Beehive and Saturn

[OXO]

Reprocessed image from early this year, the beehive cluster centre with Saturn in the middle but slightly to the upper right can you spot them?..

This was a 1 Min single exposure with the coolpix 4500 on eq5 motorised mount.

The orignal image showed a lot of light pollution but tonight i managed to process it out and get what i think is a nice image.

Regards

James

[AndyMac]

Very nice image, James. Gives you a 'feel' for the night.

[Ant]

It's been a while since I've seen the beehive... on an image scale that sie it must be pretty small. Is it the little cluster sort of middle left?

Thats a nice shot James, very very suprised you managed to get that in the morning twilight.

Ant

[OXO]

Hi Ant,

The beehive is to the left from centre your quite right matey

With this image i really did get the processing spot on as the orignal image was heavly polluted with light and to top that the twilight light. I used your technique's that you have shown us over the past month so i gota thank you for that.

James :sunny:

[Ant]

I'm still blumming gobsmacked that you got what you did...

It was a few weeks ago that I last looked for Saturn and we are gaining darkness at a rate of 25 minutes a week now - or so I heard on the weather last night. Yippee.

[OXO]

Ah Dark Nights :cheers: :blob: :blob2: :blob4: :lol: :lol: :) :hello1: :o :occasion5: :occasion6: :occasion7: :occasion8: :occasion9:

[Ant]

thats another 100meg added onto our bandwidth requirements

[OXO]

Nah 2262 byte's

Imagine what results you could get from the TSP ant now that would be awsome :shock:

James

[Ant]

I tell you something, when I went to the TSp there was no such thing as CCD's - or if there were they would hve been out of most people price range.

But with a decent skyscan mount, polaraligned and a good CCD or DSLR - the results would be amazing! The only snag is that with temps up in the hundreds during the day - it doesn't get that cold at night - so some form of cooling would be needed.

But film would be amazing there...

Ant

[OXO]

Sounds an amazing experience Ant, i wonder if Astroman's location is as good?

I have seen people use ice packs wrapped around there Digi cam's/DSLR's would prob do the Trick shame we have to use umbrellas with our's in the uk.

James

[Ant]

The amount of Dew out last night I needed scuba gear!!!

I bet Astromans location is pretty close. The only difference maybe is that the TSP is held up in the Davies mountains - isn't astroman on the plains in Arizona?

Ant

[OXO]

isn't astroman on the plains in Arizona?

If i remember rightly yes he's there, extremely hot! :sunny:

[Astroman]

TSP is much darker than my spot. I'm 40 miles from downtown Phoenix, and the view to the north makes me ill. My southern skies are as dark as you can imagine. From inside the dome my limiting magnitude is 6.5. My elevation above MSL is about 450 meters-1408 ft. We're in Sonoran Desert, so yeah, it gets really hot. Max temp I recall is 126ºF. Sure you want to visit?

[OXO]

[glow=red,2,300]126ºF[/glow] [glow=red,2,300]:sunny:[/glow]

Phew that's hot but i think well worth the pain to see some clear dark skies be round about half n hour Astroman

James :sunny:

[Astroman]

[glow=red,2,300]126ºF[/glow] [glow=red,2,300]:sunny:[/glow]

Phew that's hot but i think well worth the pain to see some clear dark skies be round about half n hour Astroman

James :sunny:

Well ok, but I won't be home for another 6 hours. Just tell the dogs I said not to bite you. Yeah, that should work. :?

The thing about AZ is we get about 300 clear days/nights per year for observing. You can pretty much pick and choose when you observe. It gets exhausting, actually. Even the pros get tired and pray for clouds. I kid you not! There was a thread on our observing list about this very thing-how to keep "fresh" after long runs of clear nights and my pal up at Lowell wrote a longish description of his daily routines to keep rested and stay up all night for weeks on end. Very interesting stuff.

[OXO]

Any chance you could post a link to that thread Astroman? it would be interesting if surreal to read it

Wish we had the choice here in Misty Uk :)

Do you ever get any snakes about you when your observing say in the observatory? i assume you must get some strange bug's about the place in that heat?.

James

[Astroman]

It's an email letter and I think I saved it. I'll look and see and post it if I find it.

As for "critters", I get more spiders than anything. At night, I don't notice too much around the outside of the dome, but basically anything you see in the desert, I've seen at Stone Haven. Some snakes, all harmless or at least not venomous so far, scorpions, spiders, fire ants and such. I see preying mantises, (mantisae?) alot. Prairies dogs, rabbits and of course coyotes. They usually serenade me after midnight until dawn or so. Drives the neighborhood dogs crazy! I find them somewhat soothing.

[Astroman]

Found it. Brian is one of the main observers for the LONEOS crew at Lowell. They image the sky every night and look for Near Earth Orbiting Satellites, calculate their positions and hope they don'e find any that cross Earth's trajectory. If we ever hear about a "Killer Asteroid", it's most likely it was discovered by Brian or one of his crew. He's a photometrist by training and does a lot of public outreach stuff as well. All this along with being a really nice guy!

This thread came about when someone asked how to reconcile being up late observing night after night and working a regular job during the day. He was concerned because he was feeling really dragged out after not too long. Here's Brian's response:

Brian Skiff

Wednesday, August 10, 2005 9:18 PM

Re: Sleep difficulties

Everyone one would agree that trying to do a substantial amount of observing while having a "real life" and a "real job" on the 9-to-5 cycle is debilitating. But Bob Modic's original description was of being on a very-late schedule continuously, not going back and forth between day and night shifts.

Unlike most of the folks who've posted on this thread, I am more-or-less a hermit (okay, an extroverted hermit), and have few rsponsibilties apart from astronomy. I have been on a night schedule nearly continuously for 25 years, working as the grunt observer at Lowell, running various telescopes. For 15 of those years I was scheduled in effect 365 nights a year, but luckily only ~220/year are workable, depending on the type of observing involved. Now I'm down to being assigned at a telescope four or five nights a week, so it almost feels like I'm not doing anything, at least observing-wise.

Compared to Bob, I have been lucky perhaps in not having any ill effects from this other than being just pooped if a long string of clear nights develops. I do maintain a pretty regular schedule, as Pam recommends for sanity, but shifted several hours from most folks. The basic reckoning is that on the common cloudy nights, I go to bed at 3a and get up about 11a. On clear nights, I figure on being "on duty" from late afternoon until about morning astronomical twilight. I think it was Tom Kracji who made the point about getting to bed before it was too light. Having had the same experience (the body saying "its daytime, let's stay awake"), I've made it policy to get home before it gets light enough inside the house to see without a flashlight, which in round numbers is roughly nautical twilight---no matter how glorious the dawn sky looks up to that point. Bedroom windows are blocked but not completely opaque. (I've observed at Palomar/Kitt Peak/Mount Hopkins/ Las Campanas where the dorm rooms all have darkroom-type black window shutters, and it really does help having a completely dark room.)

Around the winter solstice, when a full work-night exceeds 12 hours, I'm often not seen until 2p (and start to work again by 4:30p....), eight hours of sleep isn't enough, and one keeps a close watch at the weather, urging the rapid approach of the next winter storm. If I feel as though I can konk out for even 20 minutes in late afternoon before work, I do it. Other short naps, or a many-naps routine might work for some people, instead of expecting sleep only in one block during the 24 hours.

After much experimentation, I've cut down to about one-and-a-half meals per day, partly to avoid the common problem, also already mentioned, of overweight. Successful so far. I am a vegetarian, but not preclusively so:I'm not alarmed at a couple of slices of pepperoni on a pizza or similar maybe once per month. I have a cappuccino (regular or decaf, variably) and a pastry for "first meal" (breakfast, even if it's after Noon), and a more ordinary meal usually after starting observing, say 7-8p...and that's it. In particular, _no_ snacking during the night, and _no_ corn-syrupy drinks, though keeping hydrated is important, especially here in Arizona. Drinking/eating fruit, but avoiding sodas and the like, cuts down on the hangover feeling the next day (hangovers of the ordinary sort being basically a dehydration issue).

Since caffeine affects me (at least) for long hours, I have to treat it largely as a psycho-active drug. On a few of those winter-solstice nights, if I'm near-certain I'll be working until dawn, I've been known to stop by the local java purveyor and get what they call an espressito, which is a tiny cup of stuff that looks like transmission oil, and lets me get through a full night without dozing off, though when I flop into bed 12 or 14 hours later my ears are still hissing from it, and I expect sleep to be less than restful. More generally, I try to operate "drug-free".

As others have also noted, running telescopes increasingly means basically sitting in front of a computer (or three: the one that runs the telescope, a second that runs the instrument, and a third (a pair!) that reduce and analyze the data on the fly). For "fun" I sit more at a computer and build star catalogues. Thus it is with relish that I play volleyball to exhaustion two or three times a week with trim, energetic pals and gals half my age. In winter we have opportunity for cross-country skiing, a simple way of not sitting in front of the frigging computer quite all the time. I think Arne runs several kilometers per day; whatever works.

I don't think any of this is magic nor the only mode of operating, but mostly moderation in all things, including moderation. It could be that Bob has a mix of symptoms exacerbated by an odd schedule, but I'd certainly urge him to continue looking for improvements either medical or from lifestyle changes. Maybe not staying up quite so late?

\Brian

_______________________________________________

[OXO]

Thanks for the Information Astroman!

This is one dedicated Astronomer isn't it i only wish i could get the chance to observe as much as he does. Keeping fit with this hobby is a great piece of advise it's only too easy to stay in slumber. I personally find if we have a really good run of clear nights and i have been observing/imaging all night every night i get some sleep in the afternoon say 1hr to 1 and a half hours. If i sleep longer than that i feel pooped out for the rest of the day and night strange how it effects differant people i suppose..

James

[Ant]

220 clear nights - I'd cut my own leg off for just 22 good nights a year!

After all thats less than two good nights month...

Thanks for that Astroman, makes an interesting read - I doub't I'll ever have a problem like that though.

Ant

[AndyMac]

Brian Skiff is a very well known name, this side of the Big Pond. I agree that post made for a very interesting read.

[Astroman]

How do you know Brian? Just curious. I knew he was famous, but internationally? Zowie...

[AndyMac]

I would have read about him probably in the US astro magazines like Astronomy, S&T & (I'm sure) the now defunct Deep Sky magazine.............dating back to the early nineties.

[CELESCOPE]

Very nice wide field image James, you have caputered it well ,nice dark sky and the BH and Saturn can be seen easily , well done on that one ,

Rog

[OXO]

Thanks Rog!

Hope to get somemore widefield images soon.

James