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)

.
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