OOTM competition for December 2018: The results are in! · 2019. 1. 12. · to...
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Reflections is published whenever possible by the Northern Sydney Astronomical Society Inc. PO Box 56 Lane Cove 1595 Tel: 0423 971 374 E-mail: [email protected] Web site: www.nsas.org.au W elcome to this revamped and much shortened issue of Reflections. As you will see, it is entirely devoted to the results of our Object of the Month Competition for December. Now, just to be clear, Reflections is still not just about this monthly competition, it is still open to any entry you might care to submit, be it articles, pictures, book reviews, games, reports, as long that it has an astronomical flavour. So, don’t hesitate to send your contribution to [email protected] or directly to me to [email protected]. To those members who have articles in the pipeline I say: make it your New Year resolution to finish it and e-mail it to me. If you have followed the news lately you are probably aware of the 2 great achievements that have marked the start of this year: the first landing on the far side of the Moon by the Chinese lander and rover Chang’e 4 and the imaging of Ultimate Thule, the furthest solar system body ever visited, by the US probe New Horizons. Wishing you all the best for 2019 and clear skies. Cheerio, Jean-Luc Gaubicher 46P /Wirtanen is a small comet that orbits the sun every 5.4 years. It was discovered photographically by the American astronomer Carl A. Wirtanen in 1948, although the limited number of initial observations meant that it took more than a year to be recognized as a short period comet. Its elliptical orbit takes it from as far as the Comet 46P/Wirtanen orbit of Jupiter at its aphelion to the orbit of Earth at its perihelion. With a diameter of 1.2km, 46P/Wirtanen was the original target for close investigation by the Rosetta spacecraft, however problems with the launch window meant that Rosetta was sent to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko instead. The comet’s closest approach was on I ’m pleased to announce the winners of the inaugural Object of the Month Competition for December 2018 (Comet 46P/Wirtanen). The winner of the imaging section is Phil Angilley with a fabulous sequence of three images that shows the movement of the comet over a period of 16 minutes. The runner-ups are and Greg McCall with a beautiful single image of the comet and David Stevenson, with a magnificent time- lapse video compressing two hours of comet movement into two minutes. You can find this video at: https://nsas. org.au/media/astronomy-competition/ and, in the meantime, here are 2 extracted frames from it. There were no entries in the articles section so I’ve written a short artcle you will find below. The object of the month for January 2019 is M42, the Great Orion Nebula. Please send your images and/or articles to me at [email protected] by 31st January at the latest. If sending a video, please include a few frames as separate images so that they can be published in the magazine. The winners of each of the best image and best article will receive a bottle of red at the next meeting. Cheers, Ben Petschel January 2019 December 16, 2018 when it crossed the Taurus constellation at a distance of 12 million kilometers (0.07 Astronomical Units), travelling at a speed of 10 kilometers per second and reached a magnitude of 3. This approach is the 20th closest one for any comet since the 9th century ce and the tenth closest approach since 1950. Ben Petschel Sources: Wikipedia, EarthSky.org, cometwatch.co.uk, skyandtelescope.com OOTM competition for December 2018: The results are in!
Transcript of OOTM competition for December 2018: The results are in! · 2019. 1. 12. · to...
Reflections is published whenever possible by the Northern Sydney Astronomical Society Inc.PO Box 56 Lane Cove 1595 Tel: 0423 971 374 E-mail: [email protected] Web site: www.nsas.org.au
Welcome to this revamped and much shortened issue of Reflections.
As you will see, it is entirely devoted to the results of our Object of the Month Competition for December.Now, just to be clear, Reflections is still not just about this monthly competition, it is still open to any entry you might care to submit, be it articles, pictures, book reviews, games, reports, as long that it has
an astronomical flavour.So, don’t hesitate to send your contribution to [email protected] or directly to me to [email protected] those members who have articles in the pipeline I say: make it your New Year resolution to finish it and e-mail it to me.
If you have followed the news lately you are probably aware of the 2 great achievements that have marked the start of
this year: the first landing on the far side of the Moon by the Chinese lander and rover Chang’e 4 and the imaging of Ultimate Thule, the furthest solar system body ever visited, by the US probe New Horizons.
Wishing you all the best for 2019 and clear skies.Cheerio,
Jean-Luc Gaubicher
46P/Wirtanen is a small comet that orbits the sun every 5.4 years.
It was discovered photographically by the American astronomer Carl A. Wirtanen in 1948, although the limited number of initial observations meant that it took more than a year to be recognized as a short period comet.
Its elliptical orbit takes it from as far as the
Comet 46P/Wirtanenorbit of Jupiter at its aphelion to the orbit of Earth at its perihelion.
With a diameter of 1.2km, 46P/Wirtanen was the original target for close investigation by the Rosetta spacecraft, however problems with the launch window meant that Rosetta was sent to 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko instead.
The comet’s closest approach was on
I’m pleased to announce the winners of the inaugural Object of the Month
Competition for December 2018 (Comet 46P/Wirtanen).
The winner of the imaging section is Phil Angilley with a fabulous sequence of three images that shows the movement of the comet over a period of 16 minutes.
The runner-ups are and Greg McCall with a beautiful single image of the comet and David Stevenson, with a magnificent time-lapse video compressing two hours of comet movement into two minutes.
You can find this video at: https://nsas.org.au/media/astronomy-competition/ and, in the meantime, here are 2 extracted frames from it.
There were no entries in the articles section so I’ve written a short artcle you will find below.
The object of the month for January 2019 is M42, the Great Orion Nebula.Please send your images and/or articles to me at [email protected] by 31st January at the latest.If sending a video, please include a few
frames as separate images so that they can be published in the magazine.The winners of each of the best image and best article will receive a bottle of red at the next meeting.
Cheers,Ben Petschel
January 2019
December 16, 2018 when it crossed the Taurus constellation at a distance of 12 million kilometers (0.07 Astronomical Units), travelling at a speed of 10 kilometers per second and reached a magnitude of 3.This approach is the 20th closest one for any comet since the 9th century ce and the tenth closest approach since 1950.
Ben PetschelSources: Wikipedia, EarthSky.org, cometwatch.co.uk, skyandtelescope.com
OOTM competition for December 2018:The results are in!
On 1 December 2018, I visually observed Comet 46P / Wertanen.
This comet was very easy to see, using a Meade LX200 8î, 42mm eyepice, 47 times magnification.
Using an ATIK Infinity Camera, at prime focus, with a 6.3 Focal length reducer, I took a series of 20 second frames.
The pictures shown here are from 3 sequences of 20-second exposures stacked:
Picture 1, 8 Frames of 20 seconds, time 00:19:19 to 0:21:43. ( hh:mm:ss )Picture 2, 7 Frames of 20 seconds, time 00:24:43 to 00:26:45.Picture 3, 12 Frames of 20 seconds, time 00:31:22 to 00:35:07.
In the last picture, the comet is slightly blurred due to the fact that as I was tracking on the stars, not on the comet itself; the comet moved a long way in just 4 minutes.Also, note how much the Comet position shifted in 12 minutes!
Phil Angilley
The Winning Photographic Entry
Picture 1
Picture 2 Picture 3
The Runner-Up Entry153 images (10xR, 10xG, 10xB, 123xL) mono using a ZWO ASI1600 at -15°C on a SkyWatcher ESPRIT 120ED APO.They were taken at our Terrey Hills site on the last observing night on the 8th Decembre.
I was tracking the stars so the comet was moving out of the frame, hence the need to not have it in the centre.
I mostly used PixInsight for the post-processing but, as I know Lightroom a lot better I also used it for a quick final edit and to convert the TIFF image I got from Pixinsight to jpeg.
Please note that this is my first PixInsight edit and there was a big learning curve to know PixInsight workflow enough to apply bias, flats, darks as well as the comet precess, mono RGB combination, adding L, histogram then to non linear etc etc .The PixInsight comet routine was needed to get all the comet data aligned before they could be stacked.
Greg McCall
