18 December 2015
Comet Catalina is making it’s one and only appearance in our neighborhood. Below is a video recording made early this morning. Note that you can now add your own comments via the + icon at the upper right of the video.
2 December 2015
For the last few days, our Santa Fe night skies have been remarkably clear and calm (and cold). So I’ve been taking advantage and making some recordings.
Below are two narrated video clips of two different galaxies recorded on 1 December. These are interesting because they show two different views of spiral galaxies: face-on and edge-on. These two different perspectives show how these galaxies are incredibly wide yet very thin. Not all galaxies are of this type. Some are elliptical football shapes, some are nearly spherical. The reasons why galaxies take on these various shapes are not well understood.
NGC 891 presents an edge-on view. It is about 1000 light years in length but it’s thickness is much less.
M74 (and the Triangulum (aka Pinwheel) Galaxy below) both present face-on views of spiral galaxies.
1 December 2015
Below are four narrated videos of objects recorded on 30 November.
BowTie Nebula (NGC40)
PacMan Nebula
Little Dumbbell Nebula
Triangulum (Pinwheel) Galaxy
1/28/2015: Here are two 1-minute videos of asteroid 2004 BL86 inbound toward it’s point of closest approach to the earth. This occurred at about 9AM MST 1/26/2015. At this point it was about 750000 miles from earth (3 lunar distances) and travelling at about 40000 mph. I took these videos about 10PM MST 1/25/2015. The camera was running at 2sec integration intervals which is why you see an image refresh every two seconds.
The video below shows the asteroid moving within an apparently stationary starfield as the telescope, in this configuration, is tracking the appaent motion of the stars that results from the rotation of the earth.
The video below shows the asteroid as a stationary object with the starfield moving past. My telescope mount has a new capability of tracking the motion of just the asteroid which is different from the surrounding starfield.
Have you been watching Jupiter this month. It’s pretty bright.
Nice program Gene. I look forward to seeing more.
Gary
Very informative, Gene. Do you think we may be able to see Comet Catalina in Santa Fe over the New Year or has the comet already moved out of view for that region?Reference
Great stuff, Gene! Very good images and nice commentaries. Thanks for sharing. I always wanted to take an astronomy class. I never imagined I’d be taking one online from my cousin! Maybe you could add a Facebook button, assuming you don’t mind your site being shared on social media. I have a lot of friends who would enjoy this.
That is a way cool photo of Catalina. I looked this morning at 4:00 am and couldn’t see Catalina. Venus was unusually bright though. I’ll try again tomorrow morning. Perhaps we’ll see the tail.Reference
Forgot to mention in video that green color is due to presence of chemical compound cyanogen, (CN)2. Also, you can see a hint of tail projecting toward bottom of screen.Reference
Wow! I love this, Gene. Thank you so very much.