Professional and Amateur Astronomers Join Forces

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Professional and Amateur Astronomers Join Forces

Professional and Amateur Astronomers Join Forces:

We are perhaps living in the midst of a new "Golden Age" of astronomy. In the four hundred years since Galileo first trained his refracting optical telescope on the Moon, and Jupiter and its moons, we've seen staggering advances in the technology of telescopes. We've also benefited from the discoveries of light beyond the visible portions of the electromagnetic spectrum and the development of instruments sensitive to those wavelengths.

NASA developed and implemented its Great Observatories program to extend our view of the Universe far beyond that which our human eyes can see, giving us glimpses of the cosmos beyond our ancestors' wildest dreams. Over the past two decades, advancements in professional-grade detectors, optics and computing power have been welcomed by amateur astronomers as well. With a modest investment and a great deal of patience, a dedicated amateur astronomer can produce images that rival those of professional ground-based observatories from just ten years ago. In the spirit of Global Astronomy Month 2014, we present four views of our cosmos brought to you by NASA and two very dedicated amateur astronomers, Detlef Hartmann and Rolf Olsen, in an Astro Pro-Am collaboration.

After I spoke at the NorthEast Astro Imaging Conference in 2013, I decided to further investigate the depth and quality of both professional and amateur data that is available to anyone willing to do a little digging. I chose this as an opportunity to help forge a relationship between amateur astrophotographers and NASA by identifying several high-quality images that would be ideal candidates for a multi-wavelength, professional-amateur (or “pro-am”) collaboration. This was also a great venue to raise interest and awareness among the amateur astronomer/astrophotographer community as to the wealth of data available in NASA's various mission archives. People are often surprised when they learn that data from NASA's Great Observatories program is free to use.

I sought out the work of talented astrophotographers on astrobin, which eventually led me to the work of Detlef Hartmann. I reached out to Detlef regarding a possible collaboration combining his excellent work with data from Chandra and possibly other NASA observatories. He was enthusiastic about the idea and so we got to work identifying potential image candidates, most of which had very good X-ray data from Chandra and infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope available. Detlef utilizes his own remote observatory in the Austrian Alps, which affords him the ability to take very long exposures in very good seeing conditions thus producing stunning images. This is a common theme among amateur astrophotographers that sets them apart from the professional observatories that are often oversubscribed and for which it is difficult to devote large amounts of time to one research project; amateur astronomers have the luxury of time.

Centaurus A - Optical

It was by chance that I came across this blog post by "Bad Astronomer" Phil Plait detailing an amazing optical image of Cen A by Rolf Olsen. This extremely deep image of Cen A teases out the faintest details in the extended structure of this galaxy - all from a 10" telescope that Rolf built himself! In an effort to extend this Pro-Am collaboration to other astrophotographers, I contacted Rolf to see if he would be interested in working together on a multi-wavelength image of Cen-A and was met with the same enthusiastic response as Detlef's. We iterated a few times on an image combining Rolf's amazing work with our newly updated, deeper X-ray image, and again infrared data from Spitzer. Cen A is famous for its bright X-ray jet, but if you look very closely at Rolf's image, he also managed to capture faint evidence of that same jet in optical wavelengths as well.

This image release is hopefully the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with amateur astronomers around the world. We hope to release more images in the future. In the meantime, enjoy these four images and keep looking up!

-Joe DePasquale, Chandra Science Imager

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NASA Photos Photography

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

Wednesday, July 16, 2014