The WIYN 0.9m Observatory @ Kitt Peak

Kitt Peak National Observatory

Today there are no pretty pictures of the wonders of the Universe from the VAO observatory in Webster, NY. Instead, I bring you images of where I will be for the next week,  Kitt Peak National Observatory.  Located 56 miles from Tucson, Arizona at an elevation of 6,875 feet above sea level.   KPNO has the largest collection of telescopes in the world. 24 optical telescopes and 2 radio observatories.  

So why KPNO?

On the left, the WIYN 0.9 m Observatory

KPNO houses the WIYN consortium 0.9 meter telescope of which Rochester Institute of Technology is a partner among other educational institutions.   As part of the partnership, faculty and students of RIT  have the opportunity to conduct research and educational projects.   

Why is this important to me, you say? Well to begin, the night sky at KPNO is one of the best in the nation and the opportunity to image with a telescope that is 3 times the aperture size of the one I have is compelling.  Not to mention this will advance 2 of the projects I am currently working on.  The first project is on AGN (Active Galactic Nuclei), galaxies where their central super massive blackhole is accreating mass.  The second project is on the characterization of transiting exoplanets and their apsidal precession due to the effects predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity.

Stay tuned for the results of this trip!

M78, McNeil's Nebula, v1647Ori what do these things have in common?

M78, McNeil's Nebula and v1647Ori
©Billy Vazquez, 2011 @ VAO Webster, NY

They are all part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex.  They are also part of these image taken from VAO a few nights ago.  M78 on the upper left corner of these image is an HII region and it the brightest and most prominent object of this field but regardless there are several other nebula like objects, for example McNeil's Nebula.   

McNeil's Nebula has a very interesting story behind it.   Discovered by McNeil in 2003 after having done an exhaustive search on this field at different epochs.  But was it really a new object in the sky?  Apparently as close to the mid 1960s and by no other than an amateur astronomer(Evered Kramer).  There is clear evidence that the nebula was visible then.   So how come it disappeared just to reappear again for McNeil to find?  This is still the topic of active research.   The prevalent explanation is that the young star v1647Ori has episodic outburst whose light reflects and scatters by the dust in McNeil's Nebula.

These outbursts from young stars and their associated nebulosity are coined Herbig-Haro objects and they are like I said still the subject of astronomical research, so that we can understand the physics that powers this phenomena.

M103

M103 from VAO, Webster, NY
© Billy Vazquez 2011

A young open cluster in the constellation Cassiopeia. But how young is young, that is the question?  The age of this open cluster was estimated to be around 16 million years at a distance of 2900 parsec (Sanner et al., 1999).    The Solar System is roughly 4.5 billion years old.  If we use the age of our solar system and compare it to the stars in this cluster we come to the conclusion that the cluster is younger by 3 orders of magnitude.

M103 from VAO, Webster, NY
© Billy Vazquez 2011

How do we know which stars in the field of view are part of the cluster?    For that, we study the proper motion of the stars, which is the angular displacement over time with respect to the barycenter of the solar system.  All stars that belong to the cluster will have roughly the same proper motion. This indicates that the stars are gravitationally bound and traverse the Galaxy as a unit.

The images of M103 shown were taken using a Johnson V band filter with VAO's 12" SCT @ f/6.3.  They are 36x60 sec exposures co-added in Maxim DL for a total exposure time of 36 minutes.  The imgages were dark and flat subtracted but no further image processing performed other than the color inversion of the second image.

Horsehead Nebula

The Horsehead Nebula also known as Barnard 33 is a dark nebula in the constellation Orion and it is located just south of Alnitak.  This dark nebula is located about 1500 light years away from Earth. The red glow is imparted by ionized hydrogen from nearby star Sigma Orionis.

The image shown was taken at VAO with broadband Johnson BVR filters.  Total exposure time is 55 minutes ( 4x300s on B and V, 3x300s on R filters).   It was further processed in PixInsight for dark subtraction and flat field division.  A median noise reduction algorithm was used with a 3x3 kernel to eliminate most of the chrominance noise.   The telescope used was the 12" inch SCT at f/6.3.   Guiding was done with Metaguide with an 80mm APO refractor and Lumenera Skynix. 

In addition I present to you the unedited out of the telescope combined image of 55 minutes on a single grey channel.  You can see the vignetting of the smaller filters over the larger CCD chip area.  As you would imagine this nebula would look much better over narrowband filters to expose more of the filamentary structure at the edges of the dark nebula.

Double Cluster - NGC 869

NGC 869 in Perseus
©Billy Vazquez @ VAO Webster, NY  9/18/2011

NGC 869 in BW
©Billy Vazquez @ VAO Webster, NY  9/18/2011

The Double Cluster are two open clusters in the constellation Perseus.  The one in the images is NGC 869 at a distance of 7600 light years.   It is believed it is about 13 million years old and it is also known as Cadwell 14.

The images were taken with the 12" SCT at f/6.3 with Astrodon Johnson VBR filters.   Total exposure time was 2.5 hours.  I am still using the Orion Parsec camera.  In this instance I binned the image 2x2.

The mass of NGC 869 is estimated at 3700 solar masses with a color excess B-V of 0.56.  Both clusters are near identical in age, distance and  redenning.  Whether the double cluster is the core of the Per OB1 association is still in debate according to Slesnick et al. 2002.

M36 - An Open Cluster in Auriga

©Billy Vazquez @ VAO Webster, NY  9/11/2011

The open cluster M36 was discovered by Giovanni Batista Hodierna, an Italian astronomer of the 17th century. Rediscovered by Charles Messier as entry number 36 in his catalog.

©Billy Vazquez @ VAO Webster, NY  9/11/2011

The cluster is rather young with an approximate age of 25 million years and it is roughly at a distance at 4,000 light years.  The brightest stars on the image are of spectral type B.




This means these stars have temperatures that reach up to 33,000 K.  These stars are also very fast spinners.   You might ask how do we know they are fast rotators?   The key is on a technique called spectroscopy which breaks the light of the stars into its different emission and absorption lines and from the width of these lines we can tell the rotation speed.  

The image was taken from my observatory and it is a LRGB color combined image.  3 x 5 minutes exposures over each Johnson filter and 15 minutes exposure over a luminance (IR Blocking) filter. 

Orion's Nebula - M42

M42 - Orion's Nebula
©Billy Vazquez @ VAO (Webster, NY) 9/4/2011

I remember when I did my first "Big Upgrade" to a Dobsonian 10" reflector and I took the "Little Monster", that is how I playfully called it, outside for a first light.  It was a cold winter night but that is no deter for an avid astronomer.   Orion's Belt was clearly visible to the naked eye and I remember the beautiful images of Orion Nebula's  from my old dusty books.  Not to mention all the beautiful Hubble images on the Internet.

Well, some years have gone by since that day  outside where Orion's Nebula was a fuzzy blob on the eye piece. Both technology and my equipment have advanced quite a bit since then. I present to you last night's Orion's Nebula.  An RGB composite of 7x20 sec exposures over each filter (Bessel V, Bessel B and H-Alpha).  Post processed with MaximDL.   The scope is my 12" LX200 ACF SCT at  f/6.3.

Orion's Nebula is a stellar nursery 1,344 light years away.  It is the closest star formation region to our Sun. And its span is about 24 light years across. The 4 stars at the center that are barely resolved are part of the Trapezium open cluster.  M42 is an astrophotogpaher challenging target as its stars are much brighter than the surrounding nebulosity.