Tag: Backyard

Mars: The Red Planet on Display in Summer 2018 [Dust Storm]

Posted on by Kevin Francis
Mars July 2018
Telescope: Meade EXT-125
Camera: Google Pixel
Photographer: Kevin Francis

During the last star party at The Virginia Living Museum, I laid eyes on Mars for the first time this year.  It rose above the horizon to become the fitting end to the night’s event.  Venus started the activities and Mars finished it.  Bright and unmistakably red, we all focused our telescopes on the red planet and made the same comment, “It looks cloudy.”  Currently Mars is experiencing a planet wide dust storm.  The Opportunity rover is hopefully going to survive to continue its record breaking exploration of Mars.

Barely visible on the north pole is the ice cap.  The southern ice cap is hidden from my view here.  At the time the planet was low in the sky, so seeing wasn’t great.  This is the best of the photos I captured that night.

Critiques of the photo

ISO too high.  Because it’s so birght, lowering the ISO and taking longer video should improve the picuture quality and detail.  This is the initial issue I can see.  Leave me a message with your thoughts on how I can improve.

Mars in Opposition

Mars is in opposition on July 27, 2018.  Based on the weather reports I will be under cloudy skies.  If you’re under clear skies, think about me.  Hopefully the weather man is wrong, very wrong.

Any planet in opposition is simply when the Earth is directly between the planet and the Sun.  Mars is also at it’s closest point to Earth on July 31, 2018.  That’s about 36 million miles between planets. Both of these events means it will be putting on a great show now through August 2018.  It will be bright and dominate the sky. Get your binoculars, telescopes and cameras ready.  Take lots of pictures, make lots of memories and do it with family and friends.  Clear skies!

Beehive Cluster: I Don’t See Anything There [Magnitude]

Posted on by Kevin Francis

Light Pollution

In light polluted areas, seeing fuzzy star clusters is nearly impossible to the naked eye.  Therefore, when I attended a Star Party at the Virginia Living Museum, I wasn’t ready for the result.  Ok full disclosure, it was my first Star Party.  The lyrics from Arrested Development’s Tennessee come to mind, “the date was going great and my soul was at ease until a group…”  Ah yes a group started bugging out and it was amazing.  I was given the task to point my telescope at the Beehive Cluster, aka M44.  The Beehive Cluster is an open star cluster.  Everyone who looked at the cluster was amazed, be that as it may the stars in the cluster were invisible.  Comments like “There’s nothing there” or “I see nothing in that part of the sky” or “That’s amazing!” were thrown out like bags of peanuts at a Nationals game.

Light Polluted View
From my backyard

A Little Science

So, your question is “how does this happen?”  Here’s an example from my backyard.  Yes, however, I had to do this again for effect.  Just take a look at the sky between the trees.  It’s dark blue and almost devoid of stars.  The sky is “bright” because of the lights around Hampton Roads Virginia. Let me get a bit scientific here.  A telescope can pierce through this light pollution and expose the stars that are there.  It does this by focusing the light to a single focal point.  Under magnification, the user to focus on this small point.  The larger the aperture the more stars you can see.  This great engineering marvel is what delivers the impactful punch we saw that night.

Here’s the final edited picture:

Beehive Cluster, M44
Beehive Cluster, M44
Telescope: Meade EXT-125
Camera: Google Pixel

How I Captured the Beehive Cluster

Yes, you guessed it, I used the Meade EXT-125 telescope and Google Pixel to capture the photo.  The camera has to be set to ISO 800 or higher to let in enough light to see the stars and minimize the amount of noise in the photo.  This setting also depends on the seeing conditions at the time. There are about 1000 stars in the Beehive Cluster and is young at around 600 million years old.  Perched around 577 light years away it’s a perfect target for amateur telescopes.  Although, there are many more experienced, astronomers that will tell you that Messier found more impressive star clusters and the crowd favorite is M13, the Great Globular cluster.  Do this with your neighbors and friends and wait for it…wait for it…yep there it is.  Tell me about your experience.