The Amateur Astronomy Page

[Doc B]

Very Interesting OC! Roughly, what's the "window of opportunity" to catch a picture like that? Minutes, hours, a day? Of course, all that's contingent upon cooperative weather!

[OLDE CUTLER]

Very Interesting OC! Roughly, what's the "window of opportunity" to catch a picture like that? Minutes, hours, a day? Of course, all that's contingent upon cooperative weather!

Yes, the weather is the biggest thing. Cloudy skies will mess up the best plans. The transits of both Mercury and Venus both take several hours, depending if they are going across dead center or nearer the edge. If I remember correctly, the last transit of Mercury I pictured in 2016 took over 5 hours to transpire. That way you can get a series of pictures to show the progress of the transiting planet.

[Doc B]

Very Interesting OC! Roughly, what's the "window of opportunity" to catch a picture like that? Minutes, hours, a day? Of course, all that's contingent upon cooperative weather!

Yes, the weather is the biggest thing. Cloudy skies will mess up the best plans. The transits of both Mercury and Venus both take several hours, depending if they are going across dead center or nearer the edge. If I remember correctly, the last transit of Mercury I pictured in 2016 took over 5 hours to transpire. That way you can get a series of pictures to show the progress of the transiting planet.

Very cool!

[OLDE CUTLER]

Some of you may have seen the news that Space X"s Elon Musk is getting into the business of providing high speed internet through a series of as many as 12,000 satellites orbiting the earth (60 have been launched so far). Must be a good thing you may think, until you consider that there now are about 2100 active satellites orbiting the earth. Putting another 12,000 satellites into earth orbit will be a nightmare come true for astronomers, both professional and amateur. They will orbit the earth at an altitude of about 340 miles, so at any given time there would be hundreds of them above the horizon. I know when amateurs from our local astronomy club go out into a dark sky site to do imaging, it is already a problem when you are making an exposure and a satellite makes a streak across your image and ruins it. Imagine another 12,000 satellites added to this. And if it is not bad enough for amateurs, professional radio astronomers will be nearly put out of business by the large number of satellites broadcasting a signal from space and interfering with their scientific research. Of course the billionaire Musk had the solution to this problem by saying that "all telescopes should be in space anyway". I wonder how much it will cost to get my LX90 into earth orbit?

[Railsplitter]

An additional 12,000 satellites orbiting the Earth would probably cause problems that I can't even imagine in addition to the imaging problems that you mentioned. 12,000 is a lot!

I can already spot a satellite passing by in a relatively dark location in a matter of minutes. All I have to do is look up in the sky and wait a minute or two. Maybe four minutes at the most. Then I'll spot another one a few minutes later.

Too much of a good thing if you ask me. Generally speaking, I like modern technology but this is just asking for troubles. I hope it doesn't happen.

[Steve Warden]

Heard on the news that space junk could really start to pose a problem.
The risk of collisions of junk with legitimate satellites could cause a domino effect of collisions, which will, in turn really throw a wrench into what those satellites are broadcasting. They even stated that it could set back civilization by ??? years? decades?

[OLDE CUTLER]

Monday, November 11, 2019 will be the day of the transit of Mercury which will be visible in North America WEATHER PERMITTING. Weather is always the big IF and this fall time of the year seems to be more cloudy than other times of the year. This is the event I mentioned in prior posts in this thread and showed the comparison pictures between transits of Mercury and Venus. Here in eastern South Dakota the transit will be in progress when the sun rises, so about 7:15 AM I hope to be able to see something. I will have my rig set up as pictured above, the Meade LX90 with Baader solar filter and Canon XSi DSLR camera connected to provide live video output to a monitor as well as capability to take still photos when desired. The transit will last over 4 hours, so hopefully even if there is cloud cover, there will be an opportunity to see something thru breaks in the clouds.

I found another picture I took of a transit of Mercury, this one November 8, 2006. At the time I had a completely different setup and it produced a very different picture. The color of the photo is quite different than my present setup because at the time I had a solar filter made from Thousand Oaks solar film. It filtered the suns rays differently, and gave a more orangish colored solar disc. Also the telescope used was a Discovery 6" f/8 Dobsonian and the camera was a Fuji S5100. Mercury is the tiny dot as indicated by the arrow..The large black dot to the right is a sunspot that was visible that day.

Anyway we will just have to keep our fingers crossed that there will not be to much cloud cover at the time of the transit. I will post some pictures after the event if I can get some.

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

Can't wait to see your pictures!!

[OLDE CUTLER]

Weather conditions not ideal here. The sun just came out of the clouds and I got this shot, not the best, but you can see Mercury as the small round black dot as it crosses the face of the sun. Some of the high thin clouds are also visible in the picture. Mercury is just above and to the left of center. As I am typing this more clouds are obscuring the sun. Hope to get more photos between breaks.

[doglegg]

A cool shot OC, I found it.

[OLDE CUTLER]

Heres one thats a little better. The clouds are moving quickly, so you have to note the direction they are going, and wait for a hole in the clouds to let the sun through. Oh, and I should have mentioned that it is only 10 degrees here with wind, so the windchill is below zero while you are manipulating the gear with bare hands. Mercury just to the left of center.

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

Incredible pictures! It certainly gives you a much better idea of the relative size of the Sun compared to Mercury - and then you also have to remember that Mercury is located about 2/3rds of the way from the Earth to the Sun, so it is actually much smaller than it looks as it traverses - and, of course, your picture of the Sun doesn't show the complete size of the Sun's ever-changing corona. The Sun is BIG - and it is considered a relatively small star!!

[Railsplitter]

It's amazing that the Sun is 93 million miles from Earth and we can still feel the heat from it on our faces.

This is awesome stuff OC. Thank you for sharing your pics and knowledge with us.

[OLDE CUTLER]

Another pic thru the clouds. Even when there is a hole to shoot thru, there is thin cloudy stuff visible in the photos. I am trying to get a series of photos so you can see the movement of Mercury as it transits across the face of the solar disc. Note Mercury now is below and right of the center of the solar disc.

[OLDE CUTLER]

Just about over at this point. Mercury at lower right of solar disc.Keep looking at that same point as Mercury transits to the edge. Got lucky at the end, a nice opening in the clouds allowed these pics.

Now to get ready for the next transit of Mercury, November 13, 2032.

[Steve Warden]

Cool!
Thanks, OC, for sharing!

[TwoFlowersLuggage]

It's amazing that the Sun is 93 million miles from Earth and we can still feel the heat from it on our faces.

This is awesome stuff OC. Thank you for sharing your pics and knowledge with us.

Enough energy to char the skin of all the pasty-faced tourists at the beach!

[Railsplitter]

Enough energy to char the skin of all the pasty-faced tourists at the beach!

Lol. I recon so.

[cudgee]

Unfortunately i do not have any pictures, but i witnessed nature at it's best yesterday morning, you will have to use your imagination, but i have never seen anything like it before, and probably never will again. At 6.15 AM the full moon was setting on the western horizon, it was at about 25-30 degrees above the horizon and a rich creamy color, within the next 15 minutes it had completely disappeared below the horizon, changing to a blood red deep color as it approached the horizon. It was like watching it in a slow motion replay, but it happened so quickly, absolutely brilliant. Space is an amazing place. It seemed to be a reminder of Remembrance/Veterans Day, which was also very poignant.

[OLDE CUTLER]

For those of you who have not read about it yet, a second moon has been discovered orbiting earth on Feb. 15 by the Catalina Sky survey in Arizona. It will not be readily visible as it is only about 6 feet times 11 feet in size. It is thought to be a small captured asteroid that was pulled into the earth/moons gravity about 3 years ago. It is also thought that it will not be staying with us long before departing for other open space.

[Dinadan]

Olde Cutler - Those were some cool photos of the Sun and Mercury that you posed back in November. Looking at the November 11 photos I did not see a single sunspot. What do you think about this Solar Cyle?

Am I the only one keeping an eye on Betelgeuse? If it goes supernova I want to be sure to get a good look! Pretty much every night the last couple of months I have been stepping out on the back to check on it.

[OLDE CUTLER]

The solar cycle seems to be at the minimum now and for a while to come. I look at the solar disc nearly every day with the solar filtered telescope and have not seen a sunspot in quite some time. I will post a picture of the next one I can catch. It is a good idea to keep an eye on "Beetle Juice" as it could blow any millennium now. It had been dimming for the past months, but seems to have hit its second wind lately and is brightening slightly. Obviously it is in an unstable time in its life and will not go on forever like that. But when it could supernova is anyone's guess. It will be SPECTACULAR when it does go supernova. Sometimes I think about our own sun and as part of its life cycle in a few billion years will start to expand until its surface grows out beyond Mercury, Venus, Earth, and maybe as far as Mars orbit. All those planets (and us with it) will be incinerated so that there would not even be a trace that they ever existed. While it would really be sad that no trace of the life on earth was ever here, it may be even more tragic that all evidence would be erased of all the really nice old KNIVES on earth!!! This is probably what has happened to many civilizations that never evolved into their technological ages before their suns became unstable and destroyed all evidence of their existence.

I should add also that since "Beetle Juice" is 600-700 light years from earth, it is possible that it has already gone supernova and we will not be getting the news for quite a while.

[Dinadan]

I have been hoping for a Solar Minimum like the one that caused the year without a summer for most of my life. I live in a hot climate!

I realize that on the time scale of stars it is really very unlikely that Betelgeuse will go supernova in my lifetime, but on the other hand it is probably just as likely this year as any of the past thousand or future thousand years. Regarding the fact that we will not know if it goes supernova for 600 years ... that is just the way that deep space and time work. Heck, if an asteroid hits the Moon we will not see the impact until 1.5 seconds after the fact ... that is just the facts of life.

[OLDE CUTLER]

I had my binocular rig out last night to look for the new comet that was recently discovered. It is called Comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas, and at this point is not yet visible to the naked eye, but it is expected to brighten significantly between now and early June. If you are familiar with the night sky objects M81 and M82, last night the location of the comet made an equilateral triangle with those two deep sky objects. In other words, in the sky just off the bowl of Ursa Major (the big dipper). In the process of looking last night I also got to see something we had discussed a few weeks ago, that is Elon Musk and his plan to put about 12000 satellites into orbit to broadcast the internet to everyone. As I was looking last night, I had the opportunity to see a "freight train" of satellites, 8 or 9 of them in the same path go over in a period of just a few minutes. Musk is launching 60 at a time and now has approximately 360 already in orbit of the 12000 he has planned. His comments that the satellites will not affect astronomers is ludicrous.
I use my home made parallel arm mount to handle the 20 x 80 mega view binocs. They are quite heavy to handle manually. Note the counter weight on the opposite end of the arm to balance the unit. Did not see it yet, the sky right in town does not offer the contrast yet to see the comet and the sky last night was kind of "milky", that it the seeing conditions were not real good. I will try it again tonight if clear with my small ETX telescope.

The binocular can be raised or lowered and still stay aimed at the target. This is really handy when you have people of different heights like adults and kids who want a look.

[Sharpnshinyknives]

Thank you for posting that. Very interesting. I like that contraption for the binoculars. That would work great also for a camera I assume?
I will be watching for this comet now.