Cone work in progress

[MarkS]

As some of you know, I have joined in a project with the University of Kent which uses amateur astroimaging data to find young outbursting stars by monitoring star brightness:
http://astro.kent.ac.uk/~df/hoyscaps/index.html

4 areas of sky have been selected for initial study but I've decided to concentrate on one - NGC2264

As a by-product I've now acquired 5 hours of data in 3 sessions since mid December and I've just done a quick pre-process of the data to create an image.  I think it shows potential.  In early Spring, when I've stopped acquiring data (at least for this Winter) I'll do a proper processing run.



Mark

[Kenny]

This is brilliant Mark.

[MarkS]

Here's an animation showing some of the variable stars flashing like beacons.  Ignore the groups of flashing green pixels - that's clearly the result of a new hot pixel that I now need to add to my hot pixel map.



One star in particular, slightly down and left of centre dims and disappears entirely!  I've looked that one up - it's in the catalogue of variable stars as "GCVS OP Mon" and it varies from mag 15.4 to dimmer than mag 19.  Obviously, as demonstrated here, it can happen over a period of one month. 

Imagine the chaos if our sun did the same!!

The colours are washed out in the picture because I used logarithmic scaling to show the relative brightness of stars better.  You know what I'm going to say next 
Logarithmic scaling (like Photoshop curves) changes the R:G:B ratios and hence washes out the colour.

Mark

[JohnP]

Excellent scientific work Mark. Really like the animation. The whole image will be stunning when you finished your processing.

John

[Carole]

Good work Mark.

What's that green irregularly shaped thing that flashes in for a short while by the bright star to the left?  I'm presuming this is space junk. 

Also as a side question, what format do you use for your animations Mark and how do you upload them?

Carole

[JohnP]

Carol. ..

Ignore the groups of flashing green pixels - that's clearly the result of a new hot pixel that I now need to add to my hot pixel map.

[MarkS]

The green "object" is a collection of green hot pixels.  I should have stated that the 3 frames were imaged on 19Dec, 28Dec and 16Jan.

As for animations, for just a few frames I use animated GIF - the Animation Shop in PaintShopPro creates these.  For longer videos more compression is required so I use VirtualDub and choose one of the available Codecs.  I think some people use a Movie Maker download for Windows Media but I've never experimented with that.

I find uploading them to be a real pain because I get the video looking just as I want it and then YouTube/Vimeo compress it to death.  So now I store in in DropBox and publish the link.  The link again shows a video compressed to death but it does give the option to download the original and play it back on your own machine in the original full quality.

Mark

[MarkH]

Mark am I right in believing I can see at least 4 variables in that animation ?

[MarkS]

I can see 5 obvious ones and then a few more less obvious ones.

[Mike]

Am I imagining things or is that dark cloud of gas on the right moving to the right?

[Mike]

Bottom left star with spikes. Two stars to the left of it. The left most one seems to also be moving.

[MarkS]

Am I imagining things or is that dark cloud of gas on the right moving to the right?

Bottom left star with spikes. Two stars to the left of it. The left most one seems to also be moving.

I think it's just the noisy background playing tricks on the imagination!

[MarkS]

I wasn't in last night so wasn't able to do any imaging until I got back late.  So I did a bit more of NGC2264 and have added another frame to the variable star animation.  It covers a larger area with many more variables.

http://www.markshelley.co.uk/Astronomy/2015/NGC2264_animationv2.gif

Mark

[Mike]

Look at this thing here (in the animation of course). It is definitely moving.

[Carole]

More good work Mark.  I think I spotted about 8 variables.

Look at this thing here (in the animation of course). It is definitely moving.

I agree.  Could it be a binary system where the stars are orbiting each other?  It's doing a wiggle.

Carole