STS-126 Shuttle Launch Status: 70% Launch Probability

As of 10AM today, the Shuttle has a 70% launch probability (30% chance of weather delaying the launch). The launch window is only 10mins long so if it doesn't launch at 7:55PM EST/4:55PM PST then it won't be launching at least till Sunday.


Photo of STS-126 on launch pad.

Shuttle Launch Info: STS-126 (This Friday)

Space shuttle Endeavour will launch this Friday at 7:55pm EST (4:55pm PST). If you've never seen a launch or haven't seen one in a while, why don't you make an effort to watch this one as there won't be many left.

Live launch will be viewable on cable on HDNet & NASA TV, and online at the links below:

Windows Media Player Links
NASA TV 150kb stream
http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1369080

NASA TV 300kb stream
http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1368570

In-Browser Links:
NASA TV 300kb stream
http://www.space-multimedia.nl.eu.org/stream/nasa.php

NASA TV 500kb stream
http://www.space-sts.nl.eu.org/stream/nasa500.php

As a note, the 500kb stream may lag or not work at all depending on site traffic during the launch so keep the 300kb stream link handy!

Lastly, here are some facts about this launch:
- 155th American manned space flight
- 124th shuttle mission since STS-1
- 99th post-Challenger mission
- 11th post-Columbia mission
- 22nd flight of Endeavour
- 27th shuttle mission to the ISS

On the local side of things, it is STILL CLOUDY and RAINY here. Outlook this week still looks bad so probably won't have any telescope updates anytime soon...sob.

Weather, Alignment and Collimation

This is what the weather looks like for the next 5 days…looks like seeing will be spotty at best.



As for my telescope, it is in the middle of an upgrade (yes already!)…nothing major, just replacement screws for the mount and Polar Alignment scope which I ordered from a place called http://www.scopestuff.com/. They have a wide variety of replacement and upgrade parts for scopes so I highly recommend you take a look if you want to make your scope a little bit better (I’ve added a link to them in the Links area). I replaced the following for my LXD-75 scope:

- Azimuth Adjustment Bolts
- Latitude Adjustment Bolts
- Polar Finder Scope Adjustment Thumbscrews

Why did I replace these bolts and screws? Well the replacement bolts are made to be more convenient to turn than the stock ones and the adjustment screws on the Polar Finder Scope require a tool to adjust...where the replacement screws adjust without a tool. Makes it that much easier to use the scope.

Now that it's cloudy and rainy I've been trying to find out more about aligning the scope so that I can take longer exposures. Right now I’m struggling to get up to 30 second exposures and from what people have told me, I should be getting 1min+ exposures easily. I've managed to align the Polar Align scope (which I'm betting was one source of tracking trouble) and am also using a new piece of software to help align the scope more accurately...as soon as I get some clear sky I'll be testing all of this out.

Speaking of collimation, if you are looking for a laser collimator to make sure your mirror is aligned, look no further than the Hotech 1.25” SCA Laser Collimator. I had bought the Meade 1.25” Laser Collimator previously and due to how it is made it didn't sit flush inside of the eyepiece which renders it useless (so don’t waste your money on it!) The Hotech on the other hand uses a rubber ring that expands inside of the eyepiece so that perfect alignment can occur. I'm eager to try out my new adjusted scope but again am waiting for some clear sky...

20 Seconds of M45

I wasn't really trying to get a good shot here as I was experimenting with "drift aligning" my scope (more on this later), but this is a close-up shot of M45 (aka "Pleiades" & "Seven sisters")...more specifically this is one of the stars that make up M45 named "Merope".

The stars that make up M45 are very visible to the naked eye during the East night sky and look great in binoculars. Only with long-exposure photography do the beautiful blue nebulosity around each of the main stars start to appear. This blue nebula is called a "reflection
nebula" which means that the light from the stars are either behind or within them, illuminating the nebula for us to see.

M45 is 440 light-years away from earth which comes to 2,580,906,240,000,000 miles. It would take us 440 years to get there if we could travel the speed of light (670,616,629 mph). The fastest manned vehicle to date has gone about 24,800 mph..which at that speed would take us over 11 MILLION years to get there......

My First Nebula - M1

After still working out the kinks in the imaging process, I finally had an evening of pain-free image capture a few nights ago. I still have some bugs to work out and I will be addressing those issues next week - for now, take a look at my first nebula: M1 (aka the "Crab Nebula). Post-processing this image took a while, but turned out better than I expected for only a few 20sec exposures!

4th Observing Session: Moon Redux

Noticing a clear night last night I quickly set up the telescope with the intention to photograph the Moon again, but this time with the Meade Color DSI II camera instead of my Canon SLR to see the difference in camera quality.

What you see below is the Moon in its "Waning Gibbous" phase with about 70% of the surface visible. This mosaic was made up of only 3 exposures with slight sharpening and color correction in Photoshop.

3rd Observing Session - Moon & Capella

After a short vacation and the start of fall weather, I was able to do another photography session - this time with my DSLR camera.

The moon was out in full force during this session, which was the prime candidate of the night. Due to the size of the moon (and the wrong eyepiece I was using) I had to take multiple shots of the moon to make this mosaic (the black areas are parts of the moon that I wasn't able to take for whatever reason).

Due to the moon being so bright (and washing out all of the deep space objects) I was limited to viewing stars so I turned my scope to Capella, the 11th brightest star in the sky. Looking at Capella, it looks like one bright point of light, but is actually a close binary star about 42.5 light-years away. Intense X-ray radiation emanates from Capella, most likely due to surface magnetic activity in one of the stars.

2nd Observing Session (M31 & M33)

After a week of clouds we finally got one clear night yesterday so I set up the scope and focused on M31 (the Andromeda galaxy) and M33 (the Triangulum galaxy which I photographed previously). Learning from my first photography session, these two images turned out much better - with sharp focus, 16-bit color processing, better detail and dark frame subtraction.

M31 (aka "Andromedia galaxy") is the closest galaxy to our own (at 2.5 million light-years away) and consists of over a trillion stars (greatly exceeding the amount of stars in our own galaxy). M31 is one of the only galaxies which can be seen with the naked eye in a dark location as it is very bright (magnitude 4.4). M31 and our own Milky Way galaxy are set to collide in 2.5 billion years...




M33 (aka the "Triangulum galaxy") is a galaxy about 3 million light-years away, and is so close to the Andromeda galaxy that both are gravitationally bound to each other. M33 is also on a impact course to the Milky Way, but will take billions of years to reach us.

Space News

Lots of stuff going on this past week in Space related news:

9/29/08 - Critical Failure On Hubble Space Telescope Causes Shuttle Delay
A critical equipment failure aboard the Hubble Space Telescope on the eve of a long-awaited fifth and final shuttle servicing mission put astronomical observations on hold and forced NASA managers to delay the mid-October flight of Atlantis (STS-125). Assuming the Hubble mission is, in fact, delayed to next year, NASA will press ahead with launch of the shuttle Endeavour (STS-126) on a space station assembly mission around Nov. 14, two days earlier than currently planned.

9/28/08 - Finally A Successful Launch For The Falcon 1 Rocket!
The Falcon 1 booster redeemed itself Sunday with an electrifying launch that put an exclamation point on six years of hard work and disappointment for SpaceX, a startup company chartered to revolutionize space travel. The 70-foot-tall rocket successfully delivered a 364-pound hunk of aluminum nicknamed "Ratsat" to orbit on the launcher's fourth flight, ending a streak of three consecutive Falcon 1 failures dating back to 2006. SpaceX touts the Falcon 1 as the first privately-developed liquid-fueled rocket to successfully reach orbit.

9/28/08 - China Is Heating Up The Space Race
Three Chinese astronauts blasted off on the country's third human space voyage and have returned safely to Earth, ending a mission that included the Chinese space program's first spacewalk. China currently three missions planned for 2010 which will demonstrate how to assemble a small space station.

Setup, setup and more setup + 1st photos!

Well I have had 3 straight nights of solid clear viewing with my new scope - the first night was just eyepiece viewing and learning what the heck a "polar align" was and the other few nights were spent attempting to take some photos with my color DSI II. Below you will find the first two objects I was able to take photos of - M37 and M33. I'm still learning a lot about the correct process of taking astrophotography shots so please forgive me for the very poor quality photos (should be way better as time goes on). Rest of the week I think will be cloudy so might not have any new shots for a while.

Unboxing of the Meade 8" LXD-75

It's too late to post anything long right now so just enjoy the photos of the un-boxing of my new Meade 8" LXD-75.

Stargazing Site Report: Exit 45

I've never been really scared driving at night until I decided to venture out of my area to check out exit 45, east from Seattle on I-90. I learned that this was a stargazing site far from the skyglow of any city and wanted to see what it was all about.

25mins after we (my wife and I) left our house, we got to exit 45 which is quite far from Seattle. The road pretty much leads to nowhere so there is nothing - no lights, dead ends and dirt roads. Driving off of the safe highway, we turned onto the exit, then went another 3 miles on a one-lane dirt road to the site which was supposed to be a clearing. Because of the darkness and bumpy nature of the road, it was a bit scary driving it, knowing that if anything happened to you help would be very far away. The trees didn't help either as they were leaning over the road so much you couldn't see the sky so it was very much like out of a scary movie. After a tense moment of hearing a very strange sound suddenly emanating from the left front tire (a rock had got into the break) we finally got to the clearing, which there was one other car present.

My wife was too scared to get out of the car so I got out to assess the car and location. After looking at the car and seeing that it was fine, I broke out the binoculars and looked at Andromeda. I could already tell that the viewing was better than from my house, but the full moon pretty much ruined any proper location evaluation.

I'm not sure if I'll ever go back there again as it was so remote that you really feel like you could be in danger from something, but then again I'm sure it would have been a great site to view the skies on a dark night. My suggestion is to bring a group of people along, and go earlier when there is some daylight to make the trip less scary.

I'm always looking for a good stargazing area, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

My Telescope of Choice...

...which will be on order any day now:

Soon I'll have photos of the universe that I can call my very own...I can't wait!

My first batch of targets that I will be cataloging will be in the Eastern part of the sky as this is where my back yard faces. Right now it looks like Orion is coming up earlier and earlier each day so I should have some great views of the Orion Nebula as well as other well known galaxies.

Green Lake Star Party, Cheap Scopes & Shuttle Update

The weather was pretty much perfect for the monthly Green Lake Star Party near the north shore parking lot on the 6th. It was my first time going to a star party and though there were only a few scopes set up due to other star parties going on in the area, I had my Orion 20x80 binoculars set up looking at Jupiter and had a lot of fun talking with observers about my limited knowledge of space. This was also the first time looking through some bigger scopes such as one 6" Dobsonian and a Orion 5" Cassegrain (I believe it was a Cassegrain) which we saw great views of Jupiter (easily seeing cloud detail), the Ring Nebula (M57), Dumbbell Nebula (M27), the Double Cluster of Perseus (NGC 869 & NGC 884), Andromeda Galaxy (M31) and of course the Moon and even a few satellites. It was really cool to see kids and many adults get excited about seeing deep space objects and learn a little bit more about the universe we live in.

Inspired by the star party, I picked up a cheap scope at Fry's to see what I could see before my big 8" scope purchase in the next month or so. I picked up the Galileo FS-80S (about a 3" reflector) and messed around with it that evening. I tried my hardest to get a good shot with the DSI II camera but the scope was so cheap that I couldn't achieve good focus even with the eyepiece.

I've decided to promptly return the scope as it's not worth owning - it's slightly better than my Orion 20x80, but useless for any kind of photo taking....sorry will have to wait a bit longer to see some good shots!

Lastly, STS-125 (last Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission) has been pushed a few days to Oct. 10. This launch will be pretty interesting because STS-126 will be on the pad as well for backup just in case something goes wrong with STS-125. I don't remember if this has ever been done before (at least I don't remember the last time we had two shuttles on the pad at the same time).

Space shuttle Atlantis stands poised on the launch pad after its trek from the Vehicle Assembly Building. Image credit: NASA

Update to September 2nd Stargazing

Here is an image of how the Andromeda Galaxy, M15, NGC 457, M45 and Jupiter looked like with the 20x80 Orion GiantView Binoculars. These are not images that I took myself, but made to look like what I saw that night from by backyard. Click on the image for the full size resolution.

One way to image Deep Space Objects (DSO)

Imaging DSO is fine if you have a SLR camera, but what if you want longer exposures and convenient computer control? This is where something like the Meade Deep Sky Imager II Color CCD Camera comes in. The Meade DSI II allows you to attach the camera directly to a telescope eyepiece, then with the included software you can see a real-time preview of what you are looking at and have the computer do the work of capturing the images and stacking them for the best image possible. The DSI II also comes with an instructional DVD to help you get up and running right away as the software can be pretty daunting for the first-time user.

The downsides to something like the Meade DSI II is that it is not very high resolution for the price (the camera is less than 0.5 megapixel in resolution) and the Meade DSI III with its 1.5 megapixel resolution costs just about twice as much as the Canon XTi (10MP) that I talked about in a earlier post...so know that astrophotography cameras are something that are not cheap when compared to regular SLR or point-and-shoot cameras on the market.


The DSI II Color CCD Camera.


The DSI II Color CCD Camera out of the box.


Close-up of the CCD. Be careful as the CCD is exposed with the lens cap off.

Tonight's Stargazing

FINALLY it was a 90% clear night tonight and was able to take the new Orion binoculars for a spin. What I love about the Orion 20x80's is that you see SO many more stars than you can see with the naked eye it's really like looking at an entirely different night sky.

I really wanted to see if I could locate a nebula tonight but was unsuccessful...what I did see was as follows:

Andromeda Galaxy (M31, 4.8mag)
Easy to find once you know where to look, Andromeda is viewable with a 15x50, and of course even that much brighter with the 20x80. I still couldn't make out any detail however and looked like a dim blur.

M15 (Globular Cluster, 6.2mag)
I thought this was a galaxy, but turned out it was a globular cluster. I was never able to find this with the 15x50 binoculars, but was easily resolved using the 20x80 (but still looked like a faint blur).

NGC457 (Galactic Cluster, 6.4mag)
An interesting formation of stars which is easily seen with 20x80 binoculars.

M45 (Galactic Cluster, 1.5mag)
Always a cool formation of stars which is easily seen with 20x80 binoculars.

Jupiter & Moons
All 4 moons were very easily visible and I think I saw a hint of cloud detail on Jupiter. Very sharp using the 20x80 binoculars.

Well that's about it...going to he sack now...

What's In The Package?

It's the Orion GiantView 20x80 Binoculars! Sometimes when viewing the night sky and you don't want to set up a large telescope, whipping out some ultra-portable binoculars can do the trick nicely. I had previously owned some 10x50 Humvee binoculars which had allowed me to view the Andromeda galaxy for the first time, however it really was just a very faint blur in a sea of stars. The Orion GiantView 20x80 Binoculars fills that gap between low-power binoculars and a telescope where it has enough light-gathering power to view Deep Space Objects (DSO) and not have the setup time involved. The only downside to the GiantView 20x80 is that it is a little heavy to hold, so using a tripod is recommended (and the binoculars come with a built-in mount for photo/video tripods).

The Orion GiantView Binoculars come with a nice padded case for protection.




The glass in this binocular are fully multi-coated to minimize light loss.




The Orion GiantView 20x80 next to my 10x50 Humvee binoculars.

Barlows, SLR and a Secret Package!

Whether you are getting into astrophotography (like I am) or just wanting to do some casual stargazing, a Barlow Lens is a must-have item. What a Barlow does is double (or triple) your magnification, so in essence it gives you double the amount of eyepieces you have to work with and best of all Barlows are fairly cheap across the board. Just plop in the Barlow first into your telescope, then plop in your eyepiece and boom, double magnification.

Since my primary purpose for buying a scope is to do astrophotography, and I already have a Canon XTi camera, this next item is another must-have. The Meade Variable-Projection Camera Adapter was made so that people with SLR cameras can attach it to a telescope to take wide-field, high-resolution images. I have a DSI II Color on order, but it is limited to taking photos up to 752x852...not very high resolution at all - this is where a SLR camera fills the gap as my XTi can take images up to 3888x2592. Don't forget to order the T-Mount for your particular SLR camera as well if you get the adapter.

Lastly, a secret package from Orion has shown up...find out what it is next!

Reading Material & Why Space?

So why the interest in space/stargazing? Well for me personally I've been interested in space all my life but only recently have I started into the act of stargazing. I never had a telescope before and that was mostly because when I was young I was more interested in video games and girls than anything else.

Now at this stage in my life I can finally explore for myself the wonders of our own Milky Way galaxy as well as objects beyond our galaxy into the great unknown vastness of the universe.

Sounds cool right? And anyone can do it, even on the cheap.

For less than a cost of a Wii, you could get a telescope that can see the rings of Saturn, or the moons of Jupiter...even the polar ice caps of Mars and beyond. But with anything you buy, you will need a manual - more precisely, a guide...and the following books/magazines are what I recommend you look into...

Turn Left At Orion
Very highly rated book made for observers with small scopes or binoculars. Each object is shown as it looks in the eyepiece (so no unrealistic Hubble photos here).

Stargazing Secrets
Another good book that is packed with the best objects to look at during the current month. Has full color images and often shows what objects will look like with a larger scope or with a CCD camera.

Celestial Sampler
A magazine-style guide which is great for taking on trips or for quick stargazing sessions in the backyard. Has about 60 objects featured so not as much as the other books.

And of course the best monthly magazine to read up on space stuff is Sky & Telescope magazine, especially if you are just getting into stargazing.

Isolating Telescope Vibration

The primary purpose of my upcoming telescope purchase is to get into astrophotography, and when taking long-exposure photographs a steady tripod & mount is a must. If you already have a good tripod, here is something else that will add even more steadiness to your setup: Meade #895 Vibration Isolation Pads. Just put your tripod on these three pads on any kind of surface (concrete, soil, grass, etc.) and user or ground based vibrations will be greatly suppressed.

Variable Polarizing Filter & New Orion Catalogue

Today I was pleasantly surprised by the delivery man as most deliveries don't happen anymore on a Saturday. Upon opening up the package it was the variable polarizing filter that I ordered as well as a new Orion fall catalogue.

So what does a polarizing filter do? Well it cuts out some of the light that comes into the eyepiece - mostly needed for viewing the moon because it is so freaking bright (-12.6 magnitude to be exact...the sun for comparison is -26.73 magnitude and each order of magnitude is 100x). There are filters that cut out a set amount but I went with the variable version to give me the most flexibility when viewing.

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog - Neighbors Beyond! I'm just starting into astrophotography and wish to share my experiences and exploration of the universe with you.

So what can you expect from Neighbors Beyond? Well first off, info about all things up in the sky and most importantly photos (and video) of cool stuff. So with out further delay, let's get started....

My first piece of equipment came today: The AstroZap Flexible Dew Shield ($26.36 @ telescopes.com)
So what the heck is a dew shield? Well first off, dew is "water in the form of droplets that appears on thin, exposed objects in the morning or evening. As the exposed surface cools by radiating its heat, atmospheric moisture condenses at a rate greater than that of which it can evaporate, resulting in the formation of water droplets." (thanks Wiki!). So what a dew shield does is delay the onset of dew for those few hours you'll have enjoying your telescope. If you are just buying a scope, remember to get one of these!