A Rather Frustrating Night

Tonight was rather frustrating to say the least.  Buoyed up by taking the Rosette and Heart Nebulae a couple of nights ago, I decided to move my tripod mount to the other end of my garden in order to see some different targets than the ones I've been imaging recently - bad move!  

In my original position I'd got setting up down to just a few minutes as the tripod was level and it was already pointing at Polaris making polar alignment quick and easy each time.  Moving the tripod meant that I had to level and realign it and for some reason tonight it just didn't go smoothly.  I'm not even sure now if I was aligned on the Pole star!

That said, I did manage a half decent photo of NGC 281 - the PacMan Nebula in Cassiopeia.  It's not as good as either of my two previously nebulae shots as the stars are not completely round. But it was great to locate it and get something that resembled the target, despite the smoke from Bonfire Night part 2 and my neighbours' patio lights shining directly in my face.  I used the same exposure as last time, 7 minutes at ISO 800 with an l-eNhance narrowband filter on a crop sensor camera modded for infra-red light sensitivity.

After this I redid my polar alignment and things seemed to get worse!  Clouds were also starting to appear so I started rushing things and quickly went for B44, the famous Horsehead Nebula in Orion. I only had time to do one single shot and, whilst doing it, I managed to click the tripod resulting in the 'tadpoles' you can see in the image below.  In spite of all this, I was very pleased to see the horse's head pop out of the nebula as this was the first time I've ever seen it. This single record shot took quite a lot of processing to remove noise and make it acceptable for viewing. But don't worry, I'll be revisiting this one a few times this winter!

I finished the evening on a patch of cloud-free sky almost directly overhead and fortunately M45, the Pleiades in Taurus were showing quite well there.  I've never managed to bring out much of the nebulosity in this open star cluster, and the same was true of tonight. Another one to revisit methinks.

The Pleiades or Seven Sisters Asterism

The Pleiades or Messier 45 are an example of an open star cluster, a group of stars that were all born around the same time from a gigantic cloud of gas and dust. They are one of the most easily recognisable star patterns (sometimes known as an asterism) in the night sky, although whoever gave them their popular name of the 'Seven Sisters' clearly couldn't count! When you look at a photograph it's hard to discern which seven stars were originally the ones from which the name derives.

There are more than 800 middle-aged, hot B-type stars in the group which lies in the north-west of the constellation Taurus. Te hey are located about 440 light-years from Earth and are approximately 17.5 light years wide. The brightest stars in the cluster glow a hot blue and formed within the last 100 million years. They are extremely luminous and will burn out quickly, with life spans of only a few hundred million years, much shorter than the billions of years our own sun.

The name 'Seven Sisters' is derived from Greek legend. The Pleiades are the seven daughters of the Titan god Atlas and the ocean nymph Pleione. During an ancient war, Atlas rebelled against Zeus, the king of the gods, who sentenced his foe to forever hold up the heavens on his shoulders. The sisters were so sad that Zeus allowed them a place in the sky in order to be close to their father.

Venus and the Pleiades

Venus and the Pleiades - sounds like the name of a pop group doesn't it? Well this was going to be one of the highlights in the night sky this month and so I was very keen to photograph it.

Frustratingly, the clouds rolled in on best night when Venus would be in front of this open star cluster (3/4/20), so I had to make do with the following night (4/4/20).

I started by taking some photos of the waxing gibbous moon before it went completely dark. There are nice views of the Tycho and Copernicus lunar impact craters here. It was from this photo that I realised how far the ejection debris was flung from Tycho after it was hit by a large meteorite.

Venus was my next target, also before it went fully dark. I wanted to try to show its phase as it is rapidly diminishing in size and look very crescent-like. I had to turn the brightness down a long way to show it and this has made the sky look darker than it actually was.

Here's Venus with the Pleiades star cluster to the lower right.  Whoever named this asterism the 'Seven Sisters' clearly couldn't see all the stars - there are many more than seven!  Here's a quote shamelessly lifted from a post by Paul Richardson.

Every eight years or so, Venus passes across the line of sight of the Pleiades star cluster. It's not exactly passing "through" the star cluster, since the Pleiades are about 88 thousand times further away from us than Venus is. Since Venus is at present about 107 million Km away, that make the Pleiades a long way from home. Anyway this is how they looked last night. So mind boggling, but so beautiful.

L.A.S. Inaugural Meeting in Bowland

The Leigh Astro Society (L.A.S.) had its inaugural meeting in the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire on the 1st October 2019.  This trip to our nearest 'Dark Sky' location had its seeds in a casual discussion with two birding friends (George Pike and Paul Richardson) from Leigh Ornithological Society (L.O.S.) when I discovered that George had always wanted to see Andromeda and that Paul had beed an astronomer since his early youth. As Paul had an old telescope lurking in the back of his wardrobe, I decided to arrange a trip and on that night the L.A.S. was born. The founding members are Paul, George and myself with Paul being duly elected as Chairman of the Society because he has telescopes and knows stuff.

The actual idea to form a 'Society' all started off as a bit of a joke whilst we were out there, with me making up the initials to be the same as our esteemed birding Society. We'd recently been given a talk by one of the L.O.S.'s founding members who explained how the Society started nearly 50 or more years ago.  So in a comedy parody of that talk I started saying ...

"It was in the winter of 2019 when three intrepid lads forayed into deepest and darkest Lancashire in search of Andromeda that the foundations of the L.A.S. were laid"

I also made fun of the fact that in a recent radio interview with one our L.O.S. members, the presenter couldn't the Society's name right (well it is rather a mouthful) and so some sarcastic suggestions included the Leigh Astrophenomical Society and the Leigh Astronomological Society before we eventually settled on something short and sweet - the Leigh Astro Society.

Anyway, it was on that night that George and I had our first views of Andromeda and Saturn thanks to Paul's help.  We were based in a small lay-by along the BXXX out of Waddington and it was pretty dark - there was just a distant glow from Preston to the west. But we could see so many stars compared to our suburban homes in Leigh and Tyldesley, Greater Manchester.

These photos are not much, but they mark my initial steps into the field of Astrophotography. Some would say it's a minefield, others a wonderful hobby. I've already experienced both!

Work in progress - ignore the notes below.


Notes ....

George Pike, Paul and I had a great night viewing the skies above Bowland and this inspired me to look for a tracking mount so that I might do longer exposures of deep sky objects (DSO's) such as galaxies and nebulae as well as the Milky Way.

We had a great night and George (Pike) got to see Andromeda (one of his long-felt needs) and I reawakened my interest in the starts all under the superb guidance of our resident astronomy guru Dr. Paul Richardson. We also saw Saturn, the Hyades and Pleiades and a host of other stars which just can't be seen from suburban areas.

Update:
I've since set up a light-hearted, fun Facebook group which all those with an interest in astronomy, the night sky and astrophotography are welcome to join. We also have a WhatsApp group for reporting interesting sightings, aurora alerts and anything else that's relevant.