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Another movie of the telescope at Wast Hills, actually these pics were taken during the most recent night we had out there which produced some nice pics (see [here]), the first one was only over a short period of time where as this video covers all the way from just before sunset to just after sunrise... (if below does not work try the link directly at [youtube.com])

Whilst observing the other week I grabbed some images taken by the webcams out at Wast Hills with the intention of putting together a short animation of the telescope observing. I'm pleased to say that it came out quite well (though some work could be done - i.e. taking a longer dataset and move rapid images.. but its a start), see below:

(if you can't see the above the see the youtube page directly [here] or try the higher resolution (15mb) version [here] - it looks considerably better).

How was this made... in short using imagemagick on Ubuntu. To annimate the image and to decide what frames to junk I used:

animate -delay 45 -loop 2 *.jpg

But if you want to save the resulting animation you have to use:

convert -delay 30 *.jpg -loop 1 playme.gif

To stick it on youtube I wanted to make an avi file from the gif, so I used ffmpeg (well I used convert first but of course this is not necessary):

convert test.gif test%05d.jpg
ffmpeg -r 5 -i test%05d.jpg -y -s 4cif -b 5000000 -an test.avi

On Tuesday I took Astrosoc out to the University of Birmingham Observatory at Wast Hills for a BBQ (pictures from the social side later) and a night of observing. It was a fantastic night with probably the most clear skies I've ever seen at Wast Hills, for the visual observers they claim to have had the best view of the Milky Way ever at Wast Hills (to even see it is a almost a shock given we aren't too far out of the city).

Since the title of the post includes nebulae lets start with them. We managed to get some decent images of some lovely nebulous regions. We started off the night, well it was still fairly light when we got this image, with the Ring Nebula (M57, 2x30s BRV):

We also observed the Lagoon nebula - M8 ( 2x10s BRV ) is a giant interstellar cloud in the constellation Sagittarius. It is classified as an emission nebula and as an H II region.

The Veil Nebula, also known as the Cygnus Loop or the Witch's Broom Nebula, is a large, relatively faint supernova remnant in the constellation Cygnus (2x30s in BVR).

We took a quick view of IC5070 - Pelican Nebula (30s BRV) - I'm pretty sure we can do much better than this quick snapshot but it does show some nice dense gas clouds:

M97 - Owl Nebula (30s BRV) showing the eyes and maybe a bit more - slightly deeper required:

M27 - Dumbbell Nebula (30s BRV):

IC 5146 - Cocoon Nebula (30s BRV):

A close second to the Veil nebula in my favourite image of the night, M20 - the Trifid Nebula is an H II region located in Sagittarius (2x30s BRV):

We weren't so successful with the North American Nebula, NGC7000 - North American Nebula (30s BRV) taken at Wast Hills - clearly no nebulosity can be seen (thus we either didn't observe deep enough or in the wrong patch of the nebula as it is fairly large):

Star Clusters:

Wild Duck cluster (M11; 30s BVR)

NGC6760 - a globular cluster in the constellation Aquila (30s BRV):

Galaxies:

Moving a bit further away... M63 - the Sunflower Galaxy (30s BVR):

M108 (30s BRV):

Stephan's quintet - 4 of which are part of a compact galaxy group (30s R):

M31 - the centre of the Andromeda Galaxy (30s BRV)

M51 - The Whirlpool Galaxy (2x30s BRV):

NGC 6822 - Barnard's Galaxy is in this field though not very clear, it is probably the faint nebulous region (30s BRV):

Last week we took a week off to explore fantastic Barcelona... I'll get round to putting together a proper post about this later in the week (after [Download]..) but for now here are some pictures that can be found on my flickr account (basically this is a test to see how pictobrowser works):

Before the age of modern photographic and CCD observations α Cassiopeiae was labelled as a variable star, though this variability has not been seen with modern instrumentation. We present an analysis of 3 years of high precision space-based photometric measurements of the suspected variable star α Cassiopeiae, obtained by the broad band Solar Mass Ejection Imager (SMEI) instrument on board the Coriolis satellite. Over the 3 years of observations the star appears to not show any significant variability. Also, data from the Hipparcos epoch photometry annex shows no significant variability.

For more see [http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.4223].

.. another imaging session at Wast Hills. We have been rather lucky with the weather as of late (3 planned observing nights in a row have been rather clear!) and we managed to do some imaging again last Saturday and here are the results...

M101 that fantastic Pinwheel Galaxy (10x30s exposures in u,v,r):

M16 the Eagle Nebula (10x30s exposures in u,v,r ; I think this is a considerable step up from the last image I took with more nebulosity seen, to compare see [here]):

M17 the Omega Nebula (this object is between 5,000 and 6,000 light-years from Earth and it spans some 15 light-years in diameter; 10x30s exposures in u,v,r). This was probably my favourite image of the whole night:

Another view of M51 - the Whirlpool galaxy, I think I prefer the earlier image I made (see here) of this but this highlight the gas features (20x30s exposures in u,v,r):

M64 - the Blackeye Galaxy - slightly disappointing, still you can see the feature for which it has its name. This needs us to take off the focal reducer and do far deeper imaging. (5x30s exposures in u,v,r):

The colourful Ring Nebula - M57 (5x30s exposures in u,v,r) - this is one of the smallest objects we can see with the current setup. I'm very pleased with the colours and it has come out much better than I had expected.

M82 - the Cigar Galaxy (5x30s exposures in u,v,r), I think we can see more features this time but the colours aren't as clear as the earlier image I took.

I think the title says most of this, well I'm slightly lying since I really shouldn't call myself a Dr until I have made the minor corrections to my thesis / done the awards ceremony... but effectively I'm a doctor of astrophysics after passing my viva on my thesis entitled "From planets to galaxies; the low frequency radio sky".... more in the future...

A while back now (6th December 2008) Astrosoc (well me, Rich and Joe) went observing on the Poynting roof to try out the Meade DSI Pro II in combination with the 10" Newtonian reflector that Astrosoc own. In short the observing conditions were fantastic but we had quite a few problems setting up the camera. We got a few shots but came to the conclusion that we really need to use a smaller telescope (or focal reducer) - more to come on this over the next few week hopefully now we have a smaller GOTO telescope. Anyway we managed to get a quick and out of focus shot of the Moon but its a start:

Whilst on the roof we had a bit of fun taking shots of ourselves observing, I particularly like this one I took of Joe whilst he aligns the telescope with a green laser on Orion:

Speaking of Joe and green lasers:

and here all three of us are looking dazzled by the bright flash (oh and yes that is a shopping trolley, we are students after all!):

Earlier that day I managed to take this shot of the Moon over the University campus:

It was such a clear day, shame we didn't manage to get any better shots - there is always next time I guess.

I've finally gotten around to finish off the processing of the less interesting observations we took at Wast Hills back on the 4th April. Most of the images here aren't colour but some are quite striking and we will eventually go back and take colour images of them. If you haven't already read - the first post relating to these images can be found [here] and the more recent, better, observations can be found [here]

Well lets start of with a nice colour image of the open star cluster M36 (30s in bgr):

Staying with the star cluster theme (30s in bgr), NGC869:

Going a bit fainter, and the detail is hard to see in this one, we have the Owl Nebula (30s bg20):

Next we have the striking spirals of M65 and M66 (30s bg20):

M105 is the is the brightest elliptical galaxy in the Leo I or M96 group of galaxies and it can clearly be seen at the centre of this image (30s bg20):

The grand spiral galaxy, M101 (30s bg20):

and the fainter but also a spiral, M99:

M102 lenticular galaxy in Draco (30s bg20):

M64 the famous Black Eye galaxy (30s bg20):

M42, the Orion nebula, firstly to see the detail at the centre (bg20 30s):

and then to see the glorious extended gas cloud (r 30s):

M84, M86 and NGC4387 - looking into the Virgo cluster of galaxies (bg20 30s):

Last Sat, like the other week (see [here]), took Birmingham Astronomical Society out to the University of Birmingham Observatory. It was again a lovely clear night - far from what was predicted earlier in the week. We were able to learn from the observing of earlier in the month and I'm rather pleased with the images we produced (again, I'm sure we can do much better but this is a definite increase in quality).

Let start with an image that we observed last time (you can really see the increase in quality from the last one, [here]) - M51 - the Whirlpool Galaxy (10x30 secs in r,g 10 x 1min b):

The next image was actually the last we observed on the night, as it didn't rise above the horizon limit of the telescope early (actually it was around 2am), the Eagle Nebula (M16) - with this one I feel longer exposures are definitely needed (and maybe a H-alpha image) but not a bad start (10x30 secs in r,g 10 x 1min b) with the pillars of creation clearly visible :

Going back to the galaxies we had a look at the sombrero galaxy (M104) with a much clearer view than last time (10x30 secs in r,g 10 x 1min b) with the dust lane nicely visible (this includes a cosmic ray removal routine):

The barred spiral M106 in the constellation Canes Venatici. (5 x 30 sec in rg, 5 x 1min b):

M109 (also known as NGC 3992) is a barred spiral galaxy approximately 46 million light-years (30s in r,g,b):

M108 (also known as NGC 3556) is an edge-on spiral galaxy in the constellation Ursa Major (30s in r,g,b):

The quasar (arrow points it out) 3C273 (1min exposure bg20 filter), it is the optically-brightest quasar in our sky (m ~ 12.9), and one of the closest with a redshift, z, of 0.158:

M105 (also known as M105 and NGC 3379) is an elliptical galaxy in the constellation Leo (30s bg20):

M 87 (also known as M87, Virgo A or NGC 4486) is a giant elliptical galaxy and brightest galaxy within the Virgo cluster, located some 55 million light years away (image is 30s bg20) - our image clearly shows other galaxies in the cluster:

Away from the galaxies we took images of a couple of globular clusters. M92 is a globular cluster in the constellation Hercules (5 x 30s in rg, 5 x 1min b):

M13 (NGC 6205, sometimes called the Great Globular Cluster in Hercules) is a globular cluster in the constellation of Hercules (5 x 30s in rg, 5 x 1min b):

We started the evening with a quick image of M1 - the Crab Nebula which is a supernova remnant in the constellation of Taurus (10 x 30 rg, 1min b):

To show some science we had a quick play with the spectrograph and we managed to take a low resolution image of Saturn (30s exposure with central wavelength of H-alpha), with the planet in the centre of the spectrum (looking down vertical axis) with the rings outside (clearly less bright):

For pointing purposes we also aimed the spectrograph at Mizar, getting:

It was an absolutely excellent night of astronomy, lets hope the next one is so clear!

The other week I took Birmingham Astronomical Society out to the University of Birmingham Observatory. It was a lovely clear night and the first chance I've had in a number of years for a good session of observing. Its the first time I've tried successfully to use the new Meade telescope for astronomical imaging. We have a pretty nice setup and these are just the first images, I expect we can get much better once we get used to the telescopes characteristics and the filters. Anyway, here are a few images:

M104 - Sombrero_Galaxy

M82 - the Cigar Galaxy

M51 - Whirlpool Galaxy

Saturn

My otherhalf has a Samsung U600 and she has recently been having a few problems when she goes to write a text, it basically freezes when she hits space after the first word. It seemed to come and go and last weekend it just got worse.

A bit of googling can go a long way but most of the "fixes" were either: take it back to the shop (normally a very good idea, but out of warrant), just not use the T9 predictive text as this is the route of the problem (works but I think she wants predictive text!), or upgrade the firmware (I never like doing things like this and the posts suggested it didn't always get rid of the issue).

I thought there must be a restore factory setting option - and indeed there is but the one on the phone just puts the look back to default so you need to do something a bit fancier. Essentially you just give it a command. Note: make sure you have backed up everything off your phone this will delete everything that is on the phone (but not the stuff on the sim card). Just type in: *2767*3855# which resets the phone back to factory default settings - job done, all working.