Tag Archives: astronomy

Centaurus A

Posted on by November 2, 2022

Long long ago, before internet, computerised telescopes and dslr cameras sketching at the eyepiece was a bit tougher than today but for me, no reason to throw away all pencils and blending stumps. I still believe that if I want to get up really close and personal, I have to sketch the objects that I observe.

To stay in practice I sketch the first mission that catches my attention in the live feeds on Slooh, preferably not my own mission. Each mission is 5 minutes and I have to pay close attention. The process of reducing my rough sketch is much easier now with the added bonus of an image and imaging software. The coolest is the ‘invert’ tool in photoshop!

Some may argue that sketching while observing online is crooking. Then maybe doing astro photography using specialised cameras and software falls in that category too 😛

I say as long as you enjoy doing astronomy to the full, any which way is more than ok.

Proxima with a red dot finder

Posted on by July 20, 2021

Years ago OOG (The Orion Observation Group) had the courage to withstand any wind and weather and were brave enough to organise events with guest speakers. Serena Ingamells (my partner in all crimes) organised an event at the Taalmonument on 06.12.2008 and invited Dr Ian Glass ( South African Astronomical Observatory) to talk about his newly released book Proxima The Nearest Star (other than the Sun!)

It took a while to sink in that I would actually be able to see Proxima Centauri through a telecope but for a long long while I cherished the star in my own signed copy of the book.

Auke Slotegraaf published Con Cards with a page dedicated to Prox Cen. Wow! Yes! but all these years I never knew whether I had actually seen the star 😉 I mean there are many candidates out there!
Con cards https://assa.saao.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2017/10/concards_v154.pdf

My eye caught a mission by a fellow Slooh member. Once and for all I was going to find that star.

After reading Prox Cen from cover to cover, I took my images and compared them to Stellarium, rotating and flipping and about to give up, I remembered Auke’s con cards. His charts matched the stars in my image perfectly!
So I hope you enjoy my version of Proxima with a red dot finder.

The Flying Star

Posted on by July 20, 2021

Night after night I get to observe the most beautiful objects. I was encouraged to take a walk through Cygnus and came across a beautiful double star.

The system was named ‘The Flying Star’ because of its high proper motionIn 1753 James Bradley noticed that 61 Cygni was a double star.

The Flying star was christened as such when Giuseppi Piazzi demonstrated the sideways motion of the system. The star attracted the attention of astronomers. They realised that the star had to be atronomically close to the Sun.

The distance to 61 Cygni was measured by F W Bessel in 1838. It was the first distance measurement to a star by observation. He came quite close to the actual value of 11.4 light years away.The star also goes by the name of ‘Bessel’s Star’

Although The Flying Star was outranked by Kapteyn’s Star, Barnard’s Star and other into seventh place on the list of stars with high proper motion, it remains number one when filtered to those with naked eye visibilty.

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.