Imaging Saturn

I keep meaning to post a link to Blake’s blog, which is chock full of documentation, data, and how-to.

http://blog.lumpydarkness.com/

Fantastic first visit to the CAO for me in 2014.

The observing pad was full, and thanks to Blake, who basically has been carrying and setting up all my heavy gear because my back is out, I was able to use both my cgem and try my sky tracker on the night sky for the 2nd time (the first was my minor test on the balcony in regina, where I had to set it up 3 feet off the ground to sight polaris). I used the ac adaptor to power the scope, for the first time, and it worked perfectly (and had no heat when I unplugged it at 3am after 5 hours, v.good).

My plan was to look at a bunch of NGC and Messier objects in Virgo (just because: pick a part of the sky, explore it), while also trying to get a wide field shot of the teapot, the galaxy, and saturn. Turns out, all that business in Virgo isn’t that exciting (using Rob’s 15mm (which I will return!)), and (my lens’s field of view was not wide enough for the latter) (UPDATE: looking more closely at the image below, I did indeed get the teapot and saturn in the field of view. Working on the labelled image….)

I started with Vindematrix and confirmed I could make out the constellation naked eye (ditto with Sagittarius and Leo), then pointed at NGC 4698, but could not see anything. I also looked at M61 and M58, which was very small. Of course I got distracted. I figured out how to enter RA and Dec to goto an object, and to store an object in my HC database. I mounted the slr to my 8″, then focused on Dubhe (I thought Blake said Deneb, so the scope took a wee tour) and returned to my saved object (Panstarrs 2012 K1), and took some shots of the comet. Since the pad was so busy there was a lot of vibration, but I did manage to get at least this shot (nevermind that I forgot to record raw files, this is a native .jpg).

I shot some video of Saturn while I had the camera mounted ( I am collecting a lot of video for future processing), then returned to Virgo to look at some other objects before giving up on that business, getting a big 13mm ethos loaned from Steve along with Blake’s 2″ Williams Optics dialectric diagonal with adaptor for my 1.25″ mount. M101 was a smudge; M108 was a smudge; M97 was a nice soft schmear; M64, the Black Eye Galaxy, was a tiny schmear.

I did, with Steve’s help, confirm that my scope has developed backlash issues (Blake admonished me for storing the mount locked). I don’t know how to fix this. But I will have to find out eventually (maybe today, says Blake). (UPDATE: yes, we fixed this. Blake found this website, describing this as ‘slop’ or ‘binding’, and Steve’s description of backlash also applies. For record keeping, I tightened the Dec grubs (both) 1/4 turn, and loosened only one side of the RA 1 full rotation. 2mm and 5mm Allan keys. We physically felt a tighter grip in both directions, and slewed back and forth in both directions to listen, which lead to a modification of RA, which I’d tightened 1/4 turn at first. Now, no give/slop, everything sounds lovely. Steve time lapsed it all, maybe I’ll link up to that at some point.).

Finally, I confirmed that M13 is very pretty (and could be the next cross stitch piece, the first being Omega Centauri, which is not visible from Canada except, Blake imagines, from Pelee Island), and that M92, Hercules, is ok.

I hemmed and hawed with the sky tracker, then pushed myself and set it up. I took 5 wide field frames at ISO 800, for 5 minutes each, pointing south, but forgot a dark frame. Then I shot the summer triangle, and learned that when pointing straight up my camera lens will not hold its focus.

Below are two versions of the same image of the summer triangle (30s, iso 6400, because I forgot to reduce the iso after focusing): with one, I let the pshop raw processor automatically ‘correct’, and with the other, I manually adjusted various settings (click for larger versions).

Below is a manual stack of 4 images, using photoshop and various layer opacity levels, some levels manipulation after flattening, along with some black point adjustments:

I’ll update this post with a labelled version of this image, which I need help with (I know that sagittarius, the teapot, scorpius etc. are all in there, I just can’t make them out because a) there are so many stars and b) I don’t know the sky well yet).

Finally, I was in the midst of deleting some accidental short exposure files (darned camera, if I go to live view it kicks me out of bulb and defaults to 30s, then I forget to reset), and remembered how much detail I was able to get out of those seemingly empty images of saturn a couple of years ago. Below is a really fascinating image, I think. ISO 1000, .6s, processed using the pshop raw editor to modify the exposure settings alone: and there is a no-noise very crisp image of sagittarius and scorpius which is the same composition/framing as the image above. Wild.

We are staying another night, and I think I would like to do a time lapse of Saturn over the course of time for part of the evening, while visually observing some other part of the sky. That’s it. May go for a wee hike around the Margaret Paul trail before going to town to find something to grill for dinner and some cola to go along with the rum Nicole left behind 🙂

…

UPDATE: this is as far as I got, with help from Tom, in labeling this image. So much more in there.

Well, I wrapped up very quickly in Winnipeg and didn’t manage to write a blog post while everything was still fresh in my mind.

My final two weeks were preoccupied with finishing preparing the ecliptic file so that when Geremy arrived, we’d be ready to do some laser cutting. We had an incredibly productive four days at Assentworks, preparing various versions of the ecliptic files (layout and colour mapping) for laser cutting on to baltic birch. We began with some controlled testing of power, frequency, and speed to determine what would be ideal for each component of the cut pieces: stars, the ecliptic, the lines of the constellations, and cutting through the wood. I was pretty thrilled with the results as tests. I ended up outputting a pair of 28″ full ecliptics, with and without the lines of the constellations, along with two sets of 11″ wide pieces depicting each individual constellation with and without their boundaries. I am happily gifting the 28″ pair to the Carr Astronomical Observatory (where I am for all intents and purposes a resident artist 🙂 ). Both Geremy and I also managed to output some other items as well: he, a Settlers of Catan game board, and me, some of the Trees of Canada.

virgo, as per H.A. Rey depictions, without lines.

aquarius, as per H.A. Rey depictions, without lines.

During that time I was also interviewed by Derek Bruekner and co-host Aleem on Eat your Arts and Vegetables radio show (I am in the last 15 minutes of the first link on the May 22 mp3 file and the first 5 minutes or so on this second link on the May 22 mp3 file.), and prepared for and delivered my lecture on May 28th at Video Pool. Finally, I prepared and delivered my poster files for the Subtle Technologies Open Access exhibition and poster session curated by Farah Yusuf.

I was happy to receive positive feedback from the poster session (Farah emailed: “I just wanted to let you know that your project has sparked a very animated conversation about astronomy btwn about 6 people (I think architecture students). They’ve been huddled in front of your posters for the last hour and the opening reception hasn’t even started yet!  It’s a thoroughly engaging project.”). I have never done a poster session before, and the invitation was not for a single poster, but a set of posters that could fill the presentation frame. I treated it as a sort of pamphlet about the project, which worked out well. Here is a link to the .pdf: Horowitz-poster-SubtleTech_01

And that wrapped up my month in Winnipeg. If I haven’t mentioned it enough, I am so thankful to the folks at Video Pool, Assentworks, and the Canada Council. I am managing to make technical, material, and conceptual progress with the Modelling Views project, and feel confident now that I will have a very productive year, with big production taking place next summer in preparation for the first exhibition.

After a very busy semester I drove out to Winnipeg yesterday and having effectively walked Maisie (picture forthcoming) twice without trouble, I have set myself up at Video Pool. The studio is mine for the month and I am very happy to have carved out this time to keep learning, to move my project forward, and to connect with Winnipeg and my friends here again. Rob is flying out on Tuesday for a week (I have ordered as much as I could in advance so that I’m actually ready to work) and until then my time will be devoted to reviewing and finishing the starter kit so that I can get my head back in to the code and refresh my memory of the basics. So…. I have now made the Arduino blink at different brightnesses and speeds a cumulative total of six times. Maybe I can move on…..

Goals for the month include furthering my knowledge of motors and gears (if necessary), controlling and identifying the position of steppers, trying to better wrap my mind around astro math geekery so that I can make decisions about the kinetic objects, start thinking about scaling up, figuring out some camera options, working on the realspacetime projection (more on that later) and more. Geremy will come out in a few weeks and he and I will keep working on the visuals for the constellations and their boundaries, and Erika is taking Rob and I on a tour of Assentworks – where I hope to learn a bit of CAD and how to fabricate, or have fabricated, a version of the ecliptic and the model saturns.

I haven’t managed to post a great deal about artists and thinkers who I have been looking in to and hope to have time this summer to both keep looking and add some thoughts here. But first…multiple LED fun.