AstroPilotDad

Astronomy: Light Pollution, Crude fix to save the night

Posted on May 20, 2021May 20, 2021 by AstroPilotDad

I’m not sure if I have shared this before but I currently take pictures from my drive way. Apart from the limited FOV, only the south eastern, north eastern are visible making it a bit challenging to get images for objects more than a couple of hours a night. On top of that, there is a bright street light right next to my drive way 😐 . The light also shines right into one of the guest bedroom. To mitigate the problem, I contacted the light company and explained the situation. The were kind enough to put up a shield on one side of the light. While helpful, it is not completely opaque allowing enough light to pass through so as to be a problem.

This is usually not a huge challenge when I take pictures of objects in the south eastern skies. However, at this time of the year not many targets are visible in that region of the sky during the early part of the night. So I had to resort to targeting objects in the north/northeastern skies. The lamp created so terrible LP artifacts that the subs were unusable. I had a cheap light pollution filter applied but it wasn’t any use either. Here are a couple of sample pictures I tried to take. The first one is a 5 minute sub of Elephant’s trunk nebula (not sure if you can make out the faint outline at the center of the image) and the second is 3 minute sub of Iris Nebula. As you can see, both the images have the light pollution artifact ruining the right side of the image. The more subs I stack the more apparent the problem becomes. Going back to my point about PNW not getting enough clear sky nights, I did not want the night to be ruined. Especially, as I was able to achieve pretty good focus and guiding.

So, I resorted to a very crude but effective way to get rid of light pollution (within limits) as long as the object was not in close proximity of the street light. My solution was to quickly put up a flattened cardboard box at the end of the OTA using an elastic band. Here is what the set up looked like 🙂

The crude and quick fix saved the night. I don’t care how it looks! It worked!! You can see the results for yourself to judge. However, I think I need to improve on my light pollution filter and create a v2 that is a bit more “sophisticated” 🙂 (black chart paper which encircles the entire OTA). Will keep you posted on how that goes

Personal: Out of the burrow!

Posted on April 21, 2021April 26, 2021 by AstroPilotDad

While technically the zoo visit a few weeks ago was what we should call coming out of our burrow from hibernation, this past weekend we took advantage of the amazing Pacific North West spring weather and finally ventured out for some physical activity. I’m voting to call that as the official out of the burrow activity 🙂 . What better way to enjoy spring weather than going for a hike on one of the several thousand beautiful trails offered by PNW.

It was the first time that we were outdoors with our son for such a long period of time, burning some calories and enjoying the sunny skies and clear air. It felt real good, even though we were/are grossly out of shape. We ended up doing a 3.4 mile hike partly through forests and partly through the cityscape. It’s amazing how in PNW it is very easy to go from the concrete jungles to the natural forests with a couple mile drive!

This particular hike had a gradient and is usually done from elevation down but we did it the other way round to burn some more calories 🙂 .While we did not end up burning as many calories as I’d initally thought, I’m sure the added weight of carrying my son is not reflected in the stats so the numbers should be slightly better than below. Here is a snapshot of our hike:

Did you look at the temperature? It was hottt!!! Luckily though the trail was mostly through shaded forests so we did not feel the heat as much. The trip back through the neighborhoods adjacent to the hike was through the sun but it wasn’t bad as the trip back was quite quick given the descending gradient and paved roads.

Like I mentioned before, it felt really nice to get out there. It sure brought in some sense of normalcy. We plan to keep this trend (n=1 is definitely not a trend but I am choosing to call it that 🙂 ) and hope to get out more often during spring and summer. With me fully vaccinated and my wife about to get her first shot soon, we feel a bit more comfortable hanging out with friends outside. Hopefully indoors (with other vaccinated familes) once we are fully vaccinated.

Looking forward to a normal and fun filled summer! For now, time to close out this blog. I will leave you with a picture from our hike:

Personal: One trip round the sun!

Posted on April 20, 2021May 5, 2021 by AstroPilotDad

This past week was my son’s first birthday! All that means is that the planet earth made a trip around the sun and is back at more or less the same place relative to the sun. In terms of space-time, we are never back at the same place. The sun is revolving around the galactic core and the milky way itself is moving relative to the local cluster and space itself is expanding. Check this video out if you aren’t familiar with how everything in the universe moves and how the current calendar came into being:

My point is, the yearly celebration is quite arbitrary. If the earth took a couple of months longer to revolve, our birthdays would have been every 15 calendar months. I think what is important is to celebrate developmental milestones, but may be our developmental milestones also align with the revolution of the earth because of millions of years of evolution 🙂 ? Anyhow, given our lives revolve around the revolutions the earth makes 🙂 , it is important to celebrate milestones based on this construct. So we planned to do exactly that for our son’s birthday. Except, you know, COVID!

We still decided that such an important milestone be memorable. While we could not invite friends and family to a party, we neverthless did a small celebration where we decorated the house and my wife made a cake and we did a video call with out close family on his birthday. Our son seems to like the llama llama books so we made that as the theme for his birthday. Here is what the setup looked like:

The following day, my wife had planned for professional photoshoot. We were hesitant to do it because of COVID but the photographer had been quarantining between shoots and planned to wear a mask for the duration. So we thought that it was a tolerable risk. My wife was very exicted as this was the one thing she had been meaning to get for a while! We thought that we would do it at our son’s birth but, you know, COVID! We made arrangements for the photoshoot to be llama llama theme and we planned our matching outfits and got new ones for our son. My wife had also ordered a bunch of 12-18month outfits. As is customary, I put all the new clothes to wash and thought I was all set for the photoshoot day. On the day of, I was looking through the wash pile for the planned outfits and could not find them! I spent 30 minutes searching for them and have no idea were they were. Infact, 3 days on, I still don’t know where they are. In my mind a false memory of me washing the clothes was generated and I told my wife we were all set for the day. Imagine my wifes disappointment 😐 ,especially, since she had been looking forward to this for so long. Because of the snafu, we got delayed going to the photoshoot by an hour and did not have time to print our son’s milestone card on the way to the shoot as we had planned. Luckily the photographer was kind enough to accomodate our delayed start. We ended up getting some amazing pictures from the shoot that we will be printing to adorn some of the walls in our house

While the day was a chaotic one, the most important thing is, we had an unforgettable experience and a memorable day with those memories captured for us to relive over and over!

Astronomy: Can’t get to focus

Posted on April 15, 2021May 5, 2021 by AstroPilotDad

I’m not talking about me here. Although, the title of the post can apply to my work life and personal life in light of covid-fatigue, this post is about focus on my telescope. My setup is mostly automated once the telescope is placed in position and polar aligned. I know, in one of my posts I mentioned vlogging about my setup for any new astronomers out there. I just have been too lazy to do it #COVIDfatigue. I’ll get to it at some point but not sure if it is worth anything for the 2 subscribers that I have 🙂 . So, where was I, oh yes, focus on my telescope. My setup is mostly automated and I used EKOS and Kstars for imaging. The software also has focusing algorithms if you have a motorised focuser. I have so far struggled with getting pinpoint star focus using the algorithms. In fact, I have wasted a couple of wonderful nights because the pictures were not quite in focus and the stacking software did not reconize the stars. Here is an example image from last night which was a lost cause. I was trying to capture a portion of the Markarian’s chain – a popular target for the galaxy season.

Failed attempt at a part of Markarian’s Chain – Each fuzzy object is a galaxy!

One of the challenges imaging from my driveway, is the limited time window objects are visible for. The field of view is limited with my house obstructing all of western part of the sky and the houses across from my house cover a substantial portion of the sky on the eastern side. The only saving grace is a park diagonally across from my street that allows for a better view of the south eastern sky. With this limited time window, it is imperative for me to get the polar alignment, focus and plate solving done quickly so that I can focus on capturing images. After letting the automated focus routine complete succesfully, I was pretty stoked to get these many galaxies in the FOV of my CCD. I started capturing 300 second images. When I looked at the captured subs, they looked fine. I mean the focus was not perfect (the stars were a bit bloated) but I thought it was possibly due to exposure time. After, what I thought was a succesful couple of hours of data gathering, I called it a night and tried to stack the images to see how they look prior to getting some darks. Stacking the images threw a warning that only 1 image would be stacked. Quick google search revealed that this usually happens when the image is not in focus 😐 . It was too late to redo focus and capture the images that night. So i called it quits and planned to set up the following night as well.

The following night I decided that I am not going to take any chances with focus. So after polar alignment, I slewed to a brightish star and placed a Bahtinov mask for focus. If I did not already mention, once I set up my gear, I sit at home and work on my computer for imaging while watching the live feed of my driveway from security cameras. So, using Bahtinov mask meant I either sit outside while focusing or do a couple of in and out trips. In anycase, I prefer automated focus to avoid either options!

After succesfully getting the camera in focus using the mask, I did plate solve and tried a different target – NGC 4645 Needle Galaxy. It was a fruitful night as I was able to capture this image. It has a bunch of pollution artifacts and I need to get a lot more exposures to get better Signal to Noise ratio but I am pleased with the results

With every failed/bust night, I learn something that I can put to use for the subsequent sessions making my process more and more efficient. However, I still need to do a bit of research on how to get pinpoint focus with the EKOS focus module algorithms rather than using Bahtinov mask. This will especially be useful if I set up a remote observatory at some point in the future. Hopefully, by next clear night, I will be able to figure the autofous routine and not need to use the Bahtinov mask!

Personal: Shoes, what’s the big deal?

Posted on April 7, 2021September 23, 2021 by AstroPilotDad

Pandemic has resulted in such novel experiences for new borns that they think that’s how things normally are. For example, in my son’s world view, wearing a mask is the norm or may be even fashion 🙂 since everyone he meets outside wears one and his parents, when they venture out, wear one too! Another thing that my son wasn’t used to until recently was shoes! Our son started walking a couple of months ago but the fact that the only places he ventured to until recently was doctor appointments meant that he hadn’t had the need for shoes. We got him shoes prior to our visit to the zoo coulpe of weeks ago, but when we tried to get him to put them on he was scared of them and started crying. We decided that he wouldn’t need the shoes for the zoo visit as the weather was bad and we did not expect him to be out of his stroller.

To get him to get used to wearing shoes, I put them on him (he was crying for a bit when I did that) and then took him to the park near our house. I put him on the ground to walk and he *would not budge*! He was unsure of taking a step and would frequently sit down on the ground trying to remove the shoes. After unsuccesfully trying for a bit, I brought him back home and let the shoes be still on. After a bit of fussing, he started walking in them. Still unsure, still wobbling – reminded me of how dogs react when you put them in shoes 🙂

After a while, I took the shoes off and decided to give it a try again the next day. Same thing happened again. He cried when I put the shoes on and wasn’t ready to walk in the park. Just stood there. This, was until our neighbours kids showed up and started running around, playing soccer in the park. Once they showed up, all my son wanted to do was run towards them. He completely forgot that he was wearing shoes that he did not like 🙂 .Here is the proof!

Was planning to take him out today again but its that PNW weather – cold, gray and rainy. Let’s see how he does when I take him out to the park again soon.