20131220 - All change in the Observatory

As I mentioned in the previous Blog it is time for exoplanets again.

What is an exoplanet (or extrasolar planet)? It is a planet that is in an orbit around a star other than our own Sun :)

I received a few days ago, along with the other Searchlight Observatory Network Observatories, the agreed list of targets and time table from Professor +Svetlana Berdyugina at Kiepenheuer-Institut für Sonnenphysik .

Svetlana has been observing exoplanets for a number of years. It was Svetlana and her team that discovered, a number of years ago, that a planet (HD 189733b) in orbit around HD 189733 is blue. This was later confirmed this year by Hubble observations.

There are a number of different ways to discover and monitor exoplanets. The current project involves known exoplanets using a technique called Exoplanet Transits. This only works with systems that are near to edge on to us. The observation process involves measuring the change in brightness of the host star when an explanet passes in front of it. The techniques involved are similar to those used for variable star observing. I will write, in the near future, a number of Blogs covering the various methods of discovering and monitoring exoplanets :).

Ideally I should have changed the telescope configuration and started some test runs a few days ago, but after a few months of overall good observing nights the weather changed. We have had clouds, we have icy rain and lots of interuptions with the power.

Yesterday's driving rain stopped me from opening the observatory so with the alarm set early I went up to the observatory to check it out. Apart from a few small wet spots and the need to reset the power everything was OK. It was still fairly cloudy but with holes so I managed to see some stars for the first time in days. It was not suitable for imaging properly but decided to take some images of Comet Lovejoy before changing the configuration.

After these were taken it was time to start to change the configuration.

For the past couple of months the ST8 CCD Camera along with its filter wheel has been on the 4" F4 Pentax refractor and the ST7 CCD Camera was on the C14 F11 SCT.

I now needed to swap the cameras over and also reduce the focal length of the C14 by putting in a focal reducer and once done rebalance the telescope and check that the cable will not get tangled up, (four power cables and four data cables!).

That is the easy bit done! The sky or should I say the clouds stopped most other things being done until this evening and daybreak - providing that it is clear.  So hopefully I will be able to refocus the two telescopes and take new sets of dark, flat and bias frames.

N.B. For none astronomers I promise to do a Blog posting in the next few days explaining the reasons why I needed to change the configuration and what are the effects.

There are a number of jobs I can do during the day, some of which are already under way, including producing an observing timetable.

It is now starting to get dark. There are thick clouds on the horizon and thin cloud overhead. Providing the cloud overhead does not get much thicker I will be able to finalise the configuration, otherwise it will be the case of getting up at four in the morning to check if the cloud has gone and if it has to do the finalisation then.

As there will not be much to show image wise with exoplanets, I will be showing images of various objects that I have yet to process, or will be able to take when exoplanet observing is not taking place.

Other work in progress

I am in the middle of getting another observatory up and running. I have building a roll off structure for it and late afternoon we got it up to the observing area ready for cladding. Pictures tomorrow.

The other day

I mentioned in the previous Blog that a drop in power stopped the telescope mount from working for an hour or so. What I did not mention was that the computer and cameras did not stop.

The following image was taken at ten o'clock at night with just moonlight. It will give you an idea of the power of the telescope (4" refractor) and a time controlled CCD camera :) The distance to the buildings is about three miles.

20131216 - ISON - Search and Rescue appears to have failed.

For the past few weeks, very much like when a yacht has been reporting missing, search and rescue have been out looking for this comet in distress.

At the beginning dozens, if not hundreds, of telescopes and binoculars swept the area of sky where the deathly remains of ISON hopefully could be found - but only if the remains were either large or dense enough to be seen.

There were a number of potential sightings by very experienced observers, though these potential sightings were always accompanied with health warnings. There was even a "sighting" report being circulated where someone had misunderstood the date format of a report which was of an earlier observation of the comet.

Everyone of these sightings needed to be followed up .... just in case someone has actually found the wreckage. Like most, I prefer for observers to post potential sightings, than for them to be sat on because of a concern of being wrong. There is always the danger though that they will get picked up by the media and misinterpreted - as is often the case, but we should never allow that to stop us making reports.

One of the good things about amateur observations are that they are distributed as soon as possible. Amateurs know that by putting out these possible sightings they may be able to be confirmed by someone in another Time Zone, before the object(s) have completely left, or are in the vicinity of that field of view.

Soon I expect the obituaries will start to be published telling us as much as possible about the life and death of ISON with the coroners verdict of Lost at Sea - sorry Lost in Space. As with all celebrities, much more will be written and published as more facts are discovered about ISON's life.

We only got to know her in her final years of life and know little of her childhood spent somewhere in the little know Oort cloud.  Someday in the distant future a little of what remains may arrive back at her original home.

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I suspect that on posting this, within a day or two there will be more reports of seeing it, but as in real life there will be less suitable resources available to check.

From now on my time will be split, with Exoplanet Transits taking priority, but there will still be plenty of time for comets and other objects :) . This means that future Blogs will cover more subjects, including progress on a new SON observatory.