Atmospheric Study - Spectacular Captured Weather Subsystems

Atmospheric Study - Spectacular Captured Weather Subsystems for Extended Observations
It was discovered that spectacular weather subsystems exist in and around regional active volcanic mountains where it can be clear in one area and obscured and raining in another. How is this useful to astronomical imaging? Can the telescope view sky objects during rain? Do these weather subsystems divide and what are their rates of changeability?

PHOTO

In a general example, entire mountain ranges can disappear while others remain visible, depending on weather conditions. In other specific examples, clouds are seen in front of some clear area mountains and not others.

WEATHER POSITION These weather systems move inside, over top side, surrounding the sides, and extending to the base of volcanic mountains.

VOLCANIC MOUNTAINS

There are five main surrounding active volcanic mountain regions, each at varying sizes, distances and elevations. 

LOCATION

The volcanic mountains border on the Pacific ocean where a weather front can spill over into the mountainous formed depressive bowl and weather is thus held captive. Weather inside the bowl is shown to move around, affording clear views in one location and not in another. Sometimes these systems are static more or less, or can be in a high rate of motion and change.

RATE OF CHANGE - SIZE - CONTENT
Weather can change in 20 minutes and one weather cell may have a different rate of change compared to another. Cells can vary in size and content. Some cover entire mountains while others are seen as small prevailing cloud systems obscuring a small mountainous fraction.

CONCLUSION

During daytime, subsystems are visually spotted and the telescope is directed to open areas of the sky for astro imaging or to specific mountains for conservation study. At night, weather subsystems are found with imaging cameras that see in the dark.

Armchair Astronomy Astronomical Imaging

"Armchair Astronomy" Astronomical Imaging the Jovian System
Focus on the Jupiter system Thursday, November 4th, 2021

Left: Ganymede moon of Jupiter, Space1 is developing a mission to Ganymede with the Dynamonic Propulsive Star Gate

Left: Europa moon of Jupter presumed to have live in the ocean beneath the surface crust

Left: Io moon of Jupiter

Top: Planet Jupiter in various stages of processing

Big Blue Captures Tau Ceti Lunar Conjunction

StarBlast Telescope Project 1

Big Blue Captures Xi Cet Lunar Conjunction
65 Ceti is a type E variable double star in Cetus at 4.36 to 4.4 magnitude at RA 02 hr 14.1 m and DEC _08 Deg 57'

by Mike Otis

Otis Astroimaging

Some astronomers believe this is the system likely to harbor planets in the habitable zone and hold evolved life forms. One can only speculate about the origin and nature of these faraway worlds, 380 light years from the Earth.

Technical Data - Above Photo

* Orion StarBlast telescope project 1

* July 4, 2021 3:03 am local time
* Hand held Apple iPhone 6 Plus

* Built in 4.15mm lens at speed f2.2, ISO 500, 1/4 second digital exposure
* Blue StarBlast II EQ 4.5" with 23mm eyepiece, no active drive

* Image processing: remove window glass, temper grain, enhance star,

          preserve reflected Earthshine

* Software: iMac Catalina 10.15.7 OS, Photos v5.0, PhotoScape X v4.0.2

* Location - South Pacific Ocean

This is the First Light project conducted with the new Orion StarBlast II 4.5-inch aperture reflector telescope on the EQ-1 German Equatorial mount.

Left: enhanced AR image created by Celestron's SkyPortal app running on an iPhone with a focus on Xi1 Cetus variable star at conjunction with the Moon. Don't think about looking for the double star as it's far too close to the primary. The star is a yellow orange giant has its second component at 0 arcseconds distance or 1 AU.

This highly unusual photo was taken inside the new Indoor Observatory and shot through window glass. The image has received computer image processing to remove window glass and take care of internal window glass reflections.

Stars are very tiny pinpoints of high resolution in the parabolic StarBlast and only cover a few pixels in the cell phone camera images. Image processing is necessary to somewhat expand a star to make it more visible. This is opposite of what usually happens with seeing conditions that are less than ideal causing bloated stars or with varied optics.

Due to additional stars in the Cetus system which are located at habitable zones, contention by astronomers, and debated, is that life can exist on these planets around the star system. This refers to the famous Tau Ceti system long thought to harbor alien life forms.

Light Pollution City

 

Light Pollution City
This city has a rating beyond a Bortle number with all its light pollution and air pollution sky haze

The author has invented the Penetrator, an invention to cut through sky dynamics such as light pollution, haze, fog, smog, air pollution, light overcast, a sheen of atmospheric water vapor, and thin clouds.

Mystery Sky Light UFO

Mystery Bright Sky Light Identified

For the past several nights, a very bright UFO - static flashing sky beacon light appeared above the mountain range. Posing as a possible stationary geosynchronous orbital satellite, the beacon hovered above the mountain and was watched over the course of several nights. Sometimes it moved position from night to night. Other times it remained stationary as if hovering.

If you swing one of the very large telescopes over to the light, it can be resolved and identified. However, no telescopes were in operation most nights during the spell of inclimate overcast weather. Overcast skies only deepened the mystery.

But when the object was sighted just as the sun was setting, it became obviously clear it was simply a powered pulsating warning light located at the tip of a very large construction crane occupied in the development area of a new tall skyscraper. It was not a rotating satellite in space reflecting sunlight after all.

After identifying the hazard light, at least three more were found looming in the night sky. These contribute significant light pollution, thus destroying the darkness and beauty of the night sky, as the wide band multispectral beam emits strong light in all directions including skyward to warn low flying aircraft of its position.

Celestron Firstscope Experimenting Through Clouds

Celestron Firstscope: the Experiment, Can We Shoot Through Heavy Clouds?

Using a 2.99-inch Dobsonian to shoot the Moon through heavy clouds - is it possible?

by Mike Otis

THE VIEW at left shows the Moon totally obscured by heavy clouds on the night of Saturday, April 24th, 2021, captured with an iPhone Xs Max camera.

Photos are taken through the author's Celestron FirstScope with two Svbony Aspheric 62-degree eyepieces, using eyepiece projection, one at 10mm FL  at 30x and a 23mm FL at 13x. The experiment is to see if images can be obtained by shooting the Moon through very heavy  clouds without using filters.

At left, the first step is using the 23mm 13x ocular, holding the iPhone camera above the eyepiece and observe the effects at various exposures, noting the appearances across numerous images and seeing which images improve or degrade with various exposures. Low power seemed to accentuate the cloud haze across the front of the Moon and created less detail and surface features. It is also noted, focus will change based on the varying cloud density. It would be best to

place a lightweight plastic camera mount on the telescope rather than handhold the camera, thus allowing a greater ability to position the telescope, refocus as needed, and greatly minimize image motion without needing too many hands or bumping the telescope.

The final image shown above is through the 10mm eyepiece at 30x. The greater image scale is better at penetrating the clouds and showing lunar detail. The single prized image is software processed with PhotoScape X to remove cloud obstructions and water vapor haze. The image, towards the bottom right of the Moon shows some remaining water vapor, however it's not necessary to remove it as it does not appreciably cover the Moon. This experiment was far more successful than expected. Without the use of filters and only by adjusting image scale and exposure, a reasonable cloud penetration is possible with the Moon.

Small Telescope Fun

Having Fun with Small Telescopes
Not every image taken with a small telescope will reveal detail like the Hubble Space Telescope but you can do the next best thing by processing your photos in new, unique, and artistically creative ways. Left: original image. Below: Enhanced

Take for example this original image of the Moon (at top), captured with a small plastic telescope at 4-inch aperture. At first glance, there's not much useful information visible and the photo is overall dark and gloomy, but what if we could have some fun and extract more data from our favorite crater Ptolemaeus?

The crater Lyot is barely shown but what if image processing could enhance it and show more, introducing shadow depressions and more detail inside the giant crater? And to boot, let's add some pizazz with creativing lighting and color flares to make it interesting and fun. The second image shows those results. A lot of detail appears inside Ptolemaeus and the entire terminator is more pronounced with new features visible. Lyot crater is clearly visible along with more terminator details. To process the image, I first used Apple Mac OS system software Photos to base enhance the image. A second program Photoscape X was used for refinement and special effects, light flares, color, enhancements and framing.

CAPTURE THE ENTIRE MOON

At left is the original gibbous Moon image taken with the same telescope. The image is small and lacks the clarity of lunar features. In the next image, the Moon is having a bout of processing with Photoscape X to increase image scale and bring out the clarity of features.

So next time out, get creative and have a ton of fun with your small telescope!

Skyscraper Light Pollution

New Skyscraper Causes Tremendous Light Pollution

During the past several months, a new very tall skyscraper is under rapid construction. 

Located due South, it will become one of the tallest in the country, spanning upwards well over 120 floors with seven windows per cardinal side or 28 windows per floor, resulting in 3,360 windows of piercing wide band light pollution spreading outwards like multiple beacons washing across the expanse. 

So far, the skyscraper is still going upwards under construction - each night, all floors and all windows are lit up with high intensity white lighting, in direct violation of city lighting ordinances. 

This completely obliterates the night sky rendering the entire south direction of the sky totally useless for astronomical endeavors. It also casts light directly on telescopes and destroys all night viewing. 

Economics must be very good as the city is also constructing three more skyscrapers in the same region. The observatory is equipping with light filtering accessories and trying out various types to see which can improve the sky in some small way. 

Filtering will include various colors, wide band, narrow band, high contrast, specific cut, pass, polarizing, and various pro derivatives. A filter wheel will hold filters for rotating into the field for rapid test comparisons. Tests will include both visual and astro imaging.

In addition to the filters, the observatory will try out several new telescopic sky viewers to test for any improvements in the night sky.

Rising Sun above the Mountains

Rising Sun above the Mountains
Photo taken March 28, 2021, with iPhone Xs Max back dual camera with OS14.4.1 6mm f/2.4 at 6:04:29 am 1/119 second exposure ISO16. Air pollution was a heavy 104 AQI creating sunrise diffraction into the red spectrum and blocking a view of the trees normally seen on the mountains. Zoom  mode used at maximum creating an image 3024x4032 pixels with a size of 458K in HEIC format converted to PNG. Cropped & denoise using Apple Photos system software.

Star of Bethlehem Found

FINDING THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM

Using computers to confirm the appearance of the Bethlehem Star according to the Christian Bible, the book of St. Matthew, and cross referencing to the birth of baby Jesus

by Mike Otis

In 1992, I used five computer programs to initiate a program of time travel back to the time of the birth of Baby Jesus when the Bethlehem star was said to have appeared in the night sky and guided the Wise Men.

The software was coded to calculate and examine the positions of million of stars, examining the night sky for a brilliant apparition of spectacular magnitude. The calculated astronomical data was plotted to create a visual of the Star, Bethlehem, and the three Wise Men under the night sky as it may have appeared in the past. 

The story was published in a 1992 issue of Observatory Techniques Magazine, issue number 4, pages 40 and 41. It later was picked up by News and AP Wirephoto nationally across the USA. I was invited to lecture at the Christian Methodist Church where I presented additional details. I'm a baptized Christian graduated from three churches - First United Methodist, Bible Baptist, and Lutheran. I'm known for combining and explaining religion with science and technology. By reverse extrapolating the data far into the future, another apparition "Star of Bethlehem" was found! I encourage others to speculate on the positive aspects of a future apparition.

     

Moon Image Shows Potential Base Site

Moon Image Shows Potential Base Site
The bright spot marks the potential lunar base site for a lunar landing mission by SPACE1 and Humanoido. Full Moon image captured with a C14 Edge-HD, CGX-L, iPhone camera and color processing.

https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-case-for-moon-colony.html

Make Your Own Military Grade Image Intensifier

Make Your Own Military Grade Image Intensifier
All you need is a new iPhone and the latest incarnation of image intensifier apps

Night vision image intensifiers are used by the military to view objects in total darkness by amplifying a few photons. Now declassified technology, one can pick up a new or surplus image tube intensifier for several hundred or a few thousand USA dollars. But why do that when you can get a free phone app to do the same.

Now enter into the year 2020 where you can find almost anything in the  form of a free app for your iPhone. MilkyCam is that app. It amplifies a totally dark sky, turning it into daylight by boosting the ISO by thousands of times. For this experiment, I tried three similar apps, each with slightly different features. The goal of this experiment is to determine the amount and direction of light pollution remaining at night during the darkest sky.

Taiwan Study

This study will determine nighttime sources of light pollution using an image intensifier app for a new Apple iPhone in the Taipei Taiwan area. The photos are shot with a handheld iPhone Xs Max and the app MILKYCAM set to the extremely fast ISO rating of 1,856.  All photos have no processing. The image intensifier app is so powerful, it can take these images from a night view, to full daytime, and complete whiteout appearances. Aside from studying nighttime light pollution, the intensification app is also used for determining an analysis of clouds during the night, and spot checking the position of stars and celestial objects. Processing can remove grain and light pollution and the app can control the size of stars in the image. Pinpoint stars may disappear against the background photo noise and grain, but a slight enlargement of star diameter will bring stars into better visibility.

Photo 1 has a large parking skyscraper with large picture windows, illuminated from the inside out on every floor day and night. At the right, is a long stretch of road with an array of street lights that shine upward and down. The background skyline also has skyscrapers blazing with lights.

Photo 2 shows buildings fully illuminated from street lights and lights placed on the buildings that shine up and outwards. The only dark patches are from rooftops and a few scattered trees. The tall skyscrapers are fully illuminated from bottom to top. Every hallway has a window with light. In the first tall skyscraper, at least 12 of these windows are contributing the full illumination of the skyscraper and its surroundings. At the top are very intense lights continuously on, radiating in all directions. Adding more to the light pollution, the building balconies are all illuminated.

Photo 3 shows a tall new skyscraper under construction, and contributing the most to the light pollution problem. Other completed buildings are nearly as bad in light radiation. To the right is sky glow as it points towards the heart of downtown.

Moon & Venus

Crescent Moon & Gibbous Venus

Monday morning, September 14, 2020 , Apple iPhone XS Max camera 4.25mm f1.8 2858x3812 790K, HEIF, ISO 2500 1/4 sec. exposure, 4:28 am, rising over Taipei Taiwan. Below: enlargement showing the phases, Moon's Earthshine, and the phase of planet Venus. Need to check other photos to identify star occultation.

Light Pollution Limiting Magnitude

Most of the light pollution is already subtracted in this image. For the sake of illustration, some light pollution is retained on the photo, which appears as a green tinted noise. This sheen can be eliminated almost completely, however there is a reduction in the brightness of stars. 

Image Details

With Apple iPhone 6 Plus, 4.15mm f/2.2, 3264x2448 2mb, ISO 3712, 1/4 second exposure, taken with Nightcap app. The image is processed with Apple iMac to remove most light pollution noise. This is a determination of the photographic limiting magnitude given this particular sky, camera and app.

Determination of Limiting Magnitude under Taipei Light Polluted Skies

Morning of Monday, September 14th, 4:37am

Sky Portal Comparison

The planetarium program SkyPortal was used to screen capture at approximately the same time view at left and identify the dimmest star seen in the photo as 2.05 magnitude Kappa Orionis. Another star at 2.77 magnitude is seen near the Great Orion Nebula, still not enough to reach the Bortle 9 rating.

Visibility Limit

To the left of Kappa Orionis, and at the limit of visibility in the noise is a tiny spec, the star Gamma Monocerous at 3.98 magnitude.

Magnitude Matching

For stellar identification purposes, dial back the limiting magnitude of the planetarium program - in the second screen shot, the star magnitude is set to 4.4 to match the photo as best as possible.

Bortle Rating Insignificant

This is the limiting photographic magnitude of this particular image.  The limit of the Bortle rating is 9, for naked eye objects detected at magnitude 4. However this sky has light pollution  worse than Bortle 9 by another magnitude. The Bortle scale is useless for light pollution ratings in inner core cities.

OTIS Scale
I use the OTIS scale which uses a direct relationship with the visible star magnitude. A sky that shows only magnitude 3 stars is rated as a 3. As the number ratings become larger, for example 5, the sky becomes more clear with less light pollution. The OTIS scale allows rating the most light polluted inner core cities such as New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, Taipei, etc. and can go beyond first magnitude into negative magnitude numbers.

Conclusion

This sky is precisely OTIS Scale 3.98 on the image. On this night, a maximum of twenty stars were visible within the Eastern patio sky window. With the advent of EAA and digital telescopes that can image in bright light sky pollution from the center of core cities, the Bortle Scale stops and reaches a limit where the OTIS Scale continues.

Taipei Sunset

Taipei Sunset in Taiwan this Evening

While waiting for the clouds to clear for telescopic astronomical imaging of deep sky objects, this dramatic and unusual sky vista appeared. Shot with a handheld iPhone X camera set on automatic exposure, Sunday September 13th, 2020, showing true sunset colors. Looking like paintings, the photos capture the incredible variety of cloud systems at one time. No rain or storm today but there was a beautiful rainbow yesterday, shown below.

Day Night Viewing

Experimenting with the Moon. A red or dark red filter
will increase the contrast of a blue sky in the daytime.
Experiments with a filter to let through infrared light
and block other wavelengths will also help clear up the
image and increase contrast. Image by Mike Otis

Which is better? Day or Night?

These are some ideas on Wednesday, July 29th, 2020

Light pollution is very strong at night, greater than Bortle 9, and only one star and a planet are visible. I got an idea this afternoon.

After a big rain yesterday, the blue sky is beautiful and very clear today. Rare wind has taken the edge off high humidity levels. Using a red filter, some bright stars, planets, and the Moon are visible in the daytime! Which is better, day or night? There is no artificial light pollution in the daytime and only natural solar light prevails. Some current daytime objects to view are planes, satellites, the Sun, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury and the Moon. The idea is to increase sky contrast and subtract some solar light to a point where the observation becomes useful. Using GOTO and filters, I wonder if the brightest deep sky object can be teased into view? Certainly planets and the Moon have great potential. Depending on how this works out, I might switch to day viewing and imaging.

Solar Eclipse June 21 2020 Taiwan

Color solar images: shortly after noon, it started out looking like a partial solar eclipse over Taiwan but the Moon continued to eat a larger and larger chunk out of the Sun until it took on the Annular Eclipse appearance shown below. Thick overcast, haze, air pollution and rampant clouds blocked the sun. A solution had to be found for imaging the eclipse. A high tech approach was taken using a series of alternating small telescope sites connected by ISP.

The view at 4:16 pm local time had this maximum coverage.

WEATHER - At this moment, the sky is cloudy with upper atmospheric haze and low level high speed clouds passing overhead. Normally you would not see the eclipse today.

To continuously watch the annular solar eclipse unobstructed from Taiwan, I put together a small telescope system of localized video networks photographically linked together with video cams to cover the best weather portions of the island. Small telescope locations linked

A Celestron 3" Dobsonian reflector FirstScope is the prime telescope used for solar viewing by quickly projecting the sun's image onto a sheet of paper, firmed up by a clipboard. It's easy to stop down the aperture to reduce heat intensity and use a safe solar filter over the front tube. A camera photos the image projected on the paper and corrections are applied with computer image processing to clean up the image and correct for foreshortening effects. Photos taken over a brief period of time are ok but any activity too long will have active heat build up, and could start melting the internal plastic secondary mirror holder or other plastic telescope parts. Photo'ing the clipboard paper is safe but never look through the eyepiece. The setup is ideal for briefly imaging the paper at the final time of maximum coverage during a total Solar Eclipse, at a time of reduced heat.

include Taipei, Yunlin, Chiay, and Taichung Taiwan. At 4:16 pm local time around maximum, the day darkened substantially and a strong breeze suddenly appeared. Humidity stayed very heavy, temperature stayed exorbitantly hot, and visibility suddenly and unexpectedly increased by 5 to 10 more miles. The observatory tent abruptly began flapping in the wind and I remember thinking it's a good thing it's tied down. The telescopes did not image any solar prominences because the video exposures capturing the phase sequences were not set to do so. Many images were obtained but for brevity only a few are shown here. The entire imaging project was conducted with Apple iMac running MacOS system Catalina @3.4Ghz