Michio Kaku and my kids?

Back while I was in Korea Kim took the kids to see Dr. Michio Kaku. Pretty cool!

Missing Arizona Skies

This was taken from my backyard in Surprise Az. a couple summers ago. Ahh I miss the clear night skies there!

Variability in Type 1A Supernovae Has Implications for Studying Dark Energy

The discovery of dark energy, a mysterious force that is accelerating the expansion of the universe, was based on observations of type 1a supernovae, and these stellar explosions have long been used as "standard candles" for measuring the expansion. But not all type 1A supernovae are created equal. A new study reveals sources of variability in these supernovae, and to accurately probe the nature of dark energy and determine if it is constant or variable over time, scientists will have to find a way to measure cosmic distances with much greater precision than they have in the past.
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Living in San Antonio = Terrible night sky conditions :(

Man what a bummer after living in Arizona where the night skies are some of the clearest in the country I am now having to put up with the light pollution of San Antonio which is pretty aweful to say the least. So for a while once I get setup I'll likely try to do some wide angle stuff just to get broke back into imaging.

Been a Long Time

Hello out there. It has been quite some time since my last post. I have been in South Korea away from the clear skies of the Arizona desert. I will be here in "the land of the morning calm" until around Feburary 2009. Then after that I will reside in Witchita Falls Tx. until around June of 2009. Then after that who knows? Certainly not I. However the sooner I get to collect some of those precious photons from the heavens the better. I will be counting the days.

New H-Alpha Filter Meets the Rosette Nebula

This is the first image I have taken using a H-Alpha filter. The H-Alpha filter is designed to cut out almost all wavelengths of light other than the hydrogen iteslf. In this case the hydrogen in emmision nebulae is exactly what we want to tease out in the picture. The Rosette Nebula is located in the constellation Monoceros. The cluster and nebula lie at a distance of some 5,200 light years from Earth (although estimates of the distance vary considerably) and measure roughly 130 light years in diameter.

Flame and Horsehead Nebulae Once More

After a second consecutive night and a little more data. Here is a cropped down version of the same region as the previous post.

Treasures in the Alnitak Stellar Region

No doubt about it the Orion complex contains many glorious treasures for the CCD chip to capture. An example of this is the very bright star Alnitak (Zeta Orionis, the eastern-most star in Orion's belt.) This area is host to both NGC 2024 aka the Flame nebula and Barnard 33 aka the Horsehead nebula both you will see are named for obvious reasons. My image was taken using a UHC/UPR filter to strip away unwanted skyglow and enhance the delicate filements of dust and gas. The remarkable Horsehead is a dark globule of dust and non-luminous gas, obscuring the light coming from behind, especially the moderately bright nebula IC 434.

Lines have been drawn in the sand time and time again about the touchy subject of Intelligent Design. Now PBS weighs in with an episode of NOVA on the contraversial topic. It is scheduled to air November 13th. Check out the trailer.

Well here is my first usable shot of m27 aka the Dumbbell nebula. The Dumbbell is a remnant of a sun like star that in its death throes shed its outer surface and sent it flying out into space leaving behind a beautiful display of color and structure. M27 is thought to be the first planetary nebula discovered. This jewel in the scope for a change actually looks like its nickname. It is quite bright and can even be viewed telescopically from a light polluted area. Until next time --Clear Skies

M42 Night Two a Little More Light

Although not much time before sunrise I did manage to add around ten or fifteen more minutes of data to the final result. A little more depth of color I think but still not all of the detail that I am striving for perhaps in a night or two I will have more to offer up.

Return of the Orion Nebula (M42)

Well I hate to quote the former Disney darling Britney Spears but... "Oops I did it again..." I had to go and do it imaging an object that is a bit out of season. The hours I work afford me the ability to shoot objects that are better left alone until the winter months in the northern hemisphere. But at any rate here she is the Great Orion nebula and the Running Man nebula off to the left along for the ride. Here is the lowdown straight from Wikipedia. M42 is a diffuse nebula situated south of Orion's Belt. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky. M42 is located at a distance of about 1,500 light years away, and is the closest region of star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 30 light years across.
For this image I collected a mere twenty minutes of data so I am hoping to produce a more detailed image in the days to come using as much as an hours worth of data to tease out more or the gossamer wisps of hydrogen field of view.

Seeing in the Dark

Hello folks I recently was made aware of a program on PBS airing on Sept 19 Called Seeing in the Dark. I am stoked that they are making a film of this kind. I am hoping that they are able to capture what it is we we amature astronomers do. Stargazing is the subject of Seeing in the Dark, a 60-minute, state-of-the art, high-definition (HDTV) documentary by Tim Ferris. It is based on Ferris's book, Seeing in the Dark (Simon & Schuster, 2002), named by The New York Times as one of the ten best books of the year. At any rate you can find out more about it here http://www.pbs.org/seeinginthedark/

M33 The Triangulum Galaxy more or less done

Well after three laborious nights I am ready to post the sum of my work on the Triangulum galaxy cataloged by Charles Messier as M33. This face on spiral weighs in at around magnitude 5.7 (mag) but since it is face on it is much more difficult to view with the eye in the scope unless you are under dark skies. The camera however has no real problem. The data collected for this image is around 1hour 20 min.

M45 aka the Pleiades (The Seven Sisters)

Last night I finally got some fairly clear skies here in sunny Arizona so I decided to capture this picture of the Pleiades which is normally an optimum winter object but I am a night bird so staying up late to get objects ahead of time is no real bother. Except maybe in the morning.

The stars in the Pleiades are thought to have formed together around 100 million years ago, making them 1/50th the age of our sun, and they lie some 130 parsecs (425 light years) away. From our perspective they appear in the constellation of Taurus, with approximate celestial coordinates of 3 hours 47 minutes right ascension and +24 degrees declination.

I also took my first crack at a portion of the Veil nebula in the constellation Cygnus the swan. The Veil nebula is a supernova remnant that occurred about 5 - 10,000 years ago. It is located around 1,400 light years away.

Pale Blue Dot

One of the most beautiful and inspiring chunks of literature putting our cosmic place into perspective.

This excerpt from A Pale Blue Dot was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. As the spacecraft left our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, engineers turned it around for one last look at its home planet. Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size.

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Lunar Eclipse August 28 2007

Here is the time lapsed slideshow that I alluded to in the previous post. Here is Arizona the eclipse began around 0230am and lasted well into the 5am hour. Although I did not make it much past the maximum since it was already around 4am and I work for a living so bed was calling. Regardless of this fact the slideshow does give you the idea. I think you can extrapolate for yourself what happens after the Eclipse waxing and maximum. You guessed it pretty much the reverse of the waxing eclipse. Alas the moon slipped out of the Earth's shadow to reveal the usual full moon we typically see.

Hello to all and welcome to Binary Evolution. It is my hope that this blog is able to convey some childlike sense of wonder that we often forget as adults, particularly in the field of astronomy. The universe is such a vast and intricate place that it begs to be pondered, it yearns to be understood. In the eloquent words of Carl Sagan "We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself."

Picture of the lunar eclipse taken the morning of Aug. 28 2007 At this point in the image the eclipse was just short of totality. Eclipses of this sort are truely a wonder to behold, even with the naked eye. Especially with the naked eye. I am working on a slideshow of the eclipse that I will post as soon as I get around to putting it together.