Saturn September 2024

 

               

    

            

                       

"127mm Meade Apo refractor, Televue x3 Barlow and QHY5111462c camera.  Early hours of the 12th Sept 2024 taken from Outon Broad Suffolk. Clear skies but turbulent so achieving focus was difficult at F23. Software used: SharpCap 4.1, PIPP, AS!3, Registax6, Affinity Photo2 and AstroSharp and Clean.

The whole Jodrell Plank team were out, in force in the early hours of the 12th of September, to capture our first video clips this year of the majestic planet Saturn. What was very noticeable was by how much Saturn's rings had closed since we last imaged the planet! The solar system is a very dynamic system. As an unexpected bonus we were able to image four of the planet's moons; Rhea, Tethys, Enceladus and Dione.

Before we closed down our operations for the night, we used the 127mm telescope to obtain spectra for the stars: Vega, Altair, Tarazed and Ashlain." - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

      

                    

Summer Delights 2024

 

Rho Ophiuchi Star Clouds
from a hotel balcony in Sicily 2024

Altair, Tarazed and Barnards E
from the Jodrell Plank Observatory 2024

A Perseid Fireball piercing the Summer Triangle
from the Jodrell Plank Observatory 2024

When we could see it from the Jodrell Plank Observatory,
the Sun was super active.

The Moon was mysterious and beautiful from the Thames Estuary
and the Jodrell Plank Observatory

" It is a shame that this summer has been so wet and cloudy on the East Coast of the United Kingdom.  However, you just have to thrust your hands into your pockets and get on with it" - Karl Segin outreach officer at the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

The full solar disc in white light

 

The full solar disc on the 15th of August 2024 compiled from a number
of individual panes selected from the best frames from a number of SER
video-clips. White light filter, Altair Astro 66mm ED refractor,
Meade red light filter No23A, Hydrogen alpha pass filter
and a QHY5-111462c planetary camera.

" Pip Stakkert really did the 'hard miles' to create a whole solar disc from the many video clips we captured from the Jodrell Plank Observatory (the UK's most easterly Observatory), on the 15th of August. The weather wasn't ideal for imaging because of the wispy high level cloud, which came and went in front of the Sun. 

This was the first time that we had stacked a red light filter and a hydrogen pass filter. We believe this improved the visibility of faculae and also the cellular nature of the photosphere. The Sun in our image, has a rather obvious orange peel texture". - Joel Cairo CEO the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

The Sun on the 15th of August 2024 imaged in white light.

" When you spend many a dark night trying to capture the faint light from stars light years away in the Universe, it is easy to forget that we live just 93 million miles away from our nearest star. The Sun is currently approaching 'solar maximum' and consequently has many sunspot groups rotating across its very bright solar disc (Photosphere).

Please do not stare at the Sun and NEVER point a telescope or binoculars at the Sun because at the very least you will permanently damage your sight.

Our instrumentation engineer, Jolene McSquint-Fleming, constructed the solar white light filters we use, which are sized to fit in front of the telescope objective lens. The video clips for the above images were  captured  using the Jodrell Plank Observatory's smallest telescope, the 66mm Altair Astro Lightwave ED refractor. The specialist video camera used was a QHY5-111462c. Between the telescope and the camera we positioned a Hydrogen Alpha pass filter and a Meade 4000 red filter No23A. Several one minute duration SER video clips were captured. The clips were stacked using AS!3 software to create still images from the best video frames. The data was then processed using Registax6, Affinity Photo2 and AstroSharp.

The large sunspot group shown in the above images is Sunspot Group 3784. A sunspot appears dark because it is at a lower temperature than the surrounding photosphere. It is also an area of concentrated magnetic activity. To provide scale, it is safe to say, that the largest spot in group 3784 could easily swallow the planet Earth!

If you look carefully at the widefield images above, you might notice the brighter spots and lines in the photosphere, which appear to link the sunspots. These features are most evident towards the solar limb (Sun's edge). They are called 'solar faculae'. Solar faculae are bright spots in the photosphere that form in the canyons between solar granules, short-lived convection cells several thousand kilometres across that constantly form and dissipate over timescales of several minutes. Faculae are produced by concentrations of magnetic field lines". Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Messier4 Globular Star Cluster

 

Messier 4 in the constellation Scorpius. Credit: COAST Robotic Telescope,
Open University, Open Observatories, telescope.org

 

" This rather beautiful globular star cluster appears in our sky during mid-summer but very low and near to the southern horizon. The above image was captured recently, using the COAST robotic telescope, located much further south and at altitude on the island of Tenerife. The data was collected through BVR and Clear filters and was put together and processed, here at the Jodrell Plank Observatory, using Affinity Photo2 software.

A globular star cluster is a ball of ancient stars held together by gravity and usually located on the outer fringes of galaxies. Messier 4 is 75 light years across, approximately 6000 light years distant and as such is the nearest globular star cluster to the Earth. At the cluster's centre there may exist a black hole. Some of the oldest white dwarf stars in our galaxy reside in this cluster" - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Altair, Tarazed and Barnard's E Dark Nebula.

The Stars; Altair and Tarazed and the dark nebula Barnard's E.
Canon 600d DSLR and 135mm Samyang lens all mounted on a
Star Adventurer EQ. A stack of 20 x1min subs at ISO800.
Image credit: Kurt Thrust and technical advice from Prof GP.

 "The Summer Triangle is a very obvious asterism in the summer sky over Lowestoft at the moment. Altair-Alpha Aquilae is the Summer Triangle star closest to the southern horizon. This part of the sky is literally full of stars, sometimes referred to as 'star-clouds' and these clouds are punctuated with dark nebulae. Dark nebulae are concentrations of dust and gas, which obscure the stars within and behind them.

The stars, Altair and Tarazed, are very different and have different spectra. This difference is obvious to the naked eye and manifest in the differences in colour. We used the spectrometer manufactured by the Observatory's instrumentation engineer, Jolene McSquint-Fleming, to obtain spectral profiles for these stars". Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory. 

Spectra Credits: Kurt Thrust and Pip Stakkert.

Castor and Pollux - Alpha and Beta Geminorum

 

The constellation Gemini with the bright blue Castor and light orange hued Pollux (both top left)
A stack of light subs captured with a Star Adventurer EQ mounted Canon 600d DSLR with a fixed Canon 50mm lens. Image Credit: Pip Stakkert

 

" The stars Castor and Pollux are quite different and appear so to the naked eye.. 

Castor looks to be a single star but is in fact six stars bound gravitationally. Two of the larger and brighter component stars are of A spectral class and dominate the combined Castor spectrum. The  127mm refractor at the Jodrell Plank Observatory is easily able to separate these two stars.

Pollux is an evolved red giant star, that having used up it's supply of hydrogen, has commenced fusing helium at its core. The change requires the temperature to rise at the core and the whole star to increase in size. Pollux is of spectral class K.

The Jodrell Plank Observatory 127mm Refractor and 3d printed transmission grating spectrometer were used to capture spectral profiles of the two stars. Even a cursory inspection, shows how different the spectra are and the marked difference in surface temperature of Castor and Pollux. Although Pollux is much cooler than Castor, it appears brighter, mainly because its diameter and consequent surface area are both much larger than the equivalents for Castor." - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory

Comparative low resolution spectral profiles with Planck Curves
 for Castor and Pollux.
Credit: Kurt Thrust and BASS Spectro software

A cropped section from the above widefield image of the Constellation
 Credit : Kurt Thrust