Space: The Final Frontier

[SlammedZero]

Last night I got an epic chance to peer through a very, very expensive telescope. He said the entire setup cost him around $12-$15k. It was amazing, to say the least. We peered at some very far away galaxies and nebulas. We actually looked at the "Pillars of Life" (you may have heard of it) and I was sitting there staring at it in real time. So, this telescope is mostly for peering into deep space and not just looking at planets (you can but it doesn't look like what you think). You can change the light the telescope perceives (so you can see oxygen, hydrogen, etc) but the screen will only show you black and white. To get the pictures of the universe you are use to seeing, he has to take several minutes to hours of exposure to capture everything and then has to go through and post edit it. Basically color grade it. It was an amazing experience.


This is the M33 Galaxy. 2.7 million light years from Earth. It is about 30 thousand light years in width.


This is the Pillars of Life taken by the Hubble telescope and color graded. I really wish I took a picture of what we saw on screen looking at this in real time. I was just too much in awe to worry about my phone and also didn't want to be rude.

Anyways, I may be a little excited but I wanted to share.

 

[Runwildboys]

You definitely should've gotten a picture of the Pillars of Life. Sounds like a very cool experience. @YosemiteSam will probably want to talk in depth about it...and I think this is an artist's rendering, not an actual photograph.

 

[SlammedZero]

You definitely should've gotten a picture of the Pillars of Life. Sounds like a very cool experience. @YosemiteSam will probably want to talk in depth about it...and I think this is an artist's rendering, not an actual photograph.

I know!!! I'm kicking myself for not taking the picture.

 

[YosemiteSam]

I'm glad you loved the experience!

I'm an astronomer and astrophotographer, but I haven't been practicing in a few years. I just haven't had a lot of time, but I remain a member of my local Astronomical Society. I was a board member there for a few years. We have the largest publicly accessible telescope in Connecticut. It's a 25" Obsession Dobsonian telescope. This is a picture of Bob, the observatory director standing next to it. To buy one new, they are about $20k. This one was donated to the Society a long time ago.

The Obsession isn't a great scope to take pictures with because while it tracks objects in the sky, it's an alt-azmuth mount rather than an equatorial mount, so long term exposures rotate in the field of view. As a visual telescope, it's VERY hard to beat. We call it the giant light bucket!

That said, we also have other telescopes (and mounts) that are perfect for taking astrophotography pictures. We have a 12" Newtonian scope that the mirror was made by Perkin Elmer back in the day. The same people who made the Hubble space telescope. (picture below, though it's not in the dome anymore, we have a different one there now) This and the Obession are great for both DSO (Deep Space Objects) and planets.

The telescope that is currently in the dome is a 16" Meade schmidt cassegrain style telescope and people refer to scopes like this as Planet Killers. I can't locate a picture of it, but it's a monster too. The Round Hill Observatory in Greenwich Connecticut recently donated a new dome and two incredible telescopes to us too. A Takahashi FSQ-106ed and a 14.5" Ritchey–Chrétien on a Paramount ME mount. Both are absolute monsters for astrophotography.

Here are two of my best images I've ever taken.

This is the Andromeda Galaxy. (M31)

This is The Pleiades (M45) This image of mine actually got published in France's Astronomical Society's monthly magazine for January 2018!

The current president of our astronomical society (Shannon Calvert) is photographer and artist. He joined and started using our telescopes as lens for his camera and clearly fell in love with doing it. He is incredible. You can find his entire astro art gallery here.

 

[YosemiteSam]

You definitely should've gotten a picture of the Pillars of Life. Sounds like a very cool experience. @YosemiteSam will probably want to talk in depth about it...and I think this is an artist's rendering, not an actual photograph.

The image of the pillars of creation (aka, M16, or The Eagle Nebula) was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble only see's very small parts of the sky so they take lots of images and them stitch them together for a larger view.

Here is the first image(s) of it taken by Hubble, then they took more years later.. You see how it's squared in the edges, those are frames and then stitched together. You can clearly see the quality difference after the upgrades to Hubble years later.

 

[YosemiteSam]

Since you had a shot of the Triangulum Galaxy. (M33) Here is one of the very first images of a galaxy I ever took several years ago. (which happen to be M33) As you can see, my focus was off so it isn't very sharp and I didn't take a very long exposure so it doesn't have a ton of details. Quality wise, it's pretty much awful. You can see my mount / telescope wasn't aligned properly so you can see star smudges too. Bad focus and bad alignment lead to bad pictures. The stars look like blotches instead of crisp points of light.

 

[cowboyec]

Last night I got an epic chance to peer through a very, very expensive telescope. He said the entire setup cost him around $12-$15k. It was amazing, to say the least. We peered at some very far away galaxies and nebulas. We actually looked at the "Pillars of Life" (you may have heard of it) and I was sitting there staring at it in real time. So, this telescope is mostly for peering into deep space and not just looking at planets (you can but it doesn't look like what you think). You can change the light the telescope perceives (so you can see oxygen, hydrogen, etc) but the screen will only show you black and white. To get the pictures of the universe you are use to seeing, he has to take several minutes to hours of exposure to capture everything and then has to go through and post edit it. Basically color grade it. It was an amazing experience.


This is the M33 Galaxy. 2.7 million light years from Earth. It is about 30 thousand light years in width.


This is the Pillars of Life taken by the Hubble telescope and color graded. I really wish I took a picture of what we saw on screen looking at this in real time. I was just too much in awe to worry about my phone and also didn't want to be rude.

Anyways, I may be a little excited but I wanted to share.

 

[aria]

I love reading about this stuff and appreciate you guys sharing the pics. Fascinating stuff.

@YosemiteSam way off topic but quick question, no need to go into detail. I may even start a thread on this but with all your knowledge, do you believe “other beings” exist somewhere out there?

 

[Runwildboys]

I'm glad you loved the experience!

I'm an astronomer and astrophotographer, but I haven't been practicing in a few years. I just haven't had a lot of time, but I remain a member of my local Astronomical Society. I was a board member there for a few years. We have the largest publicly accessible telescope in Connecticut. It's a 25" Obsession Dobsonian telescope. This is a picture of Bob, the observatory director standing next to it. To buy one new, they are about $20k. This one was donated to the Society a long time ago.

The Obsession isn't a great scope to take pictures with because while it tracks objects in the sky, it's an alt-azmuth mount rather than an equatorial mount, so long term exposures rotate in the field of view. As a visual telescope, it's VERY hard to beat. We call it the giant light bucket!

That said, we also have other telescopes (and mounts) that are perfect for taking astrophotography pictures. We have a 12" Newtonian scope that the mirror was made by Perkin Elmer back in the day. The same people who made the Hubble space telescope. (picture below, though it's not in the dome anymore, we have a different one there now) This and the Obession are great for both DSO (Deep Space Objects) and planets.

The telescope that is currently in the dome is a 16" Meade schmidt cassegrain style telescope and people refer to scopes like this as Planet Killers. I can't locate a picture of it, but it's a monster too. The Round Hill Observatory in Greenwich Connecticut recently donated a new dome and two incredible telescopes to us too. A Takahashi FSQ-106ed and a 14.5" Ritchey–Chrétien on a Paramount ME mount. Both are absolute monsters for astrophotography.

Here are two of my best images I've ever taken.

This is the Andromeda Galaxy. (M31)

This is The Pleiades (M45) This image of mine actually got published in France's Astronomical Society's monthly magazine for January 2018!

The current president of our astronomical society (Shannon Calvert) is photographer and artist. He joined and started using our telescopes as lens for his camera and clearly fell in love with doing it. He is incredible. You can find his entire astro art gallery here.

With today's technology, I'm surprised you don't have a computerized base that would adjust with the Earth's rotation, to take photos with The Obsession.

 

[YosemiteSam]

I love reading about this stuff and appreciate you guys sharing the pics. Fascinating stuff.

@YosemiteSam way off topic but quick question, no need to go into detail. I may even start a thread on this but with all your knowledge, do you believe “other beings” exist somewhere out there?

Do I believe there is life that exists other than on the Earth? Absolutely!

Actually, not only do I believe there is other life out there, I believe their is an extremely high possibility there is other life right here within our own solar system. Saturn has a moon called Enceladus that has a liquid ocean on it that is covered by ice. Even though the top is ice, it is liquid underneath and it's believed that Enceladus' ocean is over six miles deep!

The Earth's oceans averages 2.3 miles deep, but deepest part of the ocean is the Challenger Deep trench. It's 32,600 feet deep which converts to 6.85 miles deep!

Life requires water and that is what Enceladus' six mile deep ocean is made of!

 

[YosemiteSam]

With today's technology, I'm surprised you don't have a computerized base that would adjust with the Earth's rotation, to take photos with The Obsession.

The Obsession does have a computerized base that tracks the sky. The problem is, it's an alt-azmuth mount. Since the Earth on an axis, it doesn't turn exactly like the Earth does. So it stays pointed at the object, but the scope doesn't twist like it needs to so the image rotates in the view.

There are other computerized mounts that do called Equatorial mounts. It tracks the object and twists the telescope just like the Earth turns and therefore the view doesn't twist while taking a long exposure.

Here is a video that sort of shows it. You can use an alt-azmuth mount and do equatorial mode, but it requires you to tilt the mount at the same angle of as you are on the Earth. For a 25" Obsession, that's a big task since it's very very big! (see picture)

 

[Runwildboys]

The Obsession does have a computerized base that tracks the sky. The problem is, it's an alt-azmuth mount. Since the Earth on an axis, it doesn't turn exactly like the Earth does. So it stays pointed at the object, but the scope doesn't twist like it needs to so the image rotates in the view.

There are other computerized mounts that do called Equatorial mounts. It tracks the object and twists the telescope just like the Earth turns and therefore the view doesn't twist while taking a long exposure.

Here is a video that sort of shows it. You can use an alt-azmuth mount and do equatorial mode, but it requires you to tilt the mount at the same angle of as you are on the Earth. For a 25" Obsession, that's a big task since it's very very big! (see picture)

Ah, got it!

 

[aria]

Bear in mind, he's not saying there's intelligent life on Enceladus, but possibly simple organisms, like the ones living in the deepest, darkest parts of our oceans, in the thermal jets....I assume.

Come again?

 

[aria]

Bear in mind, he's not saying there's intelligent life on Enceladus, but possibly simple organisms, like the ones living in the deepest, darkest parts of our oceans, in the thermal jets....I assume.

Huh?

 

[Rockport]

Last night I got an epic chance to peer through a very, very expensive telescope. He said the entire setup cost him around $12-$15k. It was amazing, to say the least. We peered at some very far away galaxies and nebulas. We actually looked at the "Pillars of Life" (you may have heard of it) and I was sitting there staring at it in real time. So, this telescope is mostly for peering into deep space and not just looking at planets (you can but it doesn't look like what you think). You can change the light the telescope perceives (so you can see oxygen, hydrogen, etc) but the screen will only show you black and white. To get the pictures of the universe you are use to seeing, he has to take several minutes to hours of exposure to capture everything and then has to go through and post edit it. Basically color grade it. It was an amazing experience.


This is the M33 Galaxy. 2.7 million light years from Earth. It is about 30 thousand light years in width.


This is the Pillars of Life taken by the Hubble telescope and color graded. I really wish I took a picture of what we saw on screen looking at this in real time. I was just too much in awe to worry about my phone and also didn't want to be rude.

Anyways, I may be a little excited but I wanted to share.

I went to the McDonalds Observatory in West Texas a few months ago and you can peer through multiple extremely expensive telescopes. 30-over 100k each. These nebula pics are misleading as you will not see these through a telescope as they are all extremely modified via software.

 

[aria]

Bear in mind, he's not saying there's intelligent life on Enceladus, but possibly simple organisms, like the ones living in the deepest, darkest parts of our oceans, in the thermal jets....I assume.

What’s that?

 

[Runwildboys]

What’s that?

https://ocean.si.edu/ecosystems/deep-sea/microbes-keep-hydrothermal-vents-pumping

 

[YosemiteSam]

I went to the McDonalds Observatory in West Texas a few months ago and you can peer through multiple extremely expensive telescopes. 30-over 100k each. These nebula pics are misleading as you will not see these through a telescope as they are all extremely modified via software.

They are long exposure. The images I took above where taken with a monochrome camera, but we use color filters (LRGB, Ha, OIII, and SII filters) when we take the images. Then we take the monochrome images that had only specific spectrums of color and merge them together. (like a color printer does) to make full color images.

Now, in many cases certain colors made be enhanced to make the images more interesting or so that you can see a specific element more clearly. Like Hydrogen Alpha filter (the Ha filter) primarily shows up in the red spectrum. Here is the California Nebula that is made up mostly of a huge cloud of hydrogen.

The red is enhanced so you can see more details of the cloud itself.

 

[SlammedZero]

That is incredible Yosemite Sam!! I love your pictures. I've always been very interested in our night's sky/the universe. I've done plenty of reading about space throughout my life, but up to this point, really have had only access to very novice telescopes. This was my first opportunity to see a telescope that could actually go out and reach something, and wow, what an experience it was. I can most definitely understand why you are so captivated into this hobby. The universe is a very strange yet intensely interesting "thing" to observe!

 

[Runwildboys]

That is incredible Yosemite Sam!! I love your pictures. I've always been very interested in our night's sky/the universe. I've done plenty of reading about space throughout my life, but up to this point, really have had only access to very novice telescopes. This was my first opportunity to see a telescope that could actually go out and reach something, and wow, what an experience it was. I can most definitely understand why you are so captivated into this hobby. The universe is a very strange yet intensely interesting "thing" to observe!

My favorite thing about it is that you're literally looking at millions of years in the past....What freaks me out is that something that happened a long time ago, such as a gamma ray burst can take out our atmosphere from light years away, and because it travels at the speed of light, we won't even see it until it's here.