i am ‘alive’ here and doing the imaging which i absolutely love with all my heart :)

Tycho Crater on the Moon, imaging in Fog in the air

Wed, 6 Jan 2010 19:31:32 +0500

So fog is covering our skies these days and keeping us away from our observations but we have to do something..right..so on Monday night i went to the observatory and first tried Mars. Immediately noticed very bad seeing since Mars was jumping all around.

So went on to the Moon.. Got about 10,000 frames here with 24 frames per second exposure, no filters. I did 10 points alignment in Registax and if you watch closely you will point out alignment errors which i believe is due to the bad seeing.. Anyways this image is not so bad considering the conditions.

Apollo 11 Landing Area

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 08:09:34 +0500

I have always wanted to image this special area..Apollo 11 landing site Mare Tranquilitatis and few weeks back, i gave it a shot. The “Imaging Source Camera” has been proving to be a great solar system imager that can image at many frames per second yet still capturing enough photons to get a nice image, with a lot less noise data.

Another technique i used was to install Infrared Band Pass filter from Astronomik. This filter has an output range of 807nm - 1100 nm wavelengths (so the above is essentially a heat image) and does a tremendously great job in cutting doing atmospheric destructive effects (twinkling) on imaging. Using an isolated wavelength band also helps in focusing to be more precise.

Speaking of focusing, it is very hard to get an accurate focus of a Planet, since it is not a point like object like stars, also atmospheric disturbances makes the process much more difficult. So, first i focus a nearby star and then slew the scope to the planet. Few months back, i got Kendrick Bahtinov Mask which works like magic..I was skeptical at first, about its accuracy for CCDing but have found it to be sensitive enough for a couple of degrees turn of the Focus Knob.. very impressed.

In this image, i spend a lot of time making the AVI file..in the end the total images were about 19,000 and since these images were uncompressed, the file size went upto 46GB!! No this is not a typo.. 46 GigaByte.. I need new hard disk and a super fast one.

As usual, i processed it in Registax..the above image is the stack of top 2,000 images.. I tried deconvolution in Maxim DL but then settled on Adobe Photoshop CS4’s processing capabilities.

The arrow marks the “Eagle” landing spot..

Earth Hour

Wed, 9 Dec 2009 14:10:36 +0500

Organized by WWF, Earth Hour is a Global Event which emphasizes on raising the awareness level for the looong life, with good health, of our dear old Mother Earth. I personally love this event, first and foremost it actually helps darkening the night sky for all of us who love to see the twinkling stars (well infact, we amateur and professional astronomers detest this twinkling with all our heart n soul because that means the seeing is bad), next Earth Hour makes me feel as if the whole earth belongs to me as much as i belong to her..just an amazing spiritual nirvana of my soul and for the whole 60 minutes of it!

Starting from just one city, Sydney, in just two years it has spread over 4,000 cities worldwide..earth is one planet loved by many indeed. Earth Hour Organization is asking your votes around the globe, a vote for our planet’s safe climate and heathy environment. You can cast your vote below. They will take your vote to recent Copenhagen Summit 2009.

Two nights at Thandiani, Abbottabad

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:35:07 +0600

On this Friday, with my brother Sameer and two friends Rauf & Naeem i went to a place in Himalaya. Thandiani, that literally means “cold” and its about 8,500 feet high and a heaven for astronomers. I wanted to image Jupiter before the season is over.

President Obama contributes in IYA2009

Thu, 8 Oct 2009 13:36:04 +0600

I could not resist blogging about this news: Astronomy Night at The White House.

Last night, President Obama was hosting a stargazing night at his place with some key figures from NASA along with Buzz Aldrin, Sally Ride, Mae Jemison and two young discoverers, “few other stars out tonight” as Obama put it.

Also present were 50 local middle school students, teachers and amateur astronomers. About 20 telescopes were set for the views of Jovian system, moon and interesting stars. They had also exhibited Moon Rocks and Meteorites. This was all done in the spirit of IYA2009 celebrations and the message from the president “If they can discover something great, so can any of you other students here tonight. All you need is a Passion for Science”.

What a wonderful experience it would have been for those kids, viewing objects many many light years away at the lawn of the White House with the President’s pat on the back. Will they ever forget to look at the night sky? How many of them will start studying hard Science Subjects, How many of them will be joining Astronomy, Physics, Mathematics departments later? and most of all in my opinion, how passionately will they be telling future generations not to stop pondering about the universe and everything we know and don’t know about it.

Okay fellows i have to let it out now: Can’t we do similar events here, in Pakistan. Is it that hard? okay so what do we need for that.. We have all sorts of telescopes, dedicated astronomy cameras, big astronomy binoculars, know-how of stars and constellations and most importantly tons of amateur astronomers who just love sleepless nights!

You have all seen what Khwarizmi Science Society has done so far in IYA2009 and still flying high with the immense enthusiasm for public outreach programs. Astronomy Societies in Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi hold regular sessions for starry talks and telescopes viewings. If we are asked by our President, Prime Minister or Chief Minister, can’t we mesmerize them with the beauty of heavens? Is this really asking too much or does our head of state get more threats than the US President? Why our related universities’ departments and institutions forget their social responsibilities..why cant they organize such gatherings where our young minds will get inspired? All it need is our own passion, our own love for educating our society, our own children.

‘World Space Week’, at Lahore

Mon, 5 Oct 2009 11:32:05 +0600

SUPARCO ‘Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission’, pakistan’s Space Agency, Khwarizmi Science Society, Lahore Astronomical Society and Society of the Sun are celebrating ‘World Space Week’ on 5th and 6th of October, 2009.

The venue is Gulshan Iqbal Park, Iqbal Town, Lahore. Me and my friends will be arriving there before Maghrib and will be setting up our telescopes and multimedia projectors. We will be showing images of KSS FALAKYATI MELAS (Astrofests), i will be presenting a basic intro of the night sky and the Universe.

Khwarizmi Society will be bringing there own telescope; LAST will bring Manual and GOTO scopes. We will also attempt ’First Light’ of KSS’ new Astronomy Video Camera with C14 for DSOs; i think it will work superbly.

We will be talking about astronomy, telescopes, night sky observation and will answer all sorts of questions from the public..everyone is welcomed!

Jupiter with its moon

Sun, 4 Oct 2009 13:22:54 +0600

My observatory recently got upgraded from a “humble” webcam (Phillips ToU), which i have used extensively in the past for planetary and lunar imaging, to The Imaging Source DBK 31AU03.AS. Its a colored CCD based camera, specially designed for Astronomy Imaging. I have huge hopes for this one with my C14.

Above is the test image for this camera. I got around 800 frames and processed about 500 in Registax 5, used deconvolution in Maxim DL 5 and some tweaks in Photoshop CS4.

This is not at all the best this camera can do..i am hoping to get much more frames in 2 minutes window (because jupiter rotates very fast, we cant use more time on this planet). Moon had also made the sky “noisy” and i got this AVI 2 hours after sunset so the sky was very turbulent.

In this month, I do want to go out to the North to a very fine dark sky to image some nice shots before the end of Jupiter season. Will blog more on that later..

Fifth Astrofest at Govt Girls School, Shahdara.

Sun, 4 Oct 2009 01:44:24 +0600

After a long wait for the Monsoon to end, we planned at went with our Multimedia equipment, Telescope and its gear to Govt. Higher Secondary School, Shahdara.

Hundreds of students were present there. KSS had arranged a ‘Quiz Competition’ for the students and then there was an introduction of Night Sky and a few topics of Astronomy.

I included many animations so they can see the concept and understand it easily.