Astronomy Pictures.

Astrophotography on a Shoe String

2009-06-22T09:06:00.002-04:00

Astronomy on a shoe string. Yes it is possible for you to take great astrophotography with a digital camera and stacking software that is free and very available on the internet. If your camera has a manual setting and you are able to take exposures with the lens cap on then you can do it. You will need a program such as "Deep Sky Stacker".

Just mount your camera on a tripod you need to take one exposure with the lens cap on for every two with the lens cap off. All exposures must be taken with identical parameters, iso of all exposure must be the same, shutter speed and focal length too. Its fun enjoyable and its kind of like waiting to open a Christmas present. you never know what you have until you have stacked and processed all the images.

This is also a wonderful way to introduce the hobby of astronomy and photography to the children and young adults. A modest digital camera will run about 400 usd and a decent tripod about 50 usd. The camera can also be used for terrestrial photography. And if you want to delve into astronomy further you can connect the camera to a telescope and take long exposure of a hour or more.

However I recommend keeping exposures with a digital camera under 30 minutes. There are three types of telescope photography. Prime focus. Where the telescope is the camera lens. Projection method where you use a eyepiece as a projector and the object you are viewing is the light source. And piggyback, you mount the camera on top of the telescope. So give it a try and enjoy.

Why Destroy the Hubble Space Telescope and the Space Station?

2009-06-21T15:28:00.004-04:00

Near the end of its service life around the year 2020, NASA plans to destroy the Hubble space telescope with a robot. This robot will attach itself to the rear of the telescope, NASA will fire a on board rocket which will cause the orbit to decay and the telescope to burn up harmlessly over the Pacific Ocean.
There are two options I can think of to save the telescope. The first would involve a modified Apollo second stage fitted with a heat shield on one end that pops out when the space telescope is docked safely inside. balloons could be mounted on the both ends and middle of the return craft. Opposite the heat shield end the new extra large parachutes they are going to use with the new Orion reentry craft could be modified for this return craft.
Another option that is even grander in scale would be to make the space telescope a lunar based telescope. I am surprised this was not mentioned before. With the cargo capacity of Ares 5, I am sure they could manufacture a mount for the telescope. And instead of having a robot send the telescope to watery grave, they could have that robot to send Hubble into a lunar trajectory and land it on the moon to be mounted. Or if this is to far fetched they could modify a Ares5 to be the mount and a lunar lander and perhaps have a space walk in lunar orbit and connect them. Then land it. Since the international space station will only be operational until 2015 or so, this seem to be the next best option.
The international space station could be recycled as well. As the our lunar base expands NASA and the world could disassemble the space station for use on the moon for living space. Just think about all that extra electricity they would have by using those extra solar panels. They could turn a ares5 into a flat bed truck and land the components on the moon. These are some ways NASA could save some cash. Since the most expensive part was getting these components into space in the first place.

Meteors And Meteorites.

2009-02-08T19:55:00.001-05:00

Back in the early seventies when astronomy was a fairly new hobby for me, it dawned on me that there were more people worried about getting your order right at your local drive thru restaurants than worried about Earth getting hit by a near Earth object. What are near Earth objects, neo's are meteors, and or asteroids comets that come within one astronomical unit of the Earth.

Back in the late seventies the movie "Meteor" was made starring Sean Connory, Carl Muldin, Brian Keith. Then in the nineties several more movies were made on the subject.
Public awareness has been raised by these movies and by Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 mashing into Jupiter, but in my opinion the most realistic disaster scene portrayed was in the movie "Deep Impact".

Back in May of 2006 I was at a NASA exhibit at Akron Fulton Airport. I cornered two NASA scientists, we were talking about meteorites. They told me "Most Meteor sizes range from about the size of your fist to a grain of sand and are harmless". And "When a meteor hits our atmosphere its like slamming into a 13 foot thick wall of hi grade concrete." If it survives that, you get a meteorite buried in the ground somewhere hopefully and not anything important. The best way to watch a meteor shower is with wide field binoculars. For more information visit Astronomy Pictures, Telescope Set Up Guide Illustrated Other great links are Amazing Weather Picture. and A Walk In The Park Multimedia and resources,Astronomer Multimedia Link Resources Guide.

A Last Perfect Day.

2009-02-02T00:17:00.003-05:00

We know that our Sun is 4.5 billion years old. At the present time our Sun is burning about 70% hydrogen and 30% helium and is a main sequence G2 class star. People say our Sun is a ordinary star, but compared to what? If you could look at all the stars you can see, you would see that our Sun is actually among the top 10% of all comparable stars in mass. The Sun converts 700 million tons of hydrogen into helium each second, the helium is the by product of the fusion that takes place. In about 1.3 billion years our Sun will increase 15% in brightness. In 4 billion years our Suns hydrogen will be exhausted and our Sun will begin to burn helium.
It will swell in size and swallow the planet Mercury. This means the Earth and all who are on it will have a last perfect day.Our atmosphere will be slowly stripped away as the Sun slowly sheds its atmosphere in waves. our oceans and lakes will boil away to space. After the helium is gone it begins to burn carbon as its atmosphere swells past Venus, Earth and maybe half way to Mars.
The Earth will melt with fervent heat. Then the Sun will throw one last tantrum, its atmosphere will be pulled in as the Suns core collapses to the size of the Earth, then the pressure in its core grows to high for gravity to hold it in. Then the biggest explosion the Earth will experience will happen. In one last violent gasp the Sun will shed its atmosphere out in all directions.
Our Sun will become a white dwarf star leaving the Earth as a burned cinder. And the new Earth sized Sun will slowly dim only to leave the Earth cloaked in the eternal darkness of space. More information about astronomy can be found at Astronomy Pictures, Telescope Set Up Guide Illustrated. or Squidoo Astronomy Group.