C/2023-A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS : the show is over...

It was one of those comets that remain in the memories, visible to the naked eye and, at its best, shining even in daytime. However, for once, the Southern hemisphere was not favoured, as the position of the comet made it more accessible to Northern skies.

Nevertheless, we succeeded to have good views of the comet in late October, when it was shining at a very respectable magnitude of 1.5, hence still visible to the naked eye, although in the dusk time only, never coinciding with dark skies.

Below are some pictures we took, rendering quite well the aspect of the comet as visible from our place (click to enlarge).

Main view of the comet after its perihelion, sharing the show with planets Venus and Mercury.
Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - October 16, 2024

The comet always displayed a long, straight tail, barely flared, which was a constant view all along its visit to the inner Solar System.
Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - October, 20, 2024
Canon 60D at prime focus of 75mm f/5 refractor

Here we can appreciate the bright, round false nucleus of the comet.
Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - October 23, 2024
Canon 60D at prime focus of MEADE LX200 16-inch, focal reduced to f/5.3

It's always hard to say farewell to a nice visitor, and even more when you know that it will only return in about 80,000 years !...

A regular sunset (at least, twice a year...)

At first, it looks like an impossible transit of a planet over the Sun disk...

But soon it reveals what it is about : the set of the Sun right behind the main dome of the Cerro Tololo International Observatory (CTIO) :

No surprise though : this event happens every year from our observing spot, and every year we take the picture, maybe hoping for some subtle differences... Actually, this year there was a significant change : the sun disk harbors many sunspots, since we are currently in the rise of the 11-year magnetic solar cycle

So now, let's see what will happen next time (and yes, we'll be there again...)

Photos: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - November 2, 2024
Canon 60D with 200mm lens

The second 2024 Total Solar Eclipse was in Argentina: we've been there too !

Some alignements are better than others... When it happens with the Sun, the Moon, and Earth, you can get two eclipses in a row, 14 days apart.

It all began on September 17, with a partial eclipse of the Moon, visible all over Chile.

At its maximum, the Earth shadow covered some 20% of the Moon disk : can you see the curved shape of the shadow ?...

But the main show came on October 2, with the annular eclipse of the Sun. It was visible from all over Patagonia, both Chilean and Argentinean sides, although we choose to watch it from Puerto San Julian, Argentina, on the Atlantic coast, that same place where the Spanish expedition led by Fernando de Magallanes docked, in route for the first world tour in history.

The afternoon was clear, the solar disk was nice,adorned with a large series of sunspots, and so we witnessed the First Contact :

The grandeur of the eclipse was 0.94, meaning that the apparent diameter of the Moon was significantly smaller than that of the Sun, as it can easily be appreciated on the view below :

A few minutes before totality, we can appreciated the very unusual solar crescent, spanning almost over 3/4 of the limb :

Totality : the Moon is entirely superimposed over the Sun. Unlike the annular Sun eclipse held in Coyhaique 7 years ago, we decided this time not to go to the exact central point, knowing that the solar ring will be large enough to produce nice pictures even if not perfectly centered :

Third Contact : the lunar limb is exactly tangent to the solar one, and the ring is broken...

Final partial phase in progress, showing again the "closed" solar crescent.
Do you notice that in the view below that it looks very similar to the flag of Turkey ?

And then the clouds came denser, and more numerous, which made us miss the Last Contact : isn't there an incentive to go and see the next eclipse ?...

After the show, why not visit the replica of the ship of Magallanes that sits proudly on the dock of Puerto San Julian ?...

Eclipse pictures : Cristian Valenzuela, September 17 (Moon), and October 2 (Sun), 2024
Tourist picture : Eric Escalera

The first 2024 Total Solar Eclipse was in Texas : we've been there !

8:00am, first look through the windows of the motel, the sky is totally overcast, with dense, heavy dark clouds. 5.5 hours left until totality, and I feel good. The place is Camp Wood, a small village in the Texas country, some 150km west of San Antonio. It will be a long day, so let’s have a good breakfast. ... There is a restaurant just across the route 55, the road that runs through the town. No one from the left, no one from the right, actually no one anywhere, easy crossing… I don’t know what I’ll find beyond the door of the restaurant… Oh, everyone is here having breakfast ! There is no “eclipse feeling” though, it’s true that the forecast is not good, but I feel good.

The day before, we located the perfect site to watch the eclipse, a small public garden with a clear view all around, we arrived here early to get the right spot, although there was no need to hurry : we’ve been alone all the time !

11:00am, 2,5 hours until totality. Here we are, installed on the only public bench, and the sky is cloudy. Do I detect some breaks in the cloud mass? Yes, I do. The sky is becoming “partially cloudy”, with growing areas of blue sky. We can use now the binoculars to watch the Sun, that makes me feel good.

12:00pm, First Contact scheduled in 15 minutes more, now we anticípate the path of the clear areas to guess if one of them will coincide with the Sun at the right moment. And it did so : First Contact spotted through the binoculars, the tiny black limb of the Moon is definitely here. Whatever happens now, at least we’ve seen the 2024 Texas Eclipse!

But we want more. The Moon is progressing fast over the Sun, and the clouds still run all over : is there a chance after all that we witness the totality ? The partial phase lasts only 1 hour and 18 minutes, it seems factible, just need to keep looking at the shrinking of the Moon crescent.

01h28pm, totality in 4 minutes, and the Sun keeps swimming among the black clouds ! I tried something that should never be done : remove the filter from the binoculars, although not putting an eye to them, just watch from a prudential distance the extreme light that is in there. Some 25 seconds before totality the light dimmed enough to attempt a direct visión, and I saw something extraordinary that I never saw before : the Moon was not a crescent anymore, just a thin yellow line slightly curved, spanning some 10 degrees, and flying transversally behind the clouds (which actually were the ones moving…), it definitely looks like an alien spaceship, until it suddenly disappeared, replaced by the magnificent Sun corona surrounding the black disk of the Moon : totality ! We saw it, and I instantly realized that, no, until now I didn’t feel good at all, it was a nervous sensation… Surprisingly, the totality coincided with a cloudless area which lasted almost all the expected time. And we enjoyed it indeed.

Why is each total eclipse systematically indescribable ? Let me say at least that everything was there : the irregular lunar limb still playing with the sunlight for a couple of seconds, the delicate structure of the Sun corona, and, a few moments after the start of totality, the apparition of some prominences, one of them notably extended, displaying its particular mix of pink and purple, a spectacular colour that cannot be rendered by any picture, it can be appreciated only in live.

For this trip we had decided to make visual observing only, with Celestron SkyWatcher 15x70 binoculars, but Cristian is an astrophotographer and couldn’t help but sacrifice some precious seconds to take a few snapshots of the eclipse, although losing almost nothing of the live show.

We visited Los Angeles, and Venice Beach, we touched the actual De Lorean time machine, and a recovered piece of the Titanic body, we entered almost all the casinos of Las Vegas, we saw the cross marks where President Kennedy was shot in Dallas, we visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston (and, yes, we had a problem…), we rode on the desertic Route 66, but none of these memories will replace the feeling of those 4 minutes.

Yet the totality ended, the short straight line was back, soon replaced by a thin crescent Sun, but shortly after the sky became cloudy again, covering a large part of the final partial phase.

Nevertheless, I managed to watch the Last Contact through some thin transparent clouds, which allowed me to make a virtual connection with the next eclipse…

A few moments of the totality... (click to enlarge)

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Text and tourist pictures : Eric Escalera
Eclipse pictures : Cristian Valenzuela, april 8, 2024

Have you ever seen a neutron star?...

There is one relatively accessible (mag. 16.5) in the heart of the Crab Nebula, namely M1 (Taurus), a remnant of a supernova witnessed in July 1054...

In the picture below, we succeeded to capture the light from the neutron star itself: this is the faintest of the two components of the tight apparent pair of stars near the centre of the nebula.

In the close-up hereafter, see the marks to locate the neutron star (click to enlarge)

Photo: Cristian Valenzuela
Observatorio del Pangue
February 16th, 2024
Canon 60D at prime focus of SCT Meade LX200 16" f/10
Total exposure 40 minutes
North is up

Three galaxies and a visitor comet...

The year 2023 ended with a nice cosmic encounter : a faint comet visited a famous trio of galaxies. The comet is ZTF 2020-V2, a remote object crossing the Solar System over 500 million km from Earth, and the galaxies are the Grus Triplet (namely NGC7582, NGC7590, and NGC7599), located some 60 million light-years away, in the Southern constellation of Grus (the Crane).
On the evening of December 13th, the comet come to nestle in the heart of the trio of galaxies. At least viewed from Earth : you certainly noticed that the galaxies are located one million million times further away (strange enough, a proportion quite similar to that of the encouter of Ceres with the galaxy M100, ocurred 9 months ago...)

And of course we've been there to capture this unusual arrangement... In the picture below, the galaxies display some structures, while the comet shows only the round, fuzzy false nucleus, surrounded by a faint hint of coma.

From left to right, the faint fuzzies visibles here are : galaxies NGC7599 and NGC7590, comet ZTF, and galaxy NGC7582

Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - December 13th, 2023
North is up

The Northeast Astronomy Forum 2023 (NEAF) : we've been there !

Dubbed the largest astronomy fair in the world, the Northeast Astronomy Forum held in the surrounds of New York City is indeed a nice place to be. This year we decided to attend, mainly to promote our telescope hosting service "Deep Sky South", but also because one should never miss an opportunity to visit the fascinating city of New York.

Yes, our booth is somewhere among the many exhibitors who attended the 2023 edition of the NEAF...

Whatever the circumstance, we never forget to connect with the heavens : the view below, taken from Brooklyn, shows lower Manhattan behind the Brooklyn Bridge but, can you glimpse the tiny white dot up in the sky ?...
This is planet Venus ! (click to enlarge)

Photos: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - April 2023

Lately, at the Observatorio del Pangue...

First, you arrive at Santiago de Chile...

...then you want to travel North and meet our clear skies !

Photos: (1)Eric Escalera (2)Jean Pichon / Observatorio del Pangue

In this column we display some of the most relevant news, pictures, or feelings happening around the observatory.

For a complete information on the place and the proposed programmes, you can visit our "facts" pages, listed at the top of the blog.

...and lastly, as to check if we really are as famous as the below picture suggests, don't hesitate to visit us, we'd be delighted to welcome you...

March 26th, a rare cosmic encounter...

Ceres is the first asteroid discovered, and still the largest body in the asteroid belt of the Solar System. Now dubbed "dwarf planet" (together with Pluto), its average distance from the Sun is slightly over 400 million kilometers.
M100 is a magnificent face-on spiral galaxy in Coma Berenices, distant of roughly 60 million light-years, that is some 1,5 million of million times farther ! And even so, they succeded to meet... at least from our perspective : on the evening of last March 26th, Ceres crossed in front of M100 in our sky, in a rare event not to be missed.

The picture below was taken at the beginning of the pass, with Ceres just "touching" the most external spiral arm of the galaxy. It is visible as a very bright spot at the upper left of the galactic nucleus.

Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - March 26th, 2023
Canon 60D at prime focus of SCT Meade LX200 16" reduced at f/6, total exposure 10 minutes. North is up

Astrophotography at Pangue : season 2023 begins...

The complex of nebulae around the Eta Carinae star field, referred as NGC3372, is fascinating when viewed in good conditions. The picture below was taken in one of those perfect summer nights : it reveals the many details available in the extended area. The separate bright patch at the upper right corner is labelled NGC3324, and the tradition in Chile says that it mimics the profile of the Nobel prize winner poetess Gabriela Mistral... Look also for the intense, curiously still unnamed, dark nebula toward the bottom of the field.

Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - March, 2023
Canon 60D at prime focus of 71mm refractor, total exposure 25 minutes.
North is up

ZTF, the "Green Comet"

By the end of 2022 it was scheduled to be spectacular, with a potential of being visible to the naked eye in February, but it didn't... Nevertheless, comet ZTF (C/2022-E3), named after its "discoverer" (Zwicky Transient Facility), is an interesting object, since it is returning supposedly for the first time in some 50,000 years ! Indeed it must have witnessed some great changes in our civilisation...

We could observe it wandering from Gemini to Taurus, still shining at a magnitude of 6.4, that is just under the limit of visibility for human eye.
The picture below shows the bright, extended coma (left side) followed by the flared, irregularly shaped dust tail (right side). The green color of the coma, rather common on comets, is due to the presence of diatomic carbon (C2), while the brownish (reddish?) tint of the tail is produced by the usual interaction of sunshine with dust.

Photo: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - February, 2023
Canon 60D at prime focus of SCT Meade LX200 16" reduced at f/6, ISO 3200, total exposure 10 minutes.

A pair of distant stellar explosions, both bright enough for visual telescopes...

Supernovae are quite rare in a given galaxy, but astronomers use to detect hundreds of them every year, by surveying a large sample of galaxies. Below are two of them, detected almost simultaneously.

The first one, labelled SN2023axu, is located not far in the sky from Sirius, the brightest star. We captured it when shining at a reasonable magnitude of 14.6, within the outskirts of the tiny galaxy NGC2283 (CMa), distant of some 33 million light-years.
To identify the supernova among the stars, you may need some help from the bottom picture, where it is marked by the two lines...

The other one, labelled SN2023bee, shown up in a more distant galaxy, NGC2708 (Hya), located some 85 million light-years away. Even so, at a magnitude of 13.4, it looks much brighter than "axu", hence evidencing a much more powerful stellar explosion... Hereafter we display a picture that we took near its maximum magnitude, followed by the marked view to identify the supernova :

Photos: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - February 24th, 2023
Canon 60D at prime focus of SCT Meade LX200 16" reduced at f/6, ISO 4000, total exposure 14 minutes. North is up.

A private event at the observatory / edition 2023

After a hiatus due to the pandemic, we get back to the tradition of taking a picture of the sunset right behind the domes of the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO), allowed by a very precise alignment between the Sun, the CTIO, and our own observatory.

This "private event", visible exclusively from our observing room, happens twice a year (on November and February) : here are some views of the last February 8th event which, for the first time in years, displays some nice sunspots on the solar surface...

Photos: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - February 8th, 2023
Canon 60D at prime focus of 71mm refractor f/5.3