Star gazing

Oh, Bu*&$!!, that leaves me out then

Clear skies tonight so I'm hoping to target the Stars Betelguese, Rigel, etc the Orion Nebula, and whatever the skies offer tongith. I'll be wearing my thermals, Cold Weather Jacket and Trouser, and Thermal Boots with a mug of Hot Chocolate on standby.

Yes, I think it's a case of the classical, something atmospheric

 

There's still belts of thin clouds at the moment making it difficult to see the Stars clearly

 

The Lost LED Revolution: Light Pollution Is Increasing
By: Jan Hattenbach | November 22, 2017
Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument on the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership weather satellite to measure the change in global light emissions between October 2012 and October 2016. The VIIRS instrument is the first-ever calibrated satellite radiometer designed to measure nighttime lights – earlier investigations were often based on uncalibrated sensors on military satellites.

VIIRS observes the Day/Night band (DNB), which picks up visible through near-infrared wavelengths. Each pixel covers ½ square kilometer, a higher spatial resolution than previous instruments, which enables scientists to investigate neighborhood-scale changes, rather than city or national, for the first time.

The researchers’ findings will not please astronomers: Earth’s nights are becoming brighter.

Between 2012 and 2016, the artificially lit outdoor area on our planet grew by 9.1%, an annual increase of roughly 2.2%. Additionally, already lit areas also got brighter by 2.2% per year. Only very few places show a decrease in lighting (mostly war-torn countries like Syria and Yemen), while some of the already brightest-lit countries remained stable, among them Spain, Italy and the United States. With few exceptions, all countries in Asia, Africa, and South America emit significantly more light now than they used to five years ago.

That in itself isn’t unexpected — artificial lighting has long been an indicator for growing wealth and population. What’s surprising is that the ongoing transition to LEDs isn’t having a contrary effect.

“While we know that LEDs save energy in specific projects, for example when a city transitions all of its street lighting from sodium lamps to LED,” Kyba explains, “when we look at our data at the national and the global level, it indicates that these savings are being offset by either new or brighter lights in other places.”


Changes in the color of Milan, Italy, at night between 2012 (left) and 2015 (right), between which the outdoor lighting in its urban core was transitioned from high-pressure sodium vapor to white LED.
International Dark-Sky Association / NASA

It's a rebound effect: Cheaper lights lead not to savings in energy consumption, but to more light. And that’s not just bad news for astronomers.

“Since the first emergence of life, the biological world was organized to a large extent by natural cycles of variation in light,” explains Franz Hölker (Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Germany). “From an evolutionary perspective, artificial light at night is a very new stressor.”

Because electricity brings light to places, times, and intensities at which it doesn’t naturally occur, many organisms have no chance to adapt. Their natural light cycles are fundamentally disrupted. About 30% of vertebrates and more than 60% of invertebrates on our planet are nocturnal, but outdoor artificial light also affects plants and microorganisms, and scientist are only beginning to learn about its possible negative effects on human health.

Blue vs. Amber LEDs
To make matters worse, the DNB is insensitive to wavelengths below 0.5 microns — blue light, which the atmosphere scatters more than other visible wavelengths. Unfortunately, many popular LED lights peak at these wavelengths.

It doesn’t have to be this way. “One of the really huge advantages of LEDs is that it’s possible to make very many different colors,” Kyba insists. “Cities can buy lamps that are not white, that have this blue component completely removed.” However these “PC Amber” or “True Amber” lights are so far used almost exclusively in designated dark-sky places.

Nevertheless, Kyba and his colleagues remain open to working with cities, local governments, and industry partners to reverse this trend: “The real dream is that we have greatvision on the streets, never really experience an uncomfortably dark place inside of a city, but because the light is used much more efficiently, would have more stars to see in the sky.”

 

Well, despite hopes of clear[ish] skies tonight the cloud slowly came in from the West and there's not a Star to be seen, so there's been no images taken tonight Still, there's a possibility of clear skies over the next few nights..........always the optimist!

 

NASA's Next Mars Rover Progresses Toward 2020 Launch

"This image is from computer-assisted-design work on the Mars 2020 rover. The design leverages many successful features of NASA's Curiosity rover, which landed on Mars in 2012, but also adds new science instruments and a sampling system to carry out new goals for the 2020 mission.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech
After an extensive review process and passing a major development milestone, NASA is ready to proceed with final design and construction of its next Mars rover, currently targeted to launch in the summer of 2020 and arrive on the Red Planet in February 2021.



The Mars 2020 rover will investigate a region of Mars where the ancient environment may have been favorable for microbial life, probing the Martian rocks for evidence of past life. Throughout its investigation, it will collect samples of soil and rock and cache them on the surface for potential return to Earth by a future mission.



“The Mars 2020 rover is the first step in a potential multi-mission campaign to return carefully selected and sealed samples of Martian rocks and soil to Earth,” said Geoffrey Yoder, acting associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This mission marks a significant milestone in NASA’s Journey to Mars – to determine whether life has ever existed on Mars, and to advance our goal of sending humans to the Red Planet.”



To reduce risk and provide cost savings, the 2020 rover will look much like its six-wheeled, one-ton predecessor, Curiosity, but with an array of new science instruments and enhancements to explore Mars as never before. For example, the rover will conduct the first investigation into the usability and availability of Martian resources, including oxygen, in preparation for human missions.



Mars 2020 will carry an entirely new subsystem to collect and prepare Martian rocks and soil samples that includes a coring drill on its arm and a rack of sample tubes. About 30 of these sample tubes will be deposited at select locations for return on a potential future sample-retrieval mission. In laboratories on Earth, specimens from Mars could be analyzed for evidence of past life on Mars and possible health hazards for future human missions.



Two science instruments mounted on the rover’s robotic arm will be used to search for signs of past life and determine where to collect samples by analyzing the chemical, mineral, physical and organic characteristics of Martian rocks. On the rover’s mast, two science instruments will provide high-resolution imaging and three types of spectroscopy for characterizing rocks and soil from a distance, also helping to determine which rock targets to explore up close.



A suite of sensors on the mast and deck will monitor weather conditions and the dust environment, and a ground-penetrating radar will assess sub-surface geologic structure.



The Mars 2020 rover will use the same sky crane landing system as Curiosity, but will have the ability to land in more challenging terrain with two enhancements, making more rugged sites eligible as safe landing candidates.



"By adding what’s known as range trigger, we can specify where we want the parachute to open, not just at what velocity we want it to open,” said Allen Chen, Mars 2020 entry, descent and landing lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "That shrinks our landing area by nearly half."



Terrain-relative navigation on the new rover will use onboard analysis of downward-looking images taken during descent, matching them to a map that indicates zones designated unsafe for landing.



"As it is descending, the spacecraft can tell whether it is headed for one of the unsafe zones and divert to safe ground nearby,” said Chen. "With this capability, we can now consider landing areas with unsafe zones that previously would have disqualified the whole area. Also, we can land closer to a specific science destination, for less driving after landing."



There will be a suite of cameras and a microphone that will capture the never-before-seen or heard imagery and sounds of the entry, descent and landing sequence. Information from the descent cameras and microphone will provide valuable data to assist in planning future Mars landings, and make for thrilling video.



"Nobody has ever seen what a parachute looks like as it is opening in the Martian atmosphere,” said JPL's David Gruel, assistant flight system manager for the Mars 2020 mission. “So this will provide valuable engineering information.”



Microphones have flown on previous missions to Mars, including NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander in 2008, but never have actually been used on the surface of the Red Planet.



"This will be a great opportunity for the public to hear the sounds of Mars for the first time, and it could also provide useful engineering information," said Mars 2020 Deputy Project Manager Matt Wallace of JPL.



Once a mission receives preliminary approval, it must go through four rigorous technical and programmatic reviews – known as Key Decision Points (KDP) — to proceed through the phases of development prior to launch. Phase A involves concept and requirements definition, Phase B is preliminary design and technology development, Phase C is final design and fabrication, and Phase D is system assembly, testing, and launch. Mars 2020 has just passed its KDP-C milestone.



"Since Mars 2020 is leveraging the design and some spare hardware from Curiosity, a significant amount of the mission's heritage components have already been built during Phases A and B,” said George Tahu, Mars 2020 program executive at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "With the KDP to enter Phase C completed, the project is proceeding with final design and construction of the new systems, as well as the rest of the heritage elements for the mission."



The Mars 2020 mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. Driven by scientific discovery, the program currently includes two active rovers and three NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars. NASA also plans to launch a stationary Mars lander in 2018, InSight, to study the deep interior of Mars.



JPL manages the Mars 2020 project and the Mars Exploration Program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington."

 

I'm slowly getting the camera and telescope combination into the focus area I want. Unfortunately, the constant cloud cover since I bought the new camera delayed finding the ideal focal length between the sensor of the Camera and the Telescope because I couldn't find any clear skies to focus on Stars. But slowly over time I've been able to adjust everything to get to what seems the right focal length. So, due to the fact that most of the Planets are not in the Night Skies at the moment but are appearing in the very early morning, I've had to use the Stars and the Moon to find the how good the focus is.
There is a matter of Maths where the Focal length of my Telescope, [3048mm], and the focal length of the new camera, [around 60mm], decide the magnification of the image.......you have to divide the focal length of the Camera into the focal length of the Telescope i.e: 3048 divided by 60 = 50 magnification. Which means, when viewing the Moon, I can only get around a third or slightly more into the image.
So, here's some rough shots of the Moon while it's in the Waxing period. They're just single shots taken hastily between intermittent cloud and a bit of a turbulent atmosphere. There is a method called "Stacking" where several identical exposures are taken of the Moon/Stars and then put together into one single image but I've not had the time or weather so far to do that. So taking into account that the atmosphere was also shimmering slightly I'm not too displeased with the very first images.









I also managed to get some short exposures of some of the Stars in the skies at the same time before the Cloud moved in, at least it gives you an idea of what's out there and consider that some of the Stars are several hundred Light Years, or more away [around 6 Trillion miles to a Light Year.]






So we're slowly getting there, but I need more really clear, still, nights and a lot more experience on the Astronomy Imaging software for processing future images

 

Glad you like them, Lori. While I seem to have got the right focal length for the Camera there is still the "small" matter of getting the Telescope image focus sharp enough so you can spend a fair of time just going in and out of focus to make sure you get the sharpest focus for that particular night's atmosphere conditions......but that's all part of the fun and mental exercise!
So, hopefully, with a combination of clear, steady skies, sharp focusing and, say, 20 to 50 identical exposures in a run which are then "stacked" the images will be sharper.

 

Of the Moon, Sheal??

 

Oh, by the way, those "Stars" that are not round in shape but more elliptical are, in fact, not Stars but Galaxies with hundreds of billions of Stars within just one of them