Summer at Jodrell Plank

Summer Milky Way and the Summer Triangle asterism over the Jodrell Plank Observatory - Credit Jody McSquint-Fleming - Canon 600DSLR with EOS  lens at f=18mm - ISO3200 stacked 10 second lights.

" Nice to see the Summer Triangle rising in the east over the Jodrell Plank Observatory. Jody was out and about carrying out some maintenance tasks when she noticed the Milky Way had climbed high enough to image. According to Jody she didn't even bother to go get a tripod but just propped the camera against a brick and set the DSLR to take bursts of 10 x 10 second images. What a woman! 

We better call in a contractor to trim that hedge! 

I noticed that the planets Jupiter and Saturn are now visible but only from the upper windows of the Jodrell Plank Observatory Visitor Centre. I managed to take a handheld image of the pair of planets this week when they skimmed the roof tops at midnight. Later in the week I went to nearby Corton Cliffs and captured some images of Jupiter and Saturn as they became visible close to the horizon and over the North Sea." - Kurt Thrust acting CEO and current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Images taken from Corton Cliffs Lowestoft with a Canon 600D DSLR at f=18mm 10x10sec lights stacked. ISo1600 and 3200. Credit: Kurt Thrust

On the lunar terminator

The craters Albategnius and Hipparchus on the terminator. 127mm Meade Apo Refractor at f=2250mm - QHY5-11 colour planetary camera stacked video clip. - enlarged detail - Credit Pip Stakkert.

" The craters Albategnius and Hipparchus being large (129 km and 150 km in diameter respectively) were known to early astronomers such as Galileo and Sir Robert Hooke. Hipparchus is the older of these two impact craters and shows considerable erosion by later impacts. This erosion is particularly noticeable on the western rim. By comparison Albategnius has steep sided walls which rise to 4000 metres on the western side. This feature is recognizable from the long black shadow thrown across the deep crater floor when the Moon is at first quarter. Albategnius has a central peak that rises 1.5 km above the crater floor". - Kurt Thrust acting CEO and current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Hipparchus - Credit: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Hipparchus - oblique view - Credit: Apollo 16

Albategnius - oblique view - Credit Apollo 16

Apollo Sites visible at First Quarter and Apollo 17

"Apollo 17 was the last of the Apollo missions to fly. Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt landed the 'Challenger' Lunar Module at 19:54:57 UT on December 11, 1972, on the southeastern rim of Mare Serenitatis in a dark geological deposit between massif units of the southwestern Montes Taurus. The mission was incredibly successful and achieved a number of goals including: 

• the greatest distance covered using an electricity powered two man rover on a single EVA.
• a total distance traversed on the lunar surface of 34 kilometres.
• a total lunar surface duration of 75 hours
• the largest collection of lunar rocks returned to Earth
• the deployment of a number of geological experiments

Sadly, and with falling US public interest in the Apollo Programme, Apollo 17 was the last manned spacecraft to visit the Moon. Eugene Cernan was the last man to have walked on the surface of the Moon. How fickle is the tax paying public!

The following images, are for me, some of the most fantastic photographs ever taken by our species.
All the Apollo astronauts showed amazing; leadership, fortitude and skill in their approach to achieving taxing objectives in an inhospitable environment presenting extreme danger and risk". - Kurt Thrust acting CEO and current Director of the Jodrell plank Observatory.

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Commander Eugene Cernan, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, and Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans

Credits: NASA and LRO

Lunar Crater Posidonius and 'Felix Ridge' near crater Atlas.

Moon at first Quarter May 2020. 127mm Meade Apo Refractor with Barlow f=2250mm. QHY5-11 colour camera. This view has North roughly to the left with crater Posidonius in the foreground, craters Hercules and Atlas in the mid-ground and Endymion with terracing well displayed near the limb. The Jodrell Plank Team is looking forward to trying out the new mono- version of this camera on the Moon. Credit: Kurt Thrust

"The team is eagerly anticipating a clear night when, our latest aquisition - a QHY5-11 mono camera, can be used to image the Moon. It offers increased definition and even sharper views of our celestial neighbour. We were pleased with this coloured image which was compiled by stacking the 10 best video frames from only 100 frames captured.
Posidonius, is an impact crater located to the edge of Mare Serenitatis, it is aprroximately 95 kilometres in diameter and 2.3 kilometres deep. The crater has been flooded with lava and shows later superimposed cratering and a rills.
Endymion is a larger impact which lies near the northeast lunar limb. It sits to the east of Mare Frigoris and north of Lacus Temporis. Endymion is approximately 125 kilometres in diameter and 2.6 kilometres deep. The impact craters; Hercules and Atlas may be seen located between Endymion and Posidonius.
The 'bright white' ray structure to the east of crater Atlas does not appear to be named on our Moon Atlas . Our sponsors, Anita and George Roberts, have unofficially named it  'Felix Ridge' in recognition of their eldest grandson's 16th Birthday. Happy Birthday Felix from all the team at the Jodrell Plank Observatory"! - Kurt Thrust acting CEO and current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Where have all the 'gas giants' gone?

An image compiled by Pip Stakkert after Jody McSquint-Fleming found some old video clips from 2015 and 2016. 127mm Meade Refractor, x2.5 Barlow lens and a QHY5v planetary camera (f=2250mm)

 

" The Jodrell Plank Observatory is located at Latitude 52 degrees and 29 minutes North. So we are pretty much 'high up' in the northern hemisphere. For the last few years, the outer planets have been well placed for observation high in the sky for southern hemisphere observers but close to the southern horizon when viewed from the northern hemisphere. The further north the location of the observer the worse the view becomes. The last time Jupiter and Saturn could be  seen through our large refractor was in 2016. When Jupiter, Saturn and Mars come to opposition (in a line with Earth and on the opposite side from the Sun) in the middle in summer, as has been the case over the last few years, the planets appear very low on the southern horizon when viewed from the northern latitudes. 

A further hinderance to imaging from the Jodrell Plank Observatory in May and June is the very long hours of daylight. The Observatory staff spend down time in these months undertaking general maintenance and more specific repairs of scopes, mounts and cameras. Our sponsor Anita Roberts, having made a tidy sum from selling 'cheese scones' made during her 'pre-lockdown Twenty four hour Sconathon' provided the finance for a newly acquired QHY mono camera. We hope to use this camera to obtain stellar, supernovae and cometary spectra. Our instrumentation engineer,Jody McSquint-Fleming, has been hard at work assembling a new spectrometer from what comes to hand.  She has also been refurbishing and sorting out software issues in order that we can utilise the otherwise  redundant QHY5v camera as a guide camera for long exposure imaging with our newer DSLRs and CMOS cameras.

Jody found the video clips, which were used by Pip to create the above image, on a seldom used laptop whilst looking for the original drivers for the QHY5v. When using older bits of kit, it is amazing to note how quickly technology has moved on. The compatibility of  software is often a problem when trying to mix old and new technology.

We believe the above image of Jupiter was captured during a shadow transit of Ganymeade in February 2016.". - Kurt Thrust acting CEO and current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

The Moon at first Quarter

The Moon in all its desolate beauty as viewed from the Jodrell Plank Observatory
 Lowestoft in May 2020

The Moon at first quarter phase; the lower image has enhanced colour saturation to accentuate the differences in surface 'albedo' which in turn reflects the prence of different surface minerals. The images were taken by Pip Stakkert using the observatory 127mm Apo Refracting telescope and a QHY5-11 colour planetary camera. The images are made up from a number of videos taken at f=2250mm. The images have been posted at a large size to give some indication of the amount of detail on the original,

" I love to watch the sun rise over craters formed billions of years ago and to observe as shadows formed by towering mountains creep silently across basalt seas" - Kurt Thrust acting CEO and current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Supernova SN2020jfo in Messier 61

Two images taken about a year apart with the COAST Telescope - credits : telescope.org - Open University  and Pip Stakkert at the Jodrell Plank Observatory

" Messier 61, also known as the Fireworks galaxy, is a member of the Virgo group of galaxies and a galaxy that displays active star formation. To date eight supernovae have been observed in Messier 61. This is a type 11 supernova which involves the sudden and cataclysmic collapse of a supergiant star. When this star ran out of gas to fuse and with no heat and pressure at its core to balance the almighty crush of gravity, the star imploded. The infalling matter rebounded from the core, created a shock wave which blew the star apart in an explosion 100 million times brighter than our sun! Messier 61 is over 52 million light years distant but even at this vast distance this enormous explosion can be seen with a relatively small telescope" - Kurt Thrust  acting CEO and current director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory. 

International Space Station (ISS)

Canon 600d DSLR with a 66mm Altair Lightwave Doublet and 0.6x flattener/focal reducer used in combination as a telescopic lens.

" With the long summer nights, the moonlight strengthening with the Moons's increasing phase and the planets being below our local southern horizon, imaging at the Jodrell Plank Observatory has been restricted to close examination of the Moon. After a long imaging run exploring surface details presented at the Moon's first quarter, Pip Stakkert and I, whilst maintaining social distance, decided that we would watch the ISS pass over Lowestoft as it was pursued by the Space X Crew Dragon spacecraft. This orbital pass was too low for us to image the ISS with our equatorially mounted bigger scopes but we both wondered whether any sort of recognisable image was obtainable using  a low-tech point and shoot approach and a handheld DSLR camera with a telescopic lens. The lower half of the above image shows a typical widefield image obtained by our Canon 600d DSLR with a telescopic lens (f=240mm) handheld as described. The tiny white dot is sunlight reflected by the ISS! Pip Stakkert then used his 'digital skills' to enlarge and enhance a number of widefield images to produce a compilation of ISS images. We were surprised how much detail could be seen, particularly in numbers 1, 3, 5 and 8. The fast changing view or aspect of the ISS as it moved along its orbit is also clearly apparent as sunlight reflected off various elements of the space station. Mr Canon sure makes an excellent and robust low priced camera!" - Kurt Thrust acting CEO and current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Credits: ISS images NASA