Titan and Iapetus

The planet Saturn with moons Titan and Iapetus on display. Canon 600d DSLR with Samyang 135 F2 ED lens on a Star Adventurer EQ mount. 12x60sec lights at ISO800 stacked using AffinityPhoto software. Overlay of star field data courtesy of Astrometry net. Credit: Karl Sequine and UNWISE

Annotated star field Credit: Stellarium

 " Whilst we were calibrating our set up for imaging NGC7000 we tested by imaging the planet Saturn which was low on our southern horizon. We believed that we had captured two of Saturn's moons, Titan and Iapetus but we were unable to identify them within the star-field. We decided to upload the our image to the Astrometry net plate solver which identified the main stars in the constellation Capricornus but unfortunately did not annotate Saturn's moons. The plate solving software did however provide an overlay from the  unWISE survey data which Kurt realised would not include Saturn or its moons because the position of planets against the unchanging starry back-drop varies with time. Pip Stakkert took this forward by using software to 'blink' between the two images. Saturn and it's two moons then just 'popped' into view.

Our home-made 'Blink Comparator'

Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second-largest natural satellite in the Solar System. It is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere, and is the only known object in space other than Earth on which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found.

Titan (false colour) Credit: ESA- Cassini

Iapetus s the third largest moon of Saturn. It has an orbit much further out than Titan and has an inclined orbit when compared with Saturn's other large moons. We were extremely lucky to have captured Iapetus with our simple camera lens set up. Iapetus can only be captured when it is at maximum western elongation in its orbit when viewed from Earth. We can only see the planets and their moons by means of reflective sunlight. Their brightness is determined by their size, distance and albedo (how much incident light is reflected). Venus is very bright because it is roughly the same size as Earth, is a near solar system neighbour close to the Sun and has a atmosphere full of clouds that are highly reflective of sunlight. Iapetus has a bright hemisphere and a dark hemisphere and is tidally locked to Saturn. We can see its bright reflective hemisphere at 'western elongation' and we see (or actually cannot see) its dark hemisphere at 'eastern elongation. We were lucky to capture our images at approximately maximum western elongation. Iapetus also looks like the 'Death Star' and how cool is that?" - Karl Sequine Out-reach Coordinator at the Jodrell Plank Observatory

Iapetus Credit ESA- Cassini

Perseid Meteors 2022

Composite image of two Perseid meteors taken in the early hours of the13th August 2022. 9sec lights taken at ISO1600 and f=10mm. Canon 600d DSLR on Star Adventurer EQ Mount. Credit; Pip Stakkert

 " Disappointing year as the Moon was full on the night of maximum interaction with the Perseid Cloud. Only 10 meteors were observed by the Jodrell Plank Team before retirement to bed at 3.30am." - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

The North America and Pelican Nebula

 

The North America and Pelican Nebula in the Constellation Cygnus the Swan. Composite image of 1.5 hours of data captured with the Jodrell Plank Observatory astromodded Canon 200d DSLR and the unmodded Canon 600d DSLR cameras 
 A Samyang 135mm lens was used on both cameras which were set to capture
one minute exposures at ISO800. The caneras were on a Star Adventurer
equatorial mount. The images from the two cameras were combined using
RegiStar software and processed using; Affinity Photo, FitsWork4, Topaz Denoise AI and GradientXterminator. Plate solving by Astrometry. net. Image Credits; Pip Stakkert and Astrometry net.

Alternative colour rendition of Jodrell Plank image with reduced stars and increased nebulosity. Credit Joel Cairo.

"Discovered by William Herschel in 1786, the huge North American (NGC 7000, left) and the smaller, dimmer Pelican (IC 5067/5070, right) Nebulae in Cygnus are  estimated to be 2590 light years distant (Gaia). The intricate, eastern edge of Mexico and Central America is known as the Cygnus Wall, a region of hot gas, dust and young stars. The Gulf of Mexico is a visual effect created by dark nebulosity or cold dust. Seven foreground stars in the 'Gulf'  form an asterism called "Little Orion." Do you see it? It is more obvious in the image below.

Smaller field of view of the North America Nebula (left) and the Pelican Nebula (right).
Image Credit: ESA Hubble Telescope -Todd Nolan

The North America Nebula is estimated to stretch 90 light years north to south and is part of a much larger cloud of ionised hydrogen gas some 140 light years across. Dark nebulae punctuate the region creating the individual clouds of glowing gas.. The gas is ionised by very hot and massive stars hidden within the cold dark nebula of the 'Gulf of Mexico'. In our image the Blue Giant star Deneb and the spectroscopic binary star (colour yellow) Xi Cygnus dominate". - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Capricornid Fireball

A Capricornid Meteor Shower  'Fireball' captured over the Ladybower Reservoir Derbyshire August 2022 by Kurt Thrust on his summer holiday. Composite image. Canon 600d DSLR and Sigma EX lens at f=10mm .on a Star Adventurer EQ mount. Single 1 minute RAW exposure at ISO800. Image developed and cropped using Affinity Photo and Topaz Denoise AI.

 "Having returned from a happy family holiday in Derbyshire, I quickly resumed my 'day job' of portraying the heavens using the wonders of expensive glass, technology and luck". - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

The Garnet Star

 

Mu Cephei or Herschel's Garnet Star - a stack of short duration light frames taken with a tripod mounted Canon 200d DSLR and a Samyang 135mm lens. Credit: Pip Stakkert.

Credit: Astrometry Net

"Mu Cephei is a red hypergiant star in the constellation Cepheus. It is a star reaching the end of its life and has begun to fuse helium into carbon. Mu Cephei is a very large cool star with a mass some 19 times the mass of the Sun and when it eventually goes supernova it is likely to collapse and create a blackhole. The Garnet Star is estimated to be over 3000 light years distant from our Solar System. It is surrounded by an expanding shell of ejected material". - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Antares Red Super Giant Star

Antares and Globular Star Cluster  Messier4..Composite crop of stacks of images taken with the Canon 200d and 600d DSLR cameras. Credit: Kurt Thrust

 The constellation Scorpius the Scorpion is only partially visible from the United Kingdom. Every June the red giant star Antares, alpha Scorpii, is just visible above the roof of the buildings that adjoin the Jodrell Plank Observatory. The images were captured from a first floor window in the Observatory Visitor Centre using a fixed tripod which restricted the exposure time of each light frame to 5 seconds. 

Antares is a slow irregular variable star with an apparent visual magnitude that fades from 0.6 to 1.6 and back again.  Antares is a Red Super Giant Star that looks red when viewed with the naked eye. It's actual size is not accurately known but it is thought that if it were located at the centre of our Solar System its surface would extend out to somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. Antares has a mass calculated to be twelve times that of the Sun.

Antares is approximately 550 light years distant from Earth. Antares illuminates foreground parts of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. The illuminated cloud is sometimes referred to as the Antares Nebula.

Messier 4 is a fairly loose globular star cluster with a diameter of 75 light years. It is located at a distance of  7200 light years and is the nearest Globular Star Cluster to the Solar System.. Its stars are  ancient with an estimated age of 12.2 billion years. The Hubble Space Telescope has identified white dwarf stars within M4 with ages of over 13 billion years. There is thought to be a millisecond pulsar neutron star binary pair amongst the stars of this cluster." - Joel Cairo CEO of the Jodrell Plank Observatory.

Uncropped more nebulous version of the above image

Credit: Astrometry Net

Polaris

Polaris the Pole Star. - The images were captured by Pip Stakkert using the astro-modded Canon 200d DSLR with  a Samyang F2 135mm lens on a fixed tripod. 20x8sec lights at F2 and ISO800 stacked and developed using Affinity Photo software (uncropped).

Polaris, the Pole Star or alpha Ursa Minor is  the nearest Cepheid variable star to the Solar System. Cepheid variable stars are useful 'standard candles' as the rate of change in  luminosity, their pulse' is related to their absolute luminosity. By knowing absolute luminosity and apparent luminosity of a star it is possible to compute distances to remote stars and galaxies.

Polaris, although seen by the naked eye as a single point of light, is in fact a triple star system some 330 light years distant from the Earth.. The brightest component Polaris Aa is a F71b evolved yellow supergiant star with a mass 5.4 times that of the Sun.

  

Polaris lies almost directly over the Earth's axis of rotation and as a consequence it appears fixed in the sky whilst all the other stars  seem to rotate around it. The elevation of Polaris above the horizon gives the approximate latitude of the observer. - Kurt Thrust current Director of the Jodrell Plank Observatory

Demonstration of the apparent rotation of stars around the fixed Pole Star