Author: Nick

The Total Solar Eclipse of 2017 August 21

The Total eclipse of 2017 August 21 as observed from: near Riverton, Wyoming

  Phase          Time       P      Z    Altitude  Azimuth

1st Contact   16:19:56.2  287.7  330.0    41.1     116.0

2nd Contact   17:39:37.4  130.7  159.9    52.7     139.2

Maximum       17:40:44.3   19.0   48.0    52.8     139.6

3rd Contact   17:41:51.4  267.5  296.2    52.9     140.0

4th Contact   19:06:01.3  110.3  113.5    58.8     175.7

Duration: 2 Mins 14 secs (134 secs) ** not limb corrected **

Magnitude: 1.0291 Obscuration: 1.0000 Ratio Moon/Sun: 1.0291

Longitude: 108.0491 West Latitude: 42.9609 North Height: 1681 metres

Preliminary processed image. Tamron 500mm f/8 catadioptric lens. Stacked 1/125 – 1 sec exposures.

2nd Contact

3rd Contact

Storm Barbara

Not much evidence of Storm Barbara on the south coast other than a nice example of the passage of a cold front around 8.00pm on 2016 December 23.

Here are the plots:storm_barbara_cold_front

The top plot shows the change in temperature from very slowly rising to falling.

In the middle plot wind direction is in white, whilst wind speed is blue. Note veering of wind from SSW to WNW. Wind speed drops from around 12 mph to 5mph.

The lower plot shows clearly the change of atmospheric pressure from falling to rising (purple) and the cessation of rain (blue).

The plot from the Aurora Cloud Sensor shows the rain in more detail and also how the sky cleared an hour or so later – Clarity increases as the Sky Temperature drops.

storm_barbara_cold_front_sky

Supernova 2016 GXP in NGC51 (Andromeda)

sn2016gxp_20161130_210230

Image taken with 8 inch Altair RCOS and SBIG STF-8300M. 16 minute (4 x 4) exposure through ‘luminance’ filter.

Here is the annotated image from Astrometry.net identifying the other galaxies within the field.

sn2016gxp_annotated

From Wikipedia:

NGC 51 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation Andromeda. It has a diameter of 90,000 light-years. The galaxy was discovered on September 7, 1885 by Lewis Swift, who described it as “Pretty faint, pretty small, round, brighter middle.”

Observation data (2000.0 epoch)
Constellation Andromeda
Right ascension 00:14:34.8h
Declination +48:15:22°
Redshift 0.017849
Helio radial velocity 5350 km/s
Distance 241,000,000Ly (74,000,000Parsecs)
Apparent magnitude (V) 13.1
Characteristics
Type S0/a
Size 90,000
Apparent size (V) 1′.445 x 0′.891