Eclipse 2024 and February 2024 Stargazing Photos

I guess you can call this my “Eclipse Special”…  Such as it is…

Quanda and I flew to San Antonio on April 5 to see the city and to view the eclipse.  I took my telescope with me and was hoping to get some amazing shots of the eclipse but that didn’t happen.  More on that later.  We did have a lot of fun touring the city.  We saw the Alamo, museums, the River Walk, and ate lots of great Mexican and TexMex food.  We enjoyed the city.

We decided to go to San Antonio because it was the southernmost, major US city that would experience the eclipse.  I thought that the farther south we went, the better our chances of getting clear weather would be.  Boy, was I wrong. 

It was raining on the morning of the 8th, so we decided to drive northwest of the city in search of better weather and longer totality.  We ended up in a tiny town called Center Point, TX.  It was in between two larger towns – Fredricksburg and Kerrville – that were hosting eclipse events.  We wanted to avoid the crowds.  We found a minimart that let us hang out in their “backyard” if we bought our food and drinks at the mart.  So, for $20 bucks, we had a place to watch the eclipse.  The other towns were charging $100 just for parking!

I set up my telescope and started praying for cloud breaks.  There were some cloud breaks, but they were never long enough or big enough for my telescope to be able to find and lock onto the sun.  Eventually, I gave up and just used by cell phone to take a few pictures through my eclipse glasses.  The pictures are below.  After the eclipse, I realized that I could have switched my telescope from automatic to manual mode and guided it to the sun myself, but I came up with that idea too late.

Even with all the clouds, we were still able to experience some of the eclipse.  There was a weird, unnatural twilight right before and after totality.  We saw the sun’s corona and totality.  It did get dark and chilly.  The crickets started chirping.  Some people told us their chickens went to roost.

This was not the eclipse I was hoping for but I am still glad I was able to experience it.

The Messier List of Deep Sky Objects

The Messier List is a list of deep sky objects that are fairly easy to find and are usually quite interesting.  I have seen 62 of the 110 objects and I have included them in my various blog entries.  I am looking forward to seeing and photographing the rest of them.  The Messier Marathon is held on one night each spring. The goal of the Marathon is to see all 110 Messier objects in one night... I think I will just stick to my own pace. Here is a more formal description of the list…

The Messier objects are a set of 110 astronomical objects catalogued by the French astronomer Charles Messier in his Catalogue des Nébuleuses et des Amas d'Étoiles (Catalogue of Nebulae and Star Clusters). Because Messier was interested only in finding comets, he created a list of those non-comet objects that frustrated his hunt for them. This list, which Messier created in collaboration with his assistant Pierre Méchain, is now known as the Messier catalogue. The Messier catalogue is one of the most famous lists of astronomical objects, and many objects on the list are still referenced by their Messier numbers. The catalogue includes most of the astronomical deep-sky objects that can be easily observed from Earth's Northern Hemisphere; many Messier objects are popular targets for amateur astronomers.

A preliminary version of the catalogue first appeared in 1774 in the Memoirs of the French Academy of Sciences for the year 1771. The first version of Messier's catalogue contained 45 objects, which were not numbered. Eighteen of the objects were discovered by Messier; the rest had been previously observed by other astronomers. By 1780 the catalogue had increased to 70 objects. The final version of the catalogue containing 103 objects was published in 1781 in the Connaissance des Temps for the year 1784. However, due to what was thought for a long time to be the incorrect addition of Messier 102, the total number remained 102. Other astronomers, using side notes in Messier's texts, eventually filled out the list up to 110 objects.

The catalogue consists of a diverse range of astronomical objects, from star clusters and nebulae to galaxies. For example, Messier 1 is a supernova remnant, known as the Crab Nebula, and the great spiral Andromeda Galaxy is M31. Further inclusions followed; the first addition came from Nicolas Camille Flammarion in 1921, who added Messier 104 after finding Messier's side note in his 1781 edition exemplar of the catalogue. M105 to M107 were added by Helen Sawyer Hogg in 1947, M108 and M109 by Owen Gingerich in 1960, and M110 by Kenneth Glyn Jones in 1967.

Several of the Messier objects – including the Crab Nebula – are included in this blog entry.

Eclipse

Here are a several pictures of the 2024 eclipse taken right before totality.  You can see the effects of the cloud cover.  Be that as it may, you can also see the sun’s corona.

Star Clusters

Messier 46 or M46, also known as NGC 2437, is an open cluster of stars in the slightly southern constellation of Puppis, the Poop Deck. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1771. Dreyer described it as "very bright, very rich, very large." It is about 5,000 light-years away. There are an estimated 500 stars in the cluster with a combined mass of 453 M☉, and it is thought to be a mid-range estimate of 251.2 million years old.

The planetary nebula NGC 2438 appears to lie within the cluster near its northern edge (the faint almost rainbow array of colored smudge at the top-center of the image), but it is most likely unrelated since it does not share the cluster's radial velocity.

Messier 48 or M48, also known as NGC 2548, is an open cluster of stars in the equatorial constellation of Hydra, the Water Snake. It sits near Hydra's westernmost limit with Monoceros, about 18° 34′ to the east and slightly south of Hydra's brightest star, Alphard. This grouping was discovered by Charles Messier in 1771, but there is no cluster precisely where Messier indicated; he made an error, as he did with M47. The value that he gave for the right ascension matches, however, his declination is off by five degrees. Credit for discovery is sometimes given instead to Caroline Herschel in 1783. Her nephew John Herschel described it as, "a superb cluster which fills the whole field; stars of 9th and 10th to the 13th magnitude – and none below, but the whole ground of the sky on which it stands is singularly dotted over with infinitely minute points".

M48 is visible to the naked eye under good atmospheric conditions. The brightest member is the star HIP 40348 at visual magnitude 8.3. The cluster is located some 2,500 light-years from the Sun. The age estimated from isochrones is 400±100 Myr, while gyrochronology age estimate is 450±50 Myr – in good agreement. This makes it intermediate in age between the Pleiades, at around 100 Myr, and the Hyades, at about 650 Myr.

Messier 50 or M 50, also known as NGC 2323 or the Heart-shaped Cluster, is an open cluster of stars in the constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn. It was recorded by G. D. Cassini before 1711 and independently discovered by Charles Messier in 1772 while observing Biela's Comet. It is sometimes described as a 'heart-shaped' figure or a blunt arrowhead.

M50 is about 2,900 light-years away from Earth and is near to but narrowly not estimated to be gravitationally tied to the Canis Major (CMa) OB1 association. It has a core radius of 5.9 ly (1.8 pc) and spans 17.8 ly (5.46 pc). The cluster has 508 confirmed and 109 probable members – their combined mass is more than 285 M☉, the mean stellar density would thus be 1.3 stars per cubic parsec. It is around 140 million years old, with two high-mass white dwarfs and two chemically peculiar stars.

NGC 2419 is much farther away than most of the star clusters I have included in my blog entries.  So much so that the cluster only takes up a small portion of the photograph to the left.  The cluster is the small, fuzzy blob that is above the center of the photograph.

NGC 2419 (also known as Caldwell 25) is a globular cluster in the constellation Lynx. It was discovered by William Herschel on December 31, 1788. NGC 2419 is at a distance of about 300,000 light years from the Solar System and at the same distance from the Galactic Center.

NGC 2419 bears the nickname "the Intergalactic Wanderer," which was bestowed when it was erroneously thought not to be in orbit around the Milky Way. Its orbit takes it farther away from the galactic center than the Magellanic Clouds, but it can (with qualifications) be considered as part of the Milky Way. At this great distance it takes three billion years to make one trip around the galaxy.

The cluster is dim in comparison to more famous globular clusters such as M13. Nonetheless, NGC 2419 is a 9th magnitude object and is readily viewed, in good sky conditions, with good quality telescopes as small as 102mm (four inches) in aperture. Intrinsically it is one of the brightest and most massive globular clusters of our galaxy, having an absolute magnitude of −9.42 and being 900,000 times more massive than the Sun.

Nebulae

Most of these nebulae have been included in previous blog entries.  I am including them again because I tried to get better pictures of them and, in the case of the Orion Nebula, just because I like it.

The Crab Nebula (catalogue designations M1, NGC 1952, Taurus A) is a supernova remnant and pulsar wind nebula in the constellation of Taurus.  It is about 6,500 light years from Earth.  Despite the amazingly detailed pictures you may be used to seeing of the Crab Nebula, don’t expect too much from my telescope.  This photo is what you see through a telescope that only collects visible light.  You’ll likely see an oval-shaped smudge of light, like a faint fingerprint — but don’t let that disappoint you. This seemingly innocuous glow is the guts of a massive star whose supernova was seen in the sky in the year A.D. 1054. That supernova was so bright that it outshone Venus and was visible during the day for nearly a month. Today, nestled in the center of the mess is the Crab pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star born from the crushed core of a once-brightly shining sun.

The Monkey Head Nebula is an emission nebula located in the constellation Orion and is associated with the open star cluster NGC 2175. It is thought to be located about 6,400 light-years away from Earth.  The nebula is quite large and takes up most of the picture but, since it is so faint, it is hard to see.  Look for patches of reddish haze in the image.  The most visible parts of the nebula are in the lower right quadrant of the picture.  When photographed the right way, the nebula really does look like a monkey’s head but you can’t see it that way when just viewed with visible light.

NGC 2467, nicknamed the "Skull and Crossbones Nebula", is a star-forming region whose appearance has occasionally also been likened to that of a colorful mandrill. It includes areas where large clouds of hydrogen gas incubate new stars. This region was one of the areas featured in the book Hubble's Universe: Greatest Discoveries and Latest Images by Terence Dickinson.

NGC 2467 had long been considered to be the nucleus of the Puppis I association. However, NGC 2467 does not represent a distinct open cluster; rather, it represents a superimposition of several stellar groups along the same approximate line of sight that have distinctly different distances (averaging 4,420 ly from us) and distinctly different radial velocities.

The Yalie in me forced me to include it because of the Skull and Crossbones nickname.

The Orion Nebula is the most spectacular nebula in the constellation and can actually be seen with the naked eye.  It is the middle “star” in Orion’s sword.  It looks like a big, fuzzy star or patch in the sky.  The Orion Nebula is the first nebula ever photographed and has probably been photographed more than any other nebula.

The Orion Nebula (M42) is a diffuse nebula.  It is one of the brightest nebulae in the night sky. It is 1,344 light-years away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. This nebula is estimated to be 24 light-years across. It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun.

Galaxies

Here are four more Messier objects that just happen to all be galaxies.

Messier 65 (also known as NGC 3623) is an intermediate spiral galaxy about 35 million light-years away in the constellation Leo the Lion, within its highly equatorial southern half. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1780. With M66 and NGC 3628, it forms the Leo Triplet, a small close group of galaxies.

M65 was discovered by Charles Messier and included in his Messier Objects list. However, William Henry Smyth accidentally attributed the discovery to Pierre Méchain in his popular 19th-century astronomical work A Cycle of Celestial Objects (stating "They [M65 and M66] were pointed out by Méchain to Messier in 1780"). This error was in turn picked up by Kenneth Glyn Jones in Messier's Nebulae and Star Clusters. This has since ramified into a number of other books by a variety of authors.

The galaxy is low in dust and gas, and there is little star formation in it, although there has been some relatively recently in the arms. The ratio of old stars to new stars is correspondingly quite high. To the eye, M65's disk appears slightly warped. Rots (1978) suggests that the two other galaxies in the Leo Triplet interacted with each other about 800 million years ago.

Messier 66 or M66, also known as NGC 3627, is an intermediate spiral galaxy in the southern, equatorial half of Leo. It was discovered by French astronomer Charles Messier on 1 March 1780, who described it as "very long and very faint". This galaxy is a member of a small group of galaxies that includes M65 and NGC 3628, known as the Leo Triplet or the M66 Group. M65 and M66 are a common object for amateur astronomic observation, being separated by only 20′.

M66 has a a spiral shape with a weak bar feature and loosely wound arms. M66 is receding from us with a heliocentric radial velocity of 696.3±12.7 km/s. It lies 31 million light-years away and is about 95 thousand light-years across with striking dust lanes and bright star clusters along sweeping spiral arms.

Messier 88 (also known as M88 or NGC 4501) is a spiral galaxy about 50 to 60 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Coma Berenices, Berenice's Hair. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1781.

(My telescope’s aim was a little off on this one.  The galaxy is in the upper left corner of the photo.)

M88 is one of the fifteen Messier objects that belong to the nearby Virgo Cluster of galaxies. It is galaxy number 1401 in the Virgo Cluster Catalogue (VCC) of 2096 galaxies that are candidate members of the cluster. M88 appears to be on or ending a highly elliptical orbit, currently on an approximate or direct course toward the cluster center, which is occupied by the giant elliptical galaxy M87. It is currently 0.3 to 0.48 million parsecs from the center and will come closest to the core in about 200 to 300 million years. Its motion through the intergalactic medium of its cluster is creating, as expected, ram pressure that is stripping away the outer region of neutral hydrogen. To date, this has been detected along the western, leading edge of the galaxy.

Messier 90 (also known as M90 and NGC 4569) is an intermediate spiral galaxy exhibiting a weak inner ring structure about 60 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, the Maiden. It was discovered by Charles Messier in 1781.

Messier 90 is a member of the Virgo Cluster, being one of its largest and brightest spiral galaxies, with an absolute magnitude of around −22 (brighter than the Andromeda Galaxy). The galaxy is found about 1.5° from the central subgroup of Messier 87.

Stars

Adhara or Epsilon Canis Majoris is a binary star system and the second-brightest object in the constellation of Canis Major. Its name is a Bayer designation that is Latinised from ε Canis Majoris, and abbreviated Epsilon CMa or ε CMa. This is the 22nd-brightest star in the night sky with an apparent magnitude of 1.50. About 4.7 million years ago, it was the brightest star in the night sky, with an apparent magnitude of −3.99. Based upon parallax measurements obtained during the Hipparcos mission, it is about 430 light-years distant from the Sun.

Gamma Cancri, or γ Cancri, is a star in the northern constellation of Cancer, the Crab. It is formally named Asellus Borealis /əˈsɛləs bɒriˈælɪs/, the traditional name of the system. Based on parallax measurements, it is located at a distance of approximately 181 light years from the Sun. The star is drifting further away with a radial velocity of 29 km/s. Since it is near the ecliptic, it can be occulted by the Moon and, very rarely, by planets.

Denebola is the second-brightest individual star in the zodiac constellation of Leo. It is the easternmost of the bright stars of Leo. It has the Bayer designation Beta Leonis or β Leonis, which are abbreviated Beta Leo or β Leo. Denebola is an A-type main sequence star with 75% more mass than the Sun and 15 times the Sun's luminosity. Based on parallax measurements from the Hipparcos astrometry satellite, the star is at a distance of 36 light-years (11 parsecs) from the Sun. Its apparent visual magnitude is 2.14, making it readily visible to the naked eye. Denebola is a Delta Scuti type variable star, meaning its luminosity varies very slightly over a period of a few hours.

Alpha Comae Berenices (α Comae Berenices, abbreviated Alpha Com, α Com) is a binary star in the constellation of Coma Berenices (Berenice's Hair), 17.8 parsecs (58 ly) away. It consists of two main sequence stars, each a little hotter and more luminous than the Sun.

Alpha Comae Berenices is said to represent the crown worn by Queen Berenice. The two components are designated Alpha Comae Berenices A (officially named Diadem /ˈdaɪədɛm/, the traditional name for the system) and B.

Beta Tauri is the second-brightest star in the constellation of Taurus, the Bull. It has the official name Elnath; Beta Tauri is the current Bayer designation, which is Latinised from β Tauri and abbreviated Beta Tau or β Tau. The original designation of Gamma Aurigae is now rarely used. It is a chemically peculiar B7 giant star, 134 light years away from the Sun with an apparent magnitude of 1.65.

Megrez /ˈmiːɡrɛz/, also called Delta Ursae Majoris (δ Ursae Majoris, abbreviated Delta UMa, δ UMa), is a star in the northern constellation of Ursa Major. With an apparent magnitude of +3.3, it is the dimmest of the seven stars in the Big Dipper asterism. Parallax measurements yield a distance estimate of 80.5 light-years (24.7 parsecs) from the Sun.