Amateur Astronomers Catch Massive Jupiter Collision

Just when you think our tiny Solar System is at peace, news of rogue comets or ginormous asteroids hitting a nearby planet wipe all those thoughts away. Amateur astronomer Dan Peterson reported that he had captured a collision on Jupiter while doing routine observations the morning of September 10th. Dan Hall, another amateur astronomer who happen to be imaging the planet, posted this video on Flickr (seen above) showing the fiery impact.

I'm not a scientist nor a mathematician, but just mixing together a few Google image searches with a screen capture of the video leads me to believe that if we had a collision like this on Earth we would be adding ourselves to the fossil collections with the dinosaurs.

Someone tell me, is the below image pretty accurate? If it is we all owe Jupiter a huge thank you...

CPOD 8.2.12: Plato Moon Crater

This image was shot in San Diego, CA on July 27, 2012, of the 101 km wide Moon crater Plato. It was taken using a DMK 21AU618.AS camera attached to a Celestron CPC 800 8" SCT fitted with a Tele Vue 2.5x Powermate and Astronomik #742 Planet filter. The video was captured with IC Capture.AS 2.2 and the 1002 frames were stacked using RegiStax 6.1.

(Astrophotographer Jim Pontarelli via Astronomy Cameras Blog)

CPOD 8.1.12: Andromeda (M31) From Your Backyard

The Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years from Earth in the Andromeda constellation. Also known as Messier 31, M31, or NGC 224, it is often referred to as the Great Andromeda Nebula in older texts. (Wikipedia)

This stunning image was taken by astronomer Bob Anderson from his home in Southern England. Remarkably, this was Bob's first attempt at imaging M31, here are the details:

'Scope: TEC 140
Mount: ASA DDM60 Pro mount - an awesome bit of kit as even the 1,500 second subs were unguided!
Camera: FLI ML16803
Subs: 5 x 1,000 seconds using each of Astrodon Tru-Balance RGB filters plus 10 x 1,500 seconds using an Astrodon 3nm Ha filter
Software: PixInsight and Photoshop CS6

You can see more info on on his image and processing over at StarGazers Lounge.

Cosmic Pic of the Day 7.31.12: Full Solar Disc

Image via AstroBin from astronomer Andrew Kwon.

This is the first in what I hope to be a daily "Cosmic" picture posting. The goal is to feature images  from amateur astronomers, but could (and will) include anything.

5 of The World's Largest Telescopes

Seeing pictures of our cosmos is a beautiful thing, it sparks the imagination and pushes us to do and see more. The magical thing about astronomy is how accessible it is to anyone that has the interest. Starting out it can be very inexpensive (looking up is free), but the sky (literally) is the limit to how far you take an astronomy hobby. Where it can get expensive and seemingly inaccessible to most, is when you start talking about the world's largest telescopes. Below are the world's top five largest telescopes in order from smallest to largest.

5.Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) Aperture Size: 8.4 meters

Located on Mt. Graham in Tucson, Arizona, the LBT is a joint collaboration between the Italian astronomical community and several universities including; The University of Arizona, Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, The Ohio State University, and The University of Notre Dame.

The telescope is unique in that it is actually two 8.4 meter mirrors on one mount. Working in tandem, the two mirrors actually have the light gathering capabilities of an 11.8 meter telescope and the resolution capabilities of a 22.8 meter scope.

Of course, at that size, images are simply astonishing...

Messier 1 - This color image of Messier 1, the Crab Nebula, was taken at the Large Binocular Telescope during November 2006 by Vincenzo Testa and collaborators from Rome Observatory.

Messier 1 - This color image of Messier 1, the Crab Nebula, was taken at the Large Binocular Telescope during November 2006 by Vincenzo Testa and collaborators from Rome Observatory.

4. Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) Aperture size: 9.2 meters

Built with a low cost in mind. the HET has a very unique hexagonal mirror array design. The scope has 91 identical hexagonal mirrors that measure 1 meter by 1 meter and weigh 250 pounds each. Ran by The University of Texas at Austin and located at the McDonald Observatory.

The Hobby-Eberly Telescope has started a 3 year observation called HETDEX (which stands for Hobby-Eberly Dark Energy Experiment) whose goal is to find the existence of dark energy.

A scientific revolution is underway. It will tell us more about the universe than we have ever known before, because it will tell us what makes up almost three-quarters of all the matter and energy in the universe. It will tell us if the laws of gravity are correct, and reveal new details about the Big Bang in which the universe was born.

In 2011 the HET and McDonald Observatory were threatened by the Texas wildfires, luckily it went unscathed.

3. Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) Aperture size: ~10 meters

The Southern African Large Telescope is located in, you guess it, South Africa. SALT is funded by several countries including South Africa, the United States, Germany, Poland, India, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. After some minor imaging problems, SALT was fully operational in 2010. Much like HET, SALT uses a hexagonal design with 91 hexagonal mirrors that are 1.2 meters wide making the total aperture of the telescope nearly 11 meters wide.

First light image from SALT:  NGC 6530
(Lagoon Nebula 2)

2. Keck and Keck II Aperture size: 10 meters

The Keck and Keck II are twin 10 meter telescopes sitting atop of Hawaii's Mauna Kea volcano. Each scope has 36 hexagonal segments that work either as separate scopes or in tandem as one. Due to their altitude and position in the Pacific Ocean the Keck scopes are able to take some of the most clear images of any scope due to not fighting any atmospheric distortion.

A false-color composite near-infrared image of Jupiter and its moon Io, taken July 20 Hawaii time (July 21 UT) by the Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea using adaptive optics (AO) to sharpen the image.

1. Gran Telescopio CANARIAS (GTC) Aperture size: 10.4 meters

Currently the largest telescope in the world, the GTC is, to some degree, the last of it's kind. It has a total light collecting area spanning a whopping 75.7 square meters. Located in the Spanish Canary Islands and mostly funded by the Spanish government, the GTC will reign supreme as the largest telescope in the world until the revolutionary Extremely Large Telescope is functional.

M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, in Canes Venatici is famous for its beautiful spiral structure, was discovered by Messier in October 1773.

Incredible Jupiter Occultation

Here is an incredible Moon/Jupiter occultation using a Skywatcher 12" Dobsonian. I don't know much about the astronomer that shot the footage, other than his YouTube page, but I do know that it is awesome.

(via Google+)

The Milky Way Over Mount Everest

(Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/coolbiere/6884815414/sizes/m/in/photostream/)

Astrophotographer Shoots Incredible Time Lapse Montage of the Milky Way

Being able to view the Milky Way with any kind of clarity is a sight like no other - being able to get a time lapse video is even better. That is exactly what astrophotographer Harley Grady has been doing the past couple years and the results are astounding. Below is a montage video that brings together many of his videos into something that can only be described as cosmic bliss.

Harley uses the following equipment:

• Canon 5D MK II
• Canon 24-105mm f2.8
• Canon 16-35mm f2.8

If you are interested in how he makes his videos, Harley also posted a quick tutorial on how you can get started.

Harley also won The Royal Observatory’s Best Newcomer Award for his shot titled “Zodiacal Light on the Farm”.

If you are as impressed with his work as I am, be sure and check him out on YouTube, Flicker, and Vimeo.

Amateur Astronomer Captures Rare Glimpse Of Infant Solar System

The photo above was taken by Rolf Wahl Olsen, ‘amateur’ astronomer from New Zealand. The word amateur should be used lightly, as these are the first shots taken of the planetary disk surrounding the popular star Beta Pictoris (β Pic). Olsen took the pictures using a 10-inch telescope from his home. Here are the mind boggling equations he used to get his picture!

First I collected 55 images of Beta Pictoris at 30 seconds each. The dust disc is most prominent in IR so ideally a better result would be expected with the use of an IR pass filter. Since I only have a traditional IR/UV block filter I just imaged without any filter, to at least get as much IR light through as possible.

Next step was to capture a similar image of a reference star under the same conditions. For this purpose I used Alpha Pictoris as the paper suggested. This star is of nearly the same spectral type (A7IV compared to Beta’s A6V) and is also close enough to Beta in the sky so that the slight change in telescope orientation should not affect the diffraction pattern. However, since the two stars have different magnitudes I needed to calculate how long to expose Alpha for in order to get a similar image which I could subtract from the Beta image.

The magnitude difference between the stars is 3.86(Beta) - 3.30(Alpha) = 0.56

Due to the logarithmic nature of the magnitude scale we know that a difference of 1 magnitude equals a brightness ratio of 2.512. Therefore 2.512 to the power of the numerical magnitude difference then equals the variation in brightness.

2.512^0.56 = 1.67, so it appears Alpha is 1.67 times brighter than Beta. This means that exposure for Alpha should be 1/1.67 = 0.597x that of Beta. I took the liberty of using 0.6x for simplicity’s sake…

So I collected 55 images of 18 seconds (30 x 0.6) for Alpha.

You can see more of his work at his site and read more on this story on Discovery!