Well, finally, we are starting to get a few hours of true darkness back again – hooray!!
Both the Hyperstar III/814C in the south dome, and the mini-WASP array in the north dome are fully functional (makes a change, usually something isn’t working) – so it’s all systems go for the new season.
I have a few exciting projects listed up on the whiteboard for the coming months, so let’s just hope for some decent imaging weather so I can cross a few of them off.
This morning as I woke up, a science fiction story entered my mind, complete. Here is that story, without adding any detail or embellishments, to keep it short.
The time is the present. The World is in political turmoil, not helped in the slightest by the Pandemic raging around the planet. If you have checked the various social media outlets you may be surprised to see a greater number of UFO sightings than usual. Well one of those UFOs decided to make a landing today and this is what was relayed to the gathered crowd via its sound system.
“Your World is currently in a state of chaos. You seem unable to organise yourselves effectively to sort out your problems, so we are here to help you. I am leaving you with a data bank. I ask you to solve one of your Millennial problems, any one, it doesn’t matter which one, and then you scan your solution using the panel on the front of the data bank and we will then show you how to sort out your problems.”
With that the data bank was deposited on the pavement outside the UFO and the UFO lifted off silently into the daytime sky.
Hundreds of cell-phones had recorded the event and it wasn’t too long before things got organised to enable the solution of a Millenial Problem in double quick time. The data bank was taken to a hotel on the bank of Lake Geneva in Switzerland, together with 150 of the World’s top mathematicians (and their families) from Russia, America, Germany, U.K. , China, India and Hungary. Fully aware of the importance of their task the mathematicians quickly organised themselves into groups, each group looking at a separate Millennial Problem, and then they got to work.
For the first year, nothing much seemed to be happening, the Problems were as intractable as ever. Then in the middle of year two a tiny gap appeared in one of the Problems that showed promise. All the mathematicians now concentrated on this one problem and by the middle of year 3, considerable progress had been made. Finally, at the beginning of year 5 the problem had been completely solved and the mathematicians had their 120-page proof to scan into the data bank.
Under the glare of the World’s media the event was being viewed by the greatest population ever to view an event on planet Earth. A Hungarian mathematician was chosen to be the one to scan in the valuable documents and with shaking hands he proceeded to do so. With the 120th page scanned in, the scanner surface became a display surface, and this is what it showed.
“Congratulations! By a concerted International effort by your World’s best mathematicians you have solved one of your most difficult mathematical problems. In comparison, your Political problems are almost trivial. So get on with it!”
I just received a mail asking how you collimate the Sky 90. I do not have a Sky90 in front of me, so some of this will be down to my failing memory. From memory I think there are 3 adjustment screws (widely spaced) sitting behind 6 adjustment screws (more closely spaced). Don’t touch the 3 adjustment screws but do all the collimation with the 6 screws.
You now need to buy yourself an artificial star, which is no more than an LED behind a tiny Aluminium aperture. Set the artificial star about 30 feet away from the Sky 90 and get an image of the star on a webcam fitted to the Sky90.
Now I think the software I had that made the collimation a doddle was Sharpcap, but I couldn’t swear to it, but it made setting up very easy as it locked on to whichever artificial star you click on (I worked with the smallest aperture).
It is now a good idea to have 6 Allen keys, one for each adjustement screw, or this will be a VERY long process. Focus the artificial star and then move very slightly IN and OUT of focus to set up the collimation on both sides of focus. With the Sky90 slightly out of focus (on either side) you should see Airy rings, and the central ring will be displaced from dead central of the ring pattern. You now have to see how untightening/tightening the adjustment screws moves the central Airy ring. Adjust the screws until the central Airy ring is dead central on both sides of focus.
That’s it. From a fresh start it probably takes me around 4 – 6 hours with several breaks. It is very tedious.
For reasons that we will all know, 2020 was a bit of a write-off when it came to keeping New Forest Observatory stuff up to date. I have just entered the M87 data I took last night and see that it was a year ago when I took a bunch of other Hyperstar images that never made it onto the site. So I’ll rectify that now.
In April 2020 I took an HSIII image of NGC3631.
In April 2020 I took an HSIII image of M51.
On April 22nd 2020 I took an HSIII image of NGC3718.
On April 15th I got a shot of the supernova in the Siamese Twins (galaxies) using the HSIII.
And finally on April 25th 2020 I took a couple of hours of 10-minute subs of the Leo Trio using the HSIII.
Well I wasn’t expecting to get out imaging last night, but it was clear and the Moon was not directly intrusive so I fired up the Hyperstar III on the C11 with the Starlight Xpress 814C OSC CCS and Lodestar guider and set to work. Almost. It took an hour to sort out gremlins which had come in from God knows where. For some reason Maxim had lost both the camera and guider settings since it was last used a few months ago and it took me an hour of various permutations and combinations to get things back to how they were.
O.K. so the system is tracking and imaging fine so what am I going to go for? I have always fancied trying to get the relativistic jet emanating from M87, and as I have about an hour before it crashes into next door’s stupid great Blue Cedar which belongs more in Exbury gardens rather than a Brockenhurst back garden, M87 it will be.
I randomly chose 4-minute long subs so with the 1-minute dither time I will be taking 5-minutes per sub so 12 subs per hour.
M87 roughly centred and off I went. Good news right from the off – I could actually see a little blip (the jet) on subs as they were downloaded to the computer, so there shouldn’t be any problem with the processed image. Except there was. If I did my normal process using Curves to drag the data out, the jet got lost in the glare from M87. However, if I used the Maxim Digital Development Filter (I usually reserve that one for globular clusters) then the jet magically appeared.
Below is a magnified image of just M87 and the jet, and the second image is the whole field of view of the 814C OSC CCD with the magnified view dropped in as an insert.
Well we have managed to survive 2020 and now await the developments of 2021.
As per usual, this imaging season has been complete rubbish so far with only a couple of good nights since the beginning of October 2020 – but that’s the way the weather seems to go nowadays.
In a vain effort to try and cheer myself up – here is my 7-minutes of fame from 10 years ago when Chris Packham came round to the New Forest Observatory to make a short programme for “Inside Out”. Enjoy!!
(10) New Forest Observatory on the box – YouTube
September 24th, 2020 – Got today’s EPOD with the single framer of M31 using the Sky90 array. My aim this season is to get a DEEEEEEP 2-framer of this one with the Sky90s so that I get the tips of both ends of the galaxy in the field of view. I must say the season so far has not been too bad at all, certainly better than the last 3 or 4 years that’s for sure.
https://epod.usra.edu/blog/2020/09/epod-20th-the-splendid-andromeda-spiral-galaxy.html
Got today’s (20th Anniversary) EPOD with “First High-Quality Real Stereo Image of Pluto” with Brian May (who did all the work on this one).
Got yesterday’s EPOD with my recent Hyperstar III image of the M51 region.
https://epod.usra.edu/blog/2020/05/m51-and-group.html
Last night’s effort with the Hyperstar. Only 13 x 5-minute subs so still pretty noisy unfortunately. This is the NGC3631 region with a huge pile of faint fuzzies at the top (North).
