#astrodon — Public Fediverse posts

It's my last night at the observatory. The night started cloudy, but it's now mostly clear, though very bright due to the half Moon that won't set until 1:17 am. The Thirty Millimetre Telescope is outside doing its thing, but I won't be joining it as I didn't finish working on the Huntsman Telescope until 8 pm, and need to be up early in the morning to finish things off there before driving back to Sydney. I want to get going fairly early so I'll have at least got as far as the M1 before it gets dark. Last thing I need is to bend the rental car around a kangaroo. Again.

#SidingSpringObservatory #Astrodon #Astronomy #TMMT #ThirtyMillimetreTelescope

4K version of the frustratingly cloudy timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uR_tvpz4mU

#SIdingSpringObservatory #Astrophotography #Astrodon

The AAT's Boltwood cloud sensor recorded it getting cloudy between about 11 pm and midnight, and between about 12:30 am and 3 am, i.e. most of the best (darkest) part of the night between the Moon setting at 12:20 am and astronomical twilight at 5:20 am was cloudy.

I thought that would have wiped out the Thirty Millimetre Telescope for most of the night too, but when I checked what it got this morning i was pleased to see that it soldiered on through breaks in the clouds and seems to have got some good data on a couple of targets I really, really wanted to get while I was here. I think the cloud was worst in the direction I was taking the timelapse, and was patchier in other parts of the sky.

#SidingSpringObservatory #Astrophotograpy #Astronomy #Astrodon #Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #TMMT #ThirtyMillimetreTelescope

*old man yells at cloud*

This time my Proper Camera stayed upright and recorded the timelapse perfectly, but there was a bit too much cloud, especially during the darkest part of the night after the Moon set. Kind of cool anyway, but not as spectacular as I'd been hoping for. Should have seen the Milky Way setting almost horizontally behind the mountains.

#SidingSpringObservatory #Astrophotography #Astrodon

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@mikeu/117117801237340419

We shall have a celebration on that day 🚀

#Space #Astrodon

Blue Rays: New Horizons High-Res Farewell to Pluto

This is the highest-resolution color departure shot of Pluto's receding crescent from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, taken when the spacecraft was 120,000 miles (200,000 kilometers) away from Pluto. Shown in approximate true color, the pict...

More: https://images.nasa.gov/details/PIA21590
Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

#pluto #newhorizons #astrodon #astronomy #astrophotography #astrophysics

Oh noes, this likely means that Swift (or Neil Gehrels Observatory) will re-enter the atmosphere later this year.

▶️ https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-updates-next-steps-for-commercial-swift-boost-mission/

Thank you, little satellite and good bye - you enabled a ton of ground breaking science and for me personally it will be, on top of the rest, super hard to catch all the transient X-ray binaries without you 💔

#astrodon #astronomy #XraysAreTheBestRays

A room full of X-ray astronomers focusing on time domain all learning the #SwiftReboost will not be successful...

#NASA #Astrodon #Astronomy

RE: https://mastodon.social/@esoastronomy/117123120493074767

Big old SMBH in the sky, just like that movie!

#Space #Astrodon

RE: https://mastodon.social/@esoastronomy/117122822196931764

Such delicious extremes!

#Space #Astrodon

One for the record books 🏅

Our Very Large Telescope Interferometer has discovered the fastest known star in our galaxy. Named S301, it orbits Sagittarius A* — the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way — reaching speeds of 25 000 kilometres per second, over 8% the speed of light.

📷 ESO/GRAVITY collaboration

1/3

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science

Dione Mosaic

Many impact craters -- the record of the collision of cosmic debris -- are shown in this mosaic from NASA Voyager 1 of Saturn moon Dione.

More: https://images.nasa.gov/details/PIA00028
Credit: NASA/JPL

#dione #voyager #astrodon #astronomy #astrophotography #astrophysics

Tonight the Thirty Millimetre Telescope and the Inaction Camera are hanging out together. That way they can share a power bank and the Thirty Millimetre Telescope gets to be in the Inaction Camera's shot, along with the Three Thousand Nine Hundred Millimetre Telescope. And, tonight, I HAVE TURNED ON THE DEW HEATER.

#SidingSpringObservatory #Astrophotography #Astrodon #Astronomy #Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #TMMT #ThirtyMillimetreTelescope

Lots of roos around the summit this afternoon.

#SidingSpringObservatory #Astrodon #Astronomy

Damn. That wasn't quite the timelapse I was hoping for. The wind blew one leg of my Proper Camera's tripod off the edge of the concrete slab just as it was getting properly dark.

While there was some success on the Anglo-Australian Telescope last night my personal devices were 0/3. The Proper Camera fell over, the Inaction Camera's battery ran out before the Moon had set and didn't properly expose the night sky anyway, and the Thirty Millimetre Telescope stopped taking data at 11:30 pm, just as the Moon set. That was when humidity peaked, I think the lens fogged up and caused autofocus to fail, which prevented any more data being taken.

#SidingSpringObservatory #Astrophotography #Astrodon #Astronomy

Experiments successfully completed just as astronomical twilight begins. Calling it a night.

#AAT #AngloAustralianTelescope #SidingSpringObservatory #Astronomy #Astrodon

Too late for the demo but the humidity has now dropped, the outside of the dome has dried off, and we've opened up and are pointing the telescope at the night sky.

#AngloAustralianTelescope #AAT #SidingSpringObservatory #Astrodon #Astronomy

Feels like home.

#AAT #AngloAustralianTelescope #SidingSpringObservatory #Astronomy #Astrodon

I wonder how my Thirty Millimetre Telescope, Inaction Camera and Proper Camera are coping out there. I should have turned on the dew heater in the Thirty Millimetre Telescope. It does have the 3D printed lens hood/stray light baffle that would help keep dew off the lens to some extent, but maybe not enough for Siding Spring Observatory in winter.

#SidingSpringObservatory #Astronomy #Astrodon

This "skies are clear but the outside of the dome is dripping with condensation" situation is fairly common at SIding Spring Observatory in winter. I've experienced it many times before, with the AAT, UKST and Huntsman Telescope.

The telescopes here do generally stay open at higher humidities than at many other observatories, but even they have their limits.

#Astrodon #Astronomy #SidingSpringObservatory #AAT #AngloAustralianTelescope

Well that's a shame.

I'm supposed to be assisting with an on sky demonstration with the Anglo-Australian Telescope 3 am - 4 am. The skies are still (mostly) clear, and very, very dark but the outside humidity is over 95% so the telescope dome has been closed since 11 pm and is very unlikely to be opened again tonight.

#SIdingSpringObservatory #AAT #AngloAustralianTelescope #Astrodon #Astronomy

So last week we had some clear skies and cold nights. I did some photos with my Dwarfiii, this one is Ptolemy's Cluster, with a little editing in Snapseed.

Later I will show you how I went with the new stackable mosaic capability we have now with this telescope.

#Astrodon #Astronomy #Astrophotography #BackyardAstronomy #SouthernHemisphereAstronomy #DrivewayAstrophotograpy #SmartTelescope #Dwarf3

"Low-energy–Kraken–Heracles"

Not some weak Cthulhuian horror, but a dwarf Galaxy the Milky Way absorbed long before the Sun was even born

https://www.space.com/astronomy/galaxies/how-an-ancient-collision-with-another-galaxy-transformed-the-milky-way

#Space #MilkyWay #Astrodon #Astronomy

Enceladus the Powerhouse

This graphic, using data from NASA Cassini spacecraft, shows how the south polar terrain of Saturn moon Enceladus emits much more power than scientists had originally predicted.

More: https://images.nasa.gov/details/PIA13891
Credit: NASA/JPL/SWRI/SSI

#enceladus #cassini #cassinihuygens #astrodon #astronomy #astrophotography #astrophysics

There is one rule in astrophotography I know perfectly well: don't use an unrepeatable event to learn your new equipment.

Naturally, I ignored it for the August 12 solar eclipse.

New Seestar, improvised solar filter, wrong recording mode — and a lot of manual work afterwards. The result isn't perfect, but the story behind it might be more useful than a perfect timelapse.

https://adfr.io/thoughts/20260818_how_not_to_photograph_a_solar_eclipse

#astrophotography #SolarEclipse #Seestar #astrodon

I have also set up the Thirty Millimetre Telescope, near to the Three Thousand Nine Hundred Millimetre Telescope.

All my imaging devices (apart from my phone) have been given their tasks for the night so that will give me plenty of time to use my binoculars before I have more work to do at around 1:30 am.

#SidingSpringObservatory #Astrophotography #Astrodon #Seestar #SeestarS30Pro #TMMT #ThirtyMillimetreTelescope

Clear skies tonight! My Proper Camera has been set up to shoot a timelapse of the entire night looking towards the Warrumbungles. I also set up my Inaction Camera nearby to shoot a timelapse from a different perspective, but I don't have enough power banks for every device so the battery will die at some point before dawn.

#SidingSpringObservatory #Astrophotography #Astrodon

Last week we had 'Black Hole Stars' that were the predesesors of the Super Massive Black Holes that are at the centre of our galaxies, now here's what happened a bit later in the process, when those fledging SMBH were finding each other and falling into another.

Imagine witnessing three of the things collide with each other! Such awesome and space bending power!

https://www.space.com/astronomy/black-holes/scientists-find-3-supermassive-black-holes-on-the-verge-of-collision-inside-a-distant-galaxy

#Space #Astrodon #SMBH #Galaxies

So I am not a lab person, but sometimes I do envy lab folks: for example, when they can get a photo of themselves in the lab as a legitimate figure in a paper!

▶️ https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.13640

(This one is by an amazing early career scientist whom I had the pleasure to work with for a bit for some non-lab stuff.)

#astrodon #XRaysAreTheBestRays #astrophysics