The crab nebula in black and white

This is the crab nebula M1 in the constellation of Taurus. This photo has been made during camera testing two weeks ago. M1 is a supernova remnant. The small pulsar in the middle of the nebula is clearly visible.

The faint background stars around Aldebaran

During the camera tests of last week, I made a shot of Aldebaran in the constellation of Taurus. The faintest stars in the background are about 14,9 magnitudes. Note this was a 0,6 seconds exposure using an ST-7XME camera through a 10cm telescope!

Aplha Tauri is going to die in some million years. Its spectral type is K5III. It is 65 light years away, this is about 3 times the distance of Wega. It's magnitude 0.87 shows the high luminosity of this red giant.

Eine Nacht voll Sterne (German)

Gehen Sie abends raus in den Garten, setzen Sie sich gemütlich in einen Liegestuhl, entspannen Sie sich und beobachten Sie mit einem Fernglas die Sterne. Haben Sie das Glück an diesem Abend eine kristallklare 10er-Nacht zu erwischen, dann wird dies für Sie -mit aller höchsten Wahrscheinlichkeit- ein einschlägiges Ereignis sein, daß Sie nie vergessen werden.

Nächte, die perfekte Beobachtungsbedingungen bieten, sind selten aber dafür umso beeindruckender. Spätestens dann begreift man, was für ein Beobachtungspotential am Himmel schwebt, das leider unbewusst übersehen wurde.

Hat man als normaler Steuerzahler bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt, die Erde und das Tagesgeschehen als die einzig relevante Realität betrachtet, dann kann diese Nacht einem helfen seine Wahrnehmung zu sensibilisieren und vielleicht sogar sein Weltbild und seine Weltanschauung positiv zu verändern. Wenn er will.

The moon crater Theophilus

Looking at the moon

Yes, this is a live report! Now, it's 01:00 at night and I am sitting next to my scope writing this article. The 21cm Dall Kirkham is positioned towards the moon. The Posidonius crater is in the eyepiece and it looks marvelous! This large crater is at the nothern edge of the Sea Of Serenity, on the western edge of Mare Serenitatis, to the south of Lacus Somniorum. The diameter of Posidonius is 100km and it has a depth of 2,3km. It is partly filled with mare material. The photo attached is taken just a few minutes ago with my Philips webcam at a focal length of 2400mm!

Aligning the north celestial pole

The last time aligned my telescope mount to the north celestial pole was three years ago, as I was trying to find the point, where the sky does not rotate. It wasn't an easy job for a PAB (Pole Alignment Beginner), although my good G11 polar scope was a real help. Finally I did it and it was a joy to make long exposures with my telescope. Now after the recostruction of my observatory I had to build up the system and align it again. Hence, another alignment odyssey has started. I tried with Holger to aligh my mount using a smart shareware program called WCS. For a better understanding I also downloaded a demo version of PEMPro and tried to evaluate the quality of my mount with it.

Thanks to Holger for his great help.

Looking at the stars again

Last night, after finishing the reconstruction of my roof observatory, I again glanced at the stars using my 21cm Dall Kirkham telescope. For the first time in my life, I tried the GoTo capabilities of a telescope and wow! .. what a feeling to find the stars by just pressing a key!

Here some amazing objects I observed:

• the open clusters M38 and M37 in Auriga. That was a breathtaking view, since countless stars were twinkling like diamonds in the sky.
• the open cluster M34 in Perseus. Low magnification is required here.
  
• Bode's galaxy M81 and the cigar galaxy M82 in Ursa Major at 60x magnification. Last time I observed them was 2005 using my TAL-2M (15cm, f/8) Newton telescope.
  
• The sun-like star Epsilon Eridani. Unfortunately, I couldn't see its exoplanet ;-)
  
• The supernova remnant M1. It was like a small cloud with a clear shape in black & white.

Alcyone in Pleiades

Summer nights in Greece

August 30th, 2008:
During my vacations in Greece I observed the constellation of Cassiopeia using my 30 years old Pentax Asahi 8x40 binoculars. These high quality optics are made in Japan and offer an amazing FOV of 9.5°. The sky near Athens was quite light polluted, something about 5mag. Hence, I was astonished as I noticed nebulosity in some regions of this constellation.
I immediately consulted my star chart and I confirmed:

• the open clusters NGC663 (7.1m) and NGC654 (6.5m),
• the Pacman nebula NGC281 (7m) and
• the open cluster NGC129 (6.5m)

Sept. 9th, 2008
At 0:10 I observed Uranus, 5.7mag, about 3 degrees east from PhiAqr, easy to find with the Pentax. At the same night at 0:20 I observed Neptun (7.8m), north of GammaCapricorni, looking it indirectly through the binos. I could neither identify their shape nor their colors, both planets were pinpoint at this low magnification (8x) but it was a pleasure to observe them. Finally, I identified the globular cluster M15 in Pegasus, the open clusters M34 in Perseus and NGC7686 in Andromeda.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot

Jupiter's Great Red Spot as observed from Backnang, Germany in Holger's backyard observatory. The telescope was a 20cm GSO newton, extended to f/20 using a 4x achromatic barlow lense. We used a modified ToUCam Pro II webcam on a Losmandy G11 mount. Copyright (c) 2008 by Holger Weber and Panagiotis Xipteras

The moon eclipse 2008 (videoclip)

Follow one of the following links:
Moon Eclipse, Aug. 16th 2008 (hosted by astrodigital.net)
Moon Eclipse, Aug. 16th 2008 (hosted by deepsky.de)

The partial moon eclipse @ Aug, 16th 2008

The partial eclipse of the moon on Aug, 16th .2008. Notice the curvature of the earth globe on the moon surface! This photo is taken at 22:18 Uhr MEST.
Scope: FS-60C reduced @ f/4.4
Cam: Modified ToUCam Pro (WrCmac)
Mount: Defect EQ2. Manuel guiding (no motors)
Software: 384 shots added and sharped with GIOTTO v2.08

Observing Gamma Microscopii

Tonight August 11th, 2008 at 0:10 MEST I observed Gamma Microscopii (Gamma Mic) using my Minox 6x16 monoculars. I used the star hoping method coming from the triangle Psi- /Omega-/24-Capricorni down to Gamma Mic. Even to its low declination here in Stuttgart/Germany (DE=-32) it is still visible using a small visual aid ;-)

Gamma Mic is not much hotter (5100 °K) than our Sun but it is 10 times bigger and 64 times more luminous than it. Its magnitude of 4,67m indicates its current distance from the earth, i.e. about 224 light years. Its spectral type is G8III. Its B-V index is 0.89, this is something between white and yellow. Four million years ago, Gamma Mic was one of the brightest stars in our firmament due to its small distance from the Sun (6 light years) at that time.

The Microscopium is a small southern constellation, rarely observed in Germany.

IC405 in Auriga

GIOTTO settings for planets

GIOTTO is available at Videoastronomy.org

Jupiter's Red Spot

AstroDigital.net - The Software

Dear friends,

an astronomy program called AstroDigital.Net is available in my pages. It's a useful telescope calculator for both astrophotographers and visual observers. It runs on Windows-XP, SP2/3 with .Net-2.0 or Windows-Vista. Full graphics support. Download it now at: www.astrodigital.net

cs
Pana