Category Archives: Deep Sky Observing

Minkowski’s Butterfly

Posted on by July 21, 2021

PN Minkowski 2-9 in Ophiuchus

My heart was beating when I opened my missions this morning. The angels had been kind. PN M2-9 must count as one of the most exciting observations I’ve ever made. Look at that central system and hint of varying shades in the wings.

First I have to give huge thanks to Slooh astronomer member JeffreyP.2019 for booking a mission to this object.
The name Minkowski’s Butterfly immediately caught my attention while I was reserving missions to Comet C/2018 W2 (Africano). I got on board immediately and piggybacked two missions to PN M 2-9 expecting to see a clone of the magnificent Hubble image.
I scrutinised the images for hours but could not find a clear indication of a butterfly.

In some forums guys were reporting observations of being able to see this object through 12″ telescopes, some obviously trying OIII and other filters. Quite apprehensive and not wanting to make a fool of myself, I ran two of my own missions last night, one on T2 and one on T4.

For those who, like me, have never seen this bipolar planetary nebula: What we are seeing is the last gasp of a binary star system.
“The two stars at the heart of the nebula circle one another roughly every 100 years. This rotation not only creates the wings of the butterfly and the two jets, it also allows the white dwarf to strip gas from its larger companion, which then forms a large disc of material around the stars, extending out as far as 15 times the orbit of Pluto!” (so it says in Astronomy Now Aug 2015)

Obviously a bipolar system is much more complex and I will definitely be delving into the science behind PN M 2-9 and booking more missions on Slooh to spread the wings of this butterfly.

Polarissima Borealis – home to St Nicholas

Posted on by July 20, 2021

My reasons for going with online robotic telescopes, were the limitations of my own backyard set-up and wanting to see beyond the horison of the southern celestial hemisphere.

I discovered that travelling to outer space to explore the northern celestial hemisphere was not that complicated after all. I made travel arrangements (by means of membership) with Slooh and each night I hop on one of the seven robotic telescopes to wherever I want to go

 

 

 

Travelling to these distant places takes some preparation. What kind of experience am I hoping for on a given night? Do I want the extreme thrills of seeing galaxies being ripped apart or would I prefer going slowly, gliding over the stars of delicate open clusters? Some prefer big and bright. I do love the “wow” factor of beautiful celestial wonders but mostly I tend to wander off the beaten celestial track.

It’s not close to Xmas yet but recently I reserved a mission to Polaris. At least I had to get aquainted with the north pole star. As I tried to determine which of the stars in the field of view could be Polaris, I discovered a very faint object close to the star almost central in the image. Not only had I found Polaris, but I also learnt that the faint object close by was in fact a galaxy, Polarissima Borealis (NGC 3172)

Trying to find all I could about this galaxy, I stumbled upon a delightful story on DeepSkyForum about NGC 3172. It took some intensive searching to reach the author. (Mark – thanks for giving me permission to share this)

Original post: DeepSkyForum Object of the Week (http://www.deepskyforum.com/)
December 29th, 2016 07:03 PM
Mark S Friedman, Wheaton, IL USA
Amateur Astronomer, observer of visual deep sky , visual solar (Ha) and chasing total solar eclipses.
The Author also takes part in a sport called Curling

Mark Friedman had become a grandfather just before Xmas and thought it would probably be a good idea to brush up on tales about jolly old Saint Nicholas.
Conjuring up memories of his youth, he recalled that Santa and his team of elves lived and worked in a place called the North Pole. Googling he found many locations claiming to be the home of Santa and the elves. Taking into account the billions of kids who qualified for presents, he calculated that such a location needed huge infrastructure for all the homes, sheds for the sleighs and to house the workshops. None of the locations that Google suggested seemed suitable for such a massive concern.
Suddenly it struck him – there must have been an omission in the old folk legends. The word “celestial” was never mentioned!
Out came his telescope. Locating Polaris, the north pole star, was easy but as it goes with astronomers, he scanned the nearby sky as well and there he spotted the very faint galaxy Polarissima Borealis. No more doubts, all this while a galaxy has been home to jolly Old Saint Nicholas and his elves!
I bet Mark can’t wait for his grandchild to be old enough to share his discovery.

NGC 3172 was discovered by John Herschel in 1831and added it to the Slough catalogue as JH 250 (Slough being his home observatory in Slough, Berkshire, England)
John Dreyer later catalogued the galaxy as NGC 3172
There is another very faint smudge close to Polarissima Borealis catalogued in the Principal Galaxy Catalog as PGC 36268.

The Twin Quasar

Posted on by July 20, 2021

I followed an online mission to the Twin (Double) Quasar and took an image. I was not quite sure which of the bright dots represented the quasar. Fellow Slooh members introduced me to Aladin, the interactive sky atlas and I could identify the object easily.

“The Twin Quasar was discovered in 1979 and was the first identified gravitationally lensed object. It appears as two images, a result from gravitational lensing caused by the galaxy YGKOW G1 that is located in the line of sight between Earth and the quasar” – Wikipedia

The quasar lies about 14 billion light years from Earth in the constellation of Ursa Major. The huge elliptical galaxy YGKOW G1 lies directly between Earth and the quasar at 4 billion light-years away and acts as a gravitational lens. Its mass is so great that it can bend the light from objects lying behind it.

I so enjoyed a course Intro to Astro on Slooh by Dr Paige Godfrey where one of the topics was gravitational lensing. Now I have a practical example to add to my notes.

 

 

NGC 3293 (Gem Cluster)

Posted on by January 17, 2020

When I started deep sky observing, our deep sky director advised that I only sketch and describe what I see. He was not interested in how Google sees an object. The equipment used, sky conditions, limiting mag, date of observation and your own observing capabilities came into account and determined whether your obs would earn a certificate come end of term. This was the best advise ever. I started seeing all kinds of patterns in the sky!

 

I do research on objects after I’ve reduced my logs. Sketching and writing by faint red light does not always produce an artwork.
My submissions were brutally honest. When I observed NGC 3293 for the first time, I had no idea that I was observing the famous Gem Cluster (so christened by the Australian astronomer Henry Chamberlain Russell) I saw this cluster as a hubbly-bubbly pipe ( it was very fashionable to smoke those in student pubs at the time – no, my student days were long gone but I thought the designs were quite pretty!) I did not even know that I needed real dark skies to observe this specific cluster properly.
When my 12″ Dob came along, I decided to follow up on all my objects previously observed through an 8″ Dob. Most of my observations have been done from my holiday home in Betty’s Bay where we have no street lights and it is nice and dark.
My obsevation of NGC 3293 caused great excitement. Our deep sky director contacted me. According to my sketch there was nebulosity surrounding the cluster. Oh dear what had I done wrong now? Well, I sketched it at the eyepiece. I sketched what I saw at the time, so there must have been something there. Yeah! – another certificate, a gift book and a mention on page 63 of Perlen Des Sudhimmels. “Möglicherweise angeregt durch diesen nebligen Hintergrund meinte die südafrikanische Beobachterin Carol Botha die Umrisse einer Wasserpfeife in der Anordnung der sterne des Haufens zu erkennen”
I immediately bought an English – German dictionary!
A year later and with the English translation of the book to Pearls of the Southern Skies, pages 63, 101, 133 were regularly shoved under the noses of those who hinted at my mere ‘housewife’ status!
Now I’ve started a new chapter: online observing. My skies are even darker, ‘my’ telescopes bigger and my logs are being updated with beautiful images.