Astroblog

The Full Moon is Wednesday February 8. Venus is easily visible in the western evening sky . Jupiter dominates the evening sky in the north-west once Venus has set. Mars enters the evening sky, but is best visible in the morning sky heading towards Saturn, which is near the star Spica. The Moon occults the star eta Geminorum on the late evening of Saturday the 4th.

Morning sky looking east as seen from Adelaide at 2:00 am local daylight saving time on Sunday February 5 showing Mars and Saturn. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. The inset shows the telescopic appearance of Saturn and it's Moons at this time. Click to embiggen.

The Full Moon is Wednesday February 8.

Mars is high in the northern morning sky. After a brief sojourn in the constellation of Virgo, Mars reverses direction and re-enters the constellation of Leo.

Mars has now entered the evening sky, rising around 10 pm (local daylight saving time), but will be relatively low above the late evening horizon for the rest of the week.

Saturn is above the north- eastern horizon, not far from the bright star Spica. Saturn is now high enough in sky in the early morning for telescopic observation.

Mercury is now lost in morning twilight.

Evening sky on Saturday February 4 looking west as seen from Adelaide at 9:00 pm local daylight saving time in South Australia showing Venus in Aquarius, with Jupiter not far away. The insets shows the appearance of Venus and Jupiter and its Moons as seen telescopically at this time. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen)

Bright white Venus is readily visible in the evening western twilight sky from around half an hour after sunset for somewhat over an hour and a half.

Venus is in Aquarius this week. It is almost on top of Uranus on the 9th. You will need binoculars to see Uranus, Venus may drown the planet out with its brightness.

Jupiter was at opposition, when it is biggest and brightest as seen from Earth, on Saturday the 29th of October.

However, Jupiter is still a great binocular and telescope object and will be for many weeks to come. Jupiter is visible for most of the night in the north-western sky, setting half an hour after midnight.

In the evening Jupiter is readily visible in the northern-western sky, from about twilight. It is coming closer to Venus, and the pair look very nice in the western evening sky.

Now is a still good time for telescopic observation of this massive world (although the window for observation is narrowing), or follow its moons in binoculars. For good telescopic observation Jupiter is best from 9 pm - 11 pm.

Although Jupiter is the most prominent now, there are lots of interesting things in the sky to view with a telescope. If you don't have a telescope, now is a good time to visit one of your local astronomical societies open nights or the local planetariums.

The evening sky facing North in Adelaide on February 4 at 11:30 pm AEDST showing the waxing Moon about to cover eta Geminorum (indicated by circle). (similar views will be seen from other cities at the equivalent local time eg 11:30 pm ACDST Adelaide.

The nearly full Moon passes in front of the moderately bright star Tejat Prior (eta Geminorium, magnitude 3.5) on the evening of Saturday February 4-Morning Sunday February 5.

The dark limb of the Moon covers the star at 23:38 pm ACDST Adleaide (4th), 0:06 am AEDST Hobart (5th), 0:11 am AEDST Melbourne (5th) and 20:00 pm AWST Perth (4th). The Star will reappear on the bright side of the Moon at 0:13 am ACDST Adleaide (5th), 0:59 am AEDST Hobart (5th), 0:52 am AEDST Melbourne (5th) and 21:00 pm AWST Perth (4th).

With the Moon close to full, this event is really best seen with binoculars or a small telescope. Picking up the stars reappearance will be quite difficult against the brightness of the Moon.

Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm AEDST, Western sky at 10 pm AEDST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch (this will be up dated to February a little later).

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Labels: weekly sky

This time it was a Kayak trip to meet up with the Friends of Torrens Island for a picnic at the historic Quarantine Station.

Great fun and lots of yummy scones were had by all.

Labels: kayak, miscelaneous

...you can kayak down your street.

Big storm just flooded the street, took out our power.

...Rob McNaught was measuring the orbit of 2012 bx34 using T17, the refined obit from Rob and others helped Goldstone to take radar images of it.

Schnitzel was great though, we were celebrating EldestOnes birthday (he's an odd number old, not a prime number, but the sum of the first and second digits you get an even number which is half MiddleOnes age, and twice the sum of the first and second digits of MiddleOnes age).

Strangely enough, video conferencing on an Android phone doesn't work too well when you are eating dinner.

Labels: asteroids, home life, iTelescope

Carnival of Space #233 is now Up at Riding with Robots. There's Death Stars, Star factories, the mysterious atmosphere of Titan and much, much more. Pop on over and have a read.

Labels: carnival of space

Had a great Australia Day, lazed around a bit, played Master Labyrinth with the younger boys, swam, had friends over, then walked up to the end of the street to take pictures of Venus, the thin crescent Moon and the Australia Day Fireworks (click on images to embiggen them).

Didn't see C/2003 T12 though, it's probably around magnitude 12.

Labels: home life, miscelaneous, Moon, Venus

Comet C/2003 T12 enters the field of view of the STEREO H1B imager on 16-01-2012. Image processed with ImageJ from raw images from SECCHI/STEREO. An animation is at the end of this post.

While my internet was in abeyance, a remarkable story played out in the STEREOHUNTER community.

Comet Al noticed a reasonably bright comet coming out from the Sun and alerted the group, William Thompson back tracked it in the COR2B images.

An orbit was initially worked out by Man-To Hui from the H1B images and Ranier Kracht refined them with the COR2B images, then found that the comets orbit matched that of C/2003 T12 (SOHO-673 observed in C3).

I love this group, the guys are backtracking now to see if they can pick it up in earlier appearances in STEREO, Comet Al may have picked up the 2007 return.

Anyway, the comet will soon be appearing in the evening sky (from about the 26th on it should be high enough above the horizon at astronomical twilight), how bright it will be is a matter of speculation. It might be unaided eye visible, or binocular only (or more likely telescope only). I'll be out having a look as I have the ocean as my western horizon.

If you want to look, Ranier's orbital elements are below:

Ecliptic  Osculating Elements (J2000.0) at JD 2455952.500000  Date:   2012/01/26:00:00:00.00 
Body            e        i            w             Node            q                JD-Tp
 
CK03T120   0.775932114   11.4780256   217.5091602   176.4741890     0.575542927      -0.4140515

A chart suitable for printing (click to embiggen) showing the track of the comet over the next few days as seen at astronomical twilight in southern Australia. The chart shows the western horizon and the rectangle the field of view of the iTelescope T12 and 14 instruments.






Animation from 16-01-2012 to 17-01-2012 showing comet C/2003 T12 in STEREO H1b, you can just see a faint tail.

Labels: astrophotography, comet, comets, Stereo Satellite

http://www.auroraskystation.com/live-camera/9/

Aurora happening now (9:24 am ACDST)

Labels: aurora

On Friday evening, shortly after I did Skype Interview with Leslie Hayes, my internet connection crashed. It feebly revived itself once or twice, but basically, while Comet Al has recovered comet C/2003 T12 and aurora roared across the sky, I've been right out of it.

Not that I haven't been busy. I have an article up at The Conversation, I've been the expert adviser for an article in Cosmos, I have an article coming out in next months Australian Sky&Telescope.
And now that the internet is back, I've done a Skype Interview with Francis Walsh and I can at last download all the pictures I've taken with iTelescope.

Of course, now we have EldestOne's birthday to contend with, so don't expect a blizzard of posts.

Labels: housekeeping, miscelaneous

Venus is easily visible in the western evening sky and is visited by the Moon on the 26th and 27th. Jupiter dominates the evening sky in the north-west once Venus has set, and is visited by the Moon on the 30th. Mars enters the evening sky, but is best visible in the morning sky heading towards Saturn, which is near the star Spica.

Morning sky looking east as seen from Adelaide at 3:00 am local daylight saving time on Sunday January 29 showing Mars and Saturn. The inset Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. The inset shows the appearance of Saturn and it's Moons at this time. Click to embiggen.

The First Quarter Moon is Tuesday January 31. This is the second First Quarter Moon this Month. We might call this a "Blue" First Quarter Moon.

Mars is high in the northern morning sky. After so long in the constellation of Leo, Mars now enters the constellation of Virgo, heading towards Spica and Saturn. Mars has now entered the evening sky, rising around 10 pm (local daylight saving time), but will be relatively low above the late evening horizon for the rest of the week.

Saturn is above the north- eastern horizon, not far from the bright star Spica. Saturn is now high enough in sky in the early morning for telescopic observation.

Mercury is now lost in morning twilight.

Evening sky on Saturday January 27 looking west as seen from Adelaide at 9:00 pm local daylight saving time in South Australia showing Venus in Aquarius, with the crescent Moon beside it and Jupiter not far away. The inset shows the appearance of Venus at this time. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen)

Bright white Venus is readily visible in the evening western twilight sky from around half an hour after sunset for somewhat over an hour and a half. Venus is near the thin crescent Moon on the 26th and 27th.

Venus is in Aquarius this week. It is almost on top of phi Aquarii (magnitude 4.2) on the 26th. You will have to wait until quite late in the twilight to see this star appear.

Jupiter was at opposition, when it is biggest and brightest as seen from Earth, on Saturday the 29th of October.

However, Jupiter is still a great binocular and telescope object and will be for many weeks to come. Jupiter is visible for most of the night in the north-western sky, setting half an hour after midnight.

Evening sky on Monday January 30 looking north as seen from Adelaide at 9:00 pm local daylight saving time in South Australia showing Jupiter and the waxing Moon. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. INSET: Jupiter and its Moons as seen telescopically at this time, (click to embiggen)

In the evening Jupiter is readily visible in the northern-western sky, from about twilight. It is coming closer to Venus, and the pair look very nice in the western evening sky.

Now is a still good time for telescopic observation of this massive world (although the window for observation is narrowing), or follow its moons in binoculars. For good telescopic observation Jupiter is best from 9 pm - 11 pm.

Although Jupiter is the most prominent now, there are lots of interesting things in the sky to view with a telescope. If you don't have a telescope, now is a good time to visit one of your local astronomical societies open nights or the local planetariums.

Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm AEDST, Western sky at 10 pm AEDST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch (this will be up dated to February a little later).

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Labels: weekly sky

During the incident where my images were appropriated and faked (see here, here and here), one of the more amusing incidents was when Don Gilson claimed that the fake planet was in my originals, but I had removed it under threat of the Queen and the CIA.

So this cartoon almost immediately came to mind (of course you have to click to embiggen for it to be legible, and of course it is copyleft me, 2012).

Why ponies? [shrugs] Why the Queen?

Labels: humor, miscelaneous, Pseudoscience

UPDATE: Fixed munged file links, now you can download all files, not just the third one (rolls eyes).

As you may know, one of my comet images has been taken and modified to give the appearance that there is an unknown planet in it (see here and here for details and a bunch of free resources to play with).

It's been 2 years since I first processed this image, and I've learnt a few tricks since then. S0 I went back and re-analysed them.

This time I stretched the images in FITS Liberator (Arcsin stretch), saved as TIFF, stacked the TIF's in ImageJ, registered the images, then used a Z project to SUM the stack. After this I used a square root transform to bring out the fainter details.

Click to embiggen the image (comet 103P Hartley2, and PGC 7154, taken on 18-09-2010), and compare it with my original stack.

I've been able to bring out the comets tail without over exposing the head, like last time. The galaxy PGC 71451 is more disappointing, but I haven't fiddled with the contrast to really bring it out.

One thing that is definitely NOT there is a crescent planet. You can even see the enhanced star diffraction spike running right through where the planet was later pasted in.

If anyone else wants to play with the raw FITS files, you can access them here (warning each file 3.5 Mb zip archives)
File 1
File 2
File 3
File 4
Process away, but do acknowledge where you got them from.

Oh and here is the header file, which you can extract from the original FITS files with any suitable image processing program:
SIMPLE = T
BITPIX = 16 /8 unsigned int, 16 & 32 int, -32 & -64 real
NAXIS = 2 /number of axes
NAXIS1 = 2184 /fastest changing axis
NAXIS2 = 1472 /next to fastest changing axis
BSCALE = 1.0000000000000000 /physical = BZERO + BSCALE*array_value
BZERO = 32768.000000000000 /physical = BZERO + BSCALE*array_value
OBJECT = '103P_18-09-0' / Target object name
TELESCOP= 'ACP->GRAS-005 TAK E250' / Telescope name
INSTRUME= 'SBIG ST-10 3 CCD Camera' / Detector instrument name
OBSERVER= 'Ian Musgrave' / Observer name
NOTES = ' '
DATE-OBS= '2010-09-18T08:04:03' / [ISO 8601] UTC date/time of exposure start
[snip lines if guff]
HISTORY File was processed by PinPoint 5.0.14 at 2010-09-18T08:05:56
DATE = '18/09/10' / [old format] UTC date of exposure start
TIME-OBS= '08:04:03' / [old format] UTC time of exposure start
UT = '08:04:03' / [old format] UTC time of exposure start
TIMESYS = 'UTC ' / Default time system
RADECSYS= 'FK5 ' / Equatorial coordinate system
AIRMASS = 1.07641649772E+000 / Airmass (multiple of zenithal airmass)
ST = '00 52 23.96' / Local apparent sidereal time of exp. start
LAT-OBS = 3.29035555556E+001 / [deg +N WGS84] Geodetic latitude
LONG-OBS= -1.05528305556E+002 / [deg +E WGS84] Geodetic longitude
ALT-OBS = 2.25000000000E+003 / [metres] Altitude above mean sea level
OBSERVAT= 'G5 - The Stefano Padovan Wide-Field Observatory' / Observatory name
RA = '23 25 01.19' / [hms J2000] Target right ascension
OBJCTRA = '23 25 01.19' / [hms J2000] Target right ascension
DEC = '+47 29 19.8' / [dms +N J2000] Target declination
OBJCTDEC= '+47 29 19.8' / [dms +N J2000] Target declination
CLRBAND = 'R ' / [J-C std] Std. color band of image or C=Color
END

Labels: comet, Pseudoscience, scepticism

Carnival of Space #232 is now up at Vintage Space. There's the space station avoiding collisions, Earth-like planets galore, exomoons, the first supernova of 2012 and much more. Head on over for a read.

Labels: carnival of space

Northern sky at 10 pm local daylight saving time in Australia showing Orion.

Globe at Night, the international light pollution survey, is currently running until January 23. The Survey is running four times this year, with January 14-23 followed by February 12-21, March 13-22 and April 11-20. Visit their website for easy to follow instructions and charts to estimate how dark your sky is.

Basically, an hour or so after sunset (8-10 pm) head out, look to the north to find Leo, (if you are in the northern hemisphere) or south to find Crux (for us southern hemisphere types) or Orion (for everybody) then check how many stars are visible, and report your observations. It's a great excuse to get outdoors and look at the sky. You might even see the International Space Station or an Iridium flare.

This year you can submit your results a smart phone or tablet. To do this, you can use the web application at www.globeatnight.org/webapp/. Globe at Night is also on Facebook and Twitter.

Labels: globe at night, light pollution

The New Moon is Monday January 23. Venus is easily visible in the western evening sky and is visited by the Moon on the 26th. Jupiter dominates the evening sky in the north-west once Venus has set. Mars enetrs the evening sky, but is best visible in the morning sky heading towards Saturn, which is near the star Spica. Globe at Night Light Pollution Survey now on.

Morning sky looking east as seen from Adelaide at 3:00 am local daylight saving time on Sunday January 22 showing Mars and Saturn. The inset Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. The inset shows the appearance of Saturn and it's Moons at this time. Click to embiggen.

The New Moon is Monday January 23. The Globe at Night, international light pollution survey, is January 14-23 followed by February 12-21, March 13-22 and April 11-20.

Mars is high in the northern morning sky. After so long in the constellation of Leo, Mars now enters the constellation of Virgo, heading towards Spica and Saturn. Mars has now entered the evening sky, rising around 11 pm (local daylight saving time), but will be low above the late evening horizon for the rest of the week.

Saturn is above the north- eastern horizon, not far from the bright star Spica. Saturn is now high enough in sky in the early morning for telescopic observation.

Mercury is now lost in morning twilight.

Evening sky on Saturday January 26 looking west as seen from Adelaide at 9:00 pm local daylight saving time in South Australia showing Venus in Aquarius, with the crescent Moon below and Jupiter not far away. The iset shows the appearance of Venus at this time. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen)

Bright white Venus is readily visible in the evening western twilight sky from around half an hour after sunset for somewhat over an hour and a half. Venus is in Aquarius this week. It passes lambda Aquarii (magnitude 3.8) on the 23rd and 24th. You will have to wait until quite late in the twilight to see this star appear.

Jupiter was at opposition, when it is biggest and brightest as seen from Earth, on Saturday the 29th of October.

However, Jupiter is still a great binocular and telescope object and will be for many weeks to come. Jupiter is visible for most of the night in the north-western sky, setting half an hour after midnight.

Evening sky on Saturday January 21 looking north as seen from Adelaide at 10:00 pm local daylight saving time in South Australia showing Jupiter and the waxing Moon. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. INSET: Jupiter and its Moons as seen telescopically at this time, (click to embiggen)

In the evening Jupiter is readily visible in the northern sky, from about twilight, and the north-western sky when it is fully dark.

Now is a good time for telescopic observation of this massive world, or follow its moons in binoculars. For good telescopic observation Jupiter is best from 9 pm - 11 pm.



Although Jupiter is the most prominent now, there are lots of interesting things in the sky to view with a telescope. If you don't have a telescope, now is a good time to visit one of your local astronomical societies open nights or the local planetariums.

Comet Lovejoy will be very difficult to spot as it has faded significantly, you need very serious telescopic kit to see it now..

Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm AEDST, Western sky at 10 pm AEDST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch (this will be up dated to January a little later).

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Labels: weekly sky

Image purported to be of a large object near 89 Leo, allegedly taken on January 9, 2012 using the GRAS (now iTelescope) scopes. The alleged coordinates are RA 11 34 21 DEC 03 03 35, click on image to embiggen for detail. However, it is a photshopped copy of one of my images from 18 September 2010.


As you may know, one of my images of comet 103P (Hartely 2) has been taken, had a fake planet added to it, and the doctored image has been circulating as evidence of Nibiru (or at least a Heavy Mass Object, whatever that is). Now, while I’m annoyed that someone has fraudulently modified one of my images, I’m more interested in using this as a teachable moment.

What lessons can we learn from this, and what resources are there for people to learn about the sky and help them interpret images posted on the web?

Before we start, here’s a list of freeware programs you can use in our exploration of astronomical images on the net:

GIMP Free image processing program
Celestia 3D Solar Simulation program
Stellarium Planetarium program
Cartes du Ciel Free sky charting software
WikiSky
Astrometry.net Astronomy image analysis prgram
Aerith Comet location and information
Minor Planet Center Comet and Asteroid Ephemeris


Part 1: How can we tell the Image of the purported Heavy Mass Object/Nibiru is a fake.

Evaluating images takes some degree of astronomical knowledge and some degree of experience with astrophotography, but I’m going to start with some simple clues that you can get with very basic knowledgee of the solar system. First off, let’s look at the image circulating on the web that claims to be of 89 Leo with a planetary object in it (image at the head of the post, click to embiggen).

With no knowledge of where or when the image was taken (or of the fact that it is a Photoshopped version of one of my images), what clues are there that this is a fake:

First Clue to Fakery: The object is a crescent. I’ve already alluded to this in my previous post, but to re-iterate, this object is supposed to be outside Earth’s orbit. It is impossible for an object outside Earth’s orbit to show a crescent. See the diagram just above, to visualise this.

Second Clue to Fakery: Have a look at the image to the left (it's my original image, it's also in the image at the head of the post), see the long fuzzy blob there, that’s a comet.

The comet’s image has trailed as when you take long exposures, things like comets, asteroids and planets move with respect to the background stars. In this case, I actually took 4x90 second images and stacked them up to improve the brightness, because I aligned all the images so that the stars were in focus, the comet shows as a trail, you can see here where I have stacked the same batch of images on the comet rather than the stars the comet is clear and the stars are trailed (but for the purposes, we don’t need to know that at the moment).

Looking back to the comet you can see the faint tail pointing off to the bottom. Now, one of the important things about comets is that the tail points away from the Sun. With the dust tails things are slightly more complex, as the tail curves, and if the comet is directly in Earth’s orbital plane the comet can hide the dust tail, (see here for a complex tail of comet 2009 P1 Garradd), but the point is that the tail will not be pointing AT the Sun.

Relationship of the orbit of comet 103P Hartley 2 with regard to the Earth and the Sun. 103P is outside and above Earth's orbit, so any object near 103P in the T05 imager must be outside Earth;'s orbit and hence not a crescent. Simulation in Celestia, click to embiggen.

Why is this important? Because look at the crescent object. The Sunlight must be coming from the bottom left to illuminate the object to give it a crescent shape.

But the comets tail means that the Sun must be towards the top right. The crescent object has been pasted in without any regard to the Sun’s location. You can use Celestia, and this set of elements for 103P, to play with the comets orbit to demonstrate this to your satisfaction.

Still another clue comes from the object being a crescent. As we saw above, the crescent is facing the wrong way with regard to the Sun, but it is also too far away from the Sun. Thin crescents as seen in the doctored image (and crescent Mercury, crescent Venus and the Crescent Moon), can only show up when the body in question is nearly between us and the Sun.

The thin crescent moon can be as far away as 25 degrees, Venus 23 degrees. However, this object is fully 115 degrees from the Sun on 9 January (if it was actually near 89 Leo, it's a bit further way using the real location) , which would mean it could not be a crescent. Thus it cannot be an actual object, but something pasted in later (here's an example of my animations of the phases of Venus).

Third Clue to Fakery: As mentioned above, when taking long exposures (6 minutes in this case), solar system object are trailed because they move with respect to the distant stars. The comet has trailed out into a rod shape because of this movement. Now look at the crescent, it is crisp without any trailing. Any solar system object closer than Neptune will show significant trailing (and even Neptune will show some trailing). So this can’t be an image of an actual solar system object, but a pasted in image.

103P Hartley as viewed against the background constellations on 18 September 2010, as seen form Earth. Simulated in Celestia (click to embiggen)

Those are all fairly simple ways you can check that an image is fake with relatively little astronomical knowledge. Let’s look at some ways to check that require a bit more expertise.

Is the Image actually in Leo? The text on the image purporting to show the alleged HMO states that the image was taken of 89 Leo on the 9th of January, 2012. How can we check this? Well, aside from the fact that it is identical to an image I posted on the 20th of September 2010 (apart from the added crescent object), we can use a number of clues. Once again, the comet is our guide.

The area around PGC 71451, as seen in WikiSky (left) and from my image of 18-09-2010 (which is identical to the image claimed to be from 9 January 2012, except for the added crescent object). The boxes surround PGC 71451 in both images. You can see that my image (and by extension the photoshopped image) is identical to the Wikisky field. I've had to rotate my image slightly to match the orientation in WikiSky. Click to embiggen.

First, head over to Seiichi Yoshida's Aerith (or cometography), and look at the list of bright observable comets. Note that there are no comets in Leo at the moment. So the image can’t be in Leo. So where is it?

Next head over to Astrometry.net. I usually use Astrometry.net for identifying fields in the STEREO spacecraft imager, but you can use it to identify other astrophotos as well. You will need to login using your Google or Facebook ID, upload the original image (restricting the search to Leo otherwise the run will take 24-48 hours), and you will get no matches. Run it again restricting to Andromeda, and it will match to the section of Andromeda where the galaxy PGC 71451 is. It’s not an image taken in Leo.

Astrometry.net run demonstrating that the image is taken in Andromeda, not Leo. Click to embiggen.

Another clue is that on the 9th of January, the nearly full Moon was 60 degrees from 89 Leo. Any long exposures taken this close to the full Moon would be badly affected by moonlight, but this image is not contaminated with moonlight (see my image of the supernova in Leo taken on 10 January for how it would look).

Is it where I say it is (in Andromeda)? Well, we’ve already used Astrometry.net to locate the area, and WikiSky as well to confirm that it is indeed an image taken with PGC 71451 in it. Can we double check.

Yes, but the next bit is a bit more tricky. You will need a decent astronomy charting program which can allow you to add other bodies like comets (such as Cartes du Ceil), then head over to the Minor Planet Center, and generate an Ephemeris for 103P (Hartley 2) for 18 September 2010 by typing 103P into the entry box, add the coordinates to your charting program (the MPPEC gives a list of programs it can expert directly to) and Hey Presto! You will see 103P near PGC 71451, just as in my image. You can also use Stellarium, but you will need to download the pack of extra stars, or the images won’t match up. Because 103P is no longer bright, you will need to specially import the 1 line MPEC elements for 103P into Stellarium for it to show up.

Difference overlay of my image and the image allegedly in 89 Leon using the GIMP. (click to enlarge)

You can also use the GIMP (which I use a lot for astrophotography), to overlay my image and the doctored image. You can overlay them and use the difference command in overlay mode to show up differences. Note that the vast majority of the image is nulled out, except the added labels and (although this is a bit hard to see, so you will need to embiggen) the crescent object.

The comet is critical here as well. If this was someone else's image, the comet would have been in a slightly different part of the image, and not nulled out as it is here.

Summary: We have now demonstrated that-

a) The image purportedly of 89 Leo on 9 January 2012 is a copy of my image of of the comet 103P taken on 18-09-2010 near PGC 71451 in Leo.

b) The crescent object is a pasted in fake.

Part 2: What do I do now.

This was a bit exhaustive (and exhausting), but it’s shown how you can use several clues to determine if an image is faked. Of course, not all images claiming to be extraordinary events are faked, often they are simple mis-identification of things such as jet contrails, internal camera or telescope reflections, Venus and other bright stars taken out of focus and so on. But using the same principles (where was the image taken, how do solar system bodies line up) you can work out if what is being presented is something startling, or much more mundane.

Hot pixels seen in my and the doctored image that Don Gilson claims is a "structure". Left panel, hot pixels when the image is stacked on the stars, right image hot pixels when image stacked on the comet.

For example, in his youtube video dealing with the image, Don Gilson makes much of a series of dots in one part of the image, claiming it is a “structure”, but it’s just a series of hot pixels (pixels in the CCD chip in the camera that are jammed permanently on).

Because the image is constructed from a stack of 4 individual 90 second exposures, (re-calibrated between each exposure), the stars drift slightly between the exposures, so the hot pixels are not in the same place (in the companion image, constructed by stacking the frames on the comet, rather than the stars, the hot pixels trail horizontally). I also did a second image stacking the same frames on the comet, and you can see the pixels trail differently.

Hot pixels are the bane of astrophotographers (not only do they mess up pretty shots, they can be mistaken for asteroids), and there are a few groups of then in the image. However, you have to have a bit of experience with CCD astrophotography to recognise hot pixels.

With programs like Stellarium and Cartes du Ceil you can work out what you are looking at, Celestia allows you to simulate planetary systems and events. Using these is a lot of fun, and you will learn a lot about the sky and solar system while you are at it.

Labels: Pseudoscience, science communicators

Phobos Grunt Re-enterd the Earth's atmosphere early this morning (Australia time). While there was initially some confusion as to where it came down, official reports say it came down at 17:45 UTC, 1250 km west of Wellington Island, Chile. See map here and interesting info graphic here.

Labels: Satellite, spacecraft

While still having very large error bars, the predictions for the Phobos Grunt reentry are becoming more certain.

Most predictions are still for 15 January UT, roughly around 20 h UT but with spreads of error on the order of 9 hours to one and a half hours (see here, here, here and here for a variety of predictions). The tightest prediction now puts the re-entry off the coast of Africa.

From Australia's point of view, the spacecraft will come down sometime on early Monday 16th, CalSky (and the Phobos Grunt site) has a pass over Adelaide at 6:54 am AEDST, with reentry at 7:12 AEDST +/- 3 hours. So it may be possible for Australians to see the craft-reenter.

Labels: Satellite, spacecraft, unaided eye observation

UPDATE: The latest CalSky update hasPhobos Grunt coming over Adeliade on the 16th at 5:57 local ( not daylight saving) time, with atmospheric re-entry at 11:07 local time. Obviously this is a rapidly evolving situation, so keep an eye on the websites.

Labels: Satellite, spacecraft

Evening sky looking westh as seen from Adelaide at 21:00 pm local daylight saving time on Thursday January 26 showing Venus near the crescent Moon. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. Click to embiggen.

The January edition of Southern Skywatch is now up.

Venus is prominent in the evening sky and is close to the crescent Moon on the 26th.

Mars enters the evening sky and is close to the Moon on the 13th and 14th. Jupiter is prominent in the evening sky, and is still a good telescopic object in the early evening.

Saturn is in the morning sky and is close to the Moon on the 17th.

Mercury leaves the morning sky and will return to the evening sky next month.

Labels: southern skywatch

Image purported to be of a large object near 89 Leo, allegedly taken on January 9, 2012 using the GRAS (now iTelescope) scopes. The alleged coordinates are RA 11 34 21 DEC 03 03 35, click on image to embiggen for detail.

This image, which is claimed to show the mythical planet Nibiru (or HMO, for Heavy Mass Object), started doing the rounds recently. I became aware of it yesterday, in a Facebook post and briefly pointed out why it had to be a fake.

Labels: comet, Pseudoscience

Comet 49P taken with the iTelescope T14 instrument in Mayhill New Mexico. I took 10 x 120 second image. Top Left: Images images stacked on the stars using ImageJ, and the stack Summed using Z project. After that I did a square root process to clean up the background a bit, then cropped down to make the comet (bottom left of centre) easier to see. Top Right: As above but entire field. Bottom Left: Galaxies identified by Astrometry.net . Click on any image to embiggen.

Comet 49P is currently in a field very rich in some iconic galaxies, sadly, the waxing Moon is not far away either. Here I've used the widefield T14 instrument to get a good feel for the spectacular field the comet is in. The comet is a faintish magnitude 14, and moves sufficiently that it doesn't stack, and is smeared out and faint. Still if you embiggen the top left image it looks pretty nice.

I probably have to wait until the 19th for the Moon to wane sufficiently to get any more images of this comet.

Labels: astrophotography, comet, comets

My image of the possible supernova in NGC 3239 in Leo taken with iTelescope T05 (3x120 seconds, stacked in ImageJ). Compare this to the discovery image (more details at the link as well) and an image taken before the supernova (tip of the hat to Charles Bell).

The image is very badly affected by the Moonlight, with the Moon only 30 degrees away, and it will only get worse over the next few days. Not sure how I'll get any good magnitude estimates out of this.

Labels: supernova

Left: Comet C/2010 G2 Hill in the STEREO H1A imager on 5-01-2102. Top Right: Comet C/2010 G2 Hill in the STEREO H1A imager on 6-01-2102. Images tacked, background subtracted and contrast enhanced after square root modification in ImageJ. Click on images to embigen. An animation of the comet from the 6th where a tiny tail can just be seen is below.

Comet C/2010 G2 Hill was picked up in the STEREO H1A imager by Jiangao Ruan and identified by Wen-Tao Hsu and Comet Al. The comet had been reported to be in outburst on the 3rd.

For those interested, I attempted to measure the intensity of C/2010 G2 Hill using images from the STEREO spacecraft, the comet came into view in the STEREO H1a instrument on 4 Jan, but was not in such a good position for attempted astrometry until the 5th.

My astrometry of C/2010 G2 Hill from 5-Jan to 7-Jan yields a magnitude of 12.1 for all days.

It's pretty hard to get decent values as the comet is very close to brighter stars and right close to the limit of detection (mag 13). I also can't work out accurately the 95% confidence interval for these values (but its on the order of +/- 1).

The magnitudes were generated by measuring the intensities of the comet and nearby reference stars in ImageJ then generating a standard curve from the reference stars in Graphpad prism, and interpolating the intensity of the comet from this curve (yes, I know this is rubbish, but it's what I have to work with). Reference stars are
Star Magnitude
TYC 660-105-1 8.45
TYC 660-293-1 9.81
TYC 660-877-1 10.93
TYC 660-48-1 11.22
TYC 660-579-1 11.8
TYC 660-944-1 12.57


Animation of C/2010 G2 Hill on the 6th, a small tail may just be seen. the image has been inverted from B7W to make seeing the comet clearer (uses images above to see location).

Labels: comet, comets, Stereo Satellite

The Last Quarter Moon is Monday January 16. Venus is easily visible in the western evening sky. Jupiter dominates the evening sky in the north-west once Venus has set. Mars is visible in the morning sky heading towards Saturn, which is near the star Spica. The waning Moon is near Mars on the 13th and 14th and near Saturn on the 17th. Mercury is lost in the morning twilight.

Morning sky looking east as seen from Adelaide at 5:00 am local daylight saving time on Tuesday January 17 showing Mars, Saturn and Mercury. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. Click to embiggen.

The Last Quarter Moon is Monday January 16.

Mars is high in the northern morning sky. After so long in the constellation of Leo, Mars now enters the constellation of Virgo, heading towards Spica and Saturn. The waning Moon is near Mars on the mornings of Friday the 13th and Saturday the 14th.

Saturn is above the north- eastern horizon, not far from the bright star Spica. On Tuesday the 17th, Saturn, Spica and the waning Moon are close together, making an attractive triangle.

Mercury is now lost in morning twilight.


Evening sky on Saturday January 14 looking west as seen from Adelaide at 9:00 pm local daylight saving time in South Australia showing Venus in Aquarius. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time (click to embiggen)

Bright white Venus is readily visible in the evening western twilight sky from around half an hour after sunset for somewhat over an hour and a half. Venus leaves Capricornius this week, entering Aquarius. It passes iota Aquarii (magnitude 4.8) on the 12th. You will have to wait until quite late in the twilight to see these stars appear.

Jupiter was at opposition, when it is biggest and brightest as seen from Earth, on Saturday the 29th of October.

However, Jupiter is still a great binocular and telescope object and will be for many weeks to come. Jupiter is visible for most of the night in the north-western sky, setting half an hour after midnight.

Evening sky on Saturday January 14 looking north as seen from Adelaide at 10:00 pm local daylight saving time in South Australia showing Jupiter and the waxing Moon. Similar views will be seen elsewhere at the equivalent local time. INSET: Jupiter and its Moons as seen telescopically at this time, (click to embiggen)

In the evening Jupiter is readily visible in the northern sky, from about twilight, and the north-western sky when it is fully dark.

Now is a good time for telescopic observation of this massive world, or follow its moons in binoculars. For good telescopic observation Jupiter is best from 9 pm - 12 am.



Although Jupiter is the most prominent now, there are lots of interesting things in the sky to view with a telescope. If you don't have a telescope, now is a good time to visit one of your local astronomical societies open nights or the local planetariums.

Comet Lovejoy will be very difficult to spot due to the Moonlight until next week.



Printable PDF maps of the Eastern sky at 10 pm AEDST, Western sky at 10 pm AEDST. For further details and more information on what's up in the sky, see Southern Skywatch (this will be up dated to January a little later).

Cloud cover predictions can be found at SkippySky.

Labels: weekly sky

Globe at Night, the international light pollution survey, is running four times this year. The first survey is January 14-23 followed by February 12-21, March 13-22 and April 11-20.

You can learn more and get charts and instruction at their website. There is also a 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast: GLOBE at Night Kickoff: Seeing the Light.

Labels: globe at night, light pollution

Rob Kaufman's exquisite series of photos and animations
https://sites.google.com/site/robsastropics/comets/comet-c-2011-w3-lovejoy
Stuart Thomson's great images from Victoria
http://www.siriuscybernetics.org.au/Siriuscybernetics/Lovejoy120102.html
And the fantastic animation, 6 days of Lovejoy, from Phil Hart
http://vimeo.com/34639569

I really have to finish processing my comet Lovejoy images.

Labels: astrophotography, comet, comet lovejoy, comets

Comet C/2009 P1 Garrad taken with the iTelescope T20 colour instrument and the T14 instrument in Mayhill New Mexico on 5 January. I took 3 x 300 second images for T20,and 5 x 120 second images for the T14 instrument. Left: T14 Images stretched individually in FITS Liberator with Arcsinh (Arcsinh x) and auto scaling. Stretched images then stacked on the comet using ImageJ, and the stack Summed using Z project. After that I did a square root process to clean up the background a bit. Top Right: T20 Images converted to RBG using ImageJ, stacked on the comet and the stack Summed using Z project. Click on images to embigen (you will need to to see the ion tail details, especially in colour.

The B&W T14 image stack turned out very nicely, with the ion tail clearly defined. The T20 colour image is muddy and shows poor detail (image cropped and rotated to matche the orientaion of the T14 instrument). I'm obviously doing SOMETHING wrong in processing, the JPEG preview thumbnails show the ion tail more clearly.

Labels: astrophotography, C/2009 P1 Garradd, comet, comets, iTelescope

Image credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The bright steak on this image was originally thought to be a cosmic ray artefact, but is now being considered as a possible meteor in Titan's upper atmosphere (still trying to find confirmation of this, found via twitter).

Labels: Meteors, space probe

Clouded out here (which means that the southern iTelescopes are clouded out too, so no comet Lovejoy). However, the Bettdeckererschnappender Weisle is acting as a Media Liaison officer for the Country Fire Service up in Port Augusta, updating information about the Flinders Ranges fires, which threaten the community of Willunga. the rain has reduced the threat, and she might get home by the end of the weekend. So I am REALLY glad of the rain.

Labels: home life, miscelaneous, weather

I've been nominated for a Shorty Award in the Science Category. It's apparently the Oscar equivalent of the tweet world. You vote by tweeting, and you can apparently vote for more than one person. There are other, far more deserving astronomers out there to vote for, so why not head off and vote.

Labels: miscelaneous

Comet C/2009 P1 Garrad taken with the iTelescope T20 colour instrument in Mayhill New Mexico on 4 January. I took 2 x 300 second images, each panel is a separate treatment of the images. Top Left: Images converted to RBG using ImageJ, stacked on the comet and the stack Summed using Z project. Top Right: JPEG preview image. Click on images to embigen.

My attempt at a colour image using T20, as you can see, I suck badly at colour composition, the preview image is better than my processed ones. Everything I tried to make the images better only made them worse. Does this mean I have to purchase MaximimDL after all :-(

Roland Ligustri's shot from yesterday using the T20 colour instrument is here.

Labels: astrophotography, C/2009 P1 Garradd, comet, comets, iTelescope