What’s New

The Eagle Nebula (M16)

The cloudy weather lately has been bad news for Friday Night Star Parties but it has given us some time to reduce a back-log of pretty pictures the UIS Barber Observatory took over the summer. Below is an image of the Eagle Nebula (M16) in the constellation Serpens. The nebula gets its name from the dark silhouette at the center of the nebula that appears like an eagle flying from the lower left to upper right in this picture. The nebula itself is a cloud of gas about 7000 light-years from Earth that has been lit up by young massive stars forming in it. We picked this as a target because it covers a relatively wide field of view that shows off the capabilities of our CCD camera.
The Eagle Nebula (M16)

The colors in the picture are not “true” colors. A color image like this is made by taking three black and white images through different color filters and assigning each image the color of red, green, or blue. In this case we combined three 10 minute exposures in the V-band, R-band, and I-band filters. The combination mimics a color picture. The red and green channels are filters that roughly correspond to colors your eyes see as red and green. But the blue channel in this image is from the infrared I-filter image. We combined them this way because this was the most visually pleasing combination.
The red and blue streaks below some of the stars are because they were over exposed in the R and I filter images.

Supernova Impostors

The UIS Barber Observatory has taken advantage of the clear weather patterns and our new wide-field U42 camera to follow the brightness variations of suspected supernnova impostors in distant galaxies. The image below is of an unusual supernova in the galaxy NGC 6796 called SN 2012bv. The color picture was made by assigning false colors to three separate images taken on June 25th in the V (light you see as green), R (light you see as red), and I (infrared light just beyond the range of your vision). The supernova is the slightly bluish “star” clearly visible in the bottom part of the fuzzy galaxy appearing as a vertical smear in the center of the picture. The galaxy NGC 6796 is about 98 million light years away from us, meaning that the light from this supernova has taken over 98 million years to reach us.

For more information about the supernova impostor project at UIS follow this link: https://edocs.uis.edu/jmart5/www/barber/SNimpostors.html

Supernovat 2012bv in NGC 6796

Pictures of the Moon

On May 30 we took a series of pictures of the Moon with our wide-field CCD camera on our 20-inch telescope. Below is the image we produced.

Mosaic of the Moon taken with the Barber Observatory 20-inch Telescope

The field of view on the camera is roughly a quarter degree across so it took only five frames to cover the first quarter Moon. This camera is being used primarily to monitor the brightness of supernova impostors in distant galaxies as part of a project sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Transit of Venus Star Party on June 5, 2012

We will be hosting a special day-time star party at Southwind Park from 5pm to sunset in Springfield, IL to view the rare Transit of Venus event on Tuesday, June 5, 2012. See the link below for more information.

http://events.uis.edu/2012/05/uis-co-hosts-special-daytime-star-party.html

First Light on New CCD Camera

(March 2012)

Galaxy M81 with the new UIS CCD Camera

The image of the galaxy M81 above is the “first-light” image taken by the new U42 CCD camera at the UIS Barber Observatory on March 14, 2012. The new camera was purchased to image supernova impostors in distant galaxies as part of a project sponsored by National Science Foundation and private donors. The field of view on the camera is exceptionally large, covering a patch of sky nearly as big across as the full moon.

Prof John Martin Named University Scholar

(October 2011)

Assistant Professor of Astronomy-Physics John Martin has been named the 2011 University Scholar for the University of Illinois Springfield. The University Scholar program honors the top scholars at the University of Illinois and is the top award for scholarship on the Springfield Campus.

http://news.uis.edu/2011/10/astronomy-and-physics-professor-john.html

Prof John Martin Earns Grant From National Science Foundation

(July 2011)

On July 1 the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that a collaboration including UIS Assistant Professor John Martin earned a three-year grant for their proposal entitiled “On the Road to the Supernova: LBVs, Hypergiants, and SN Impostors.” The project will continue and expand on Martin’s collarboration with Kris Davison and Roberta Humphreys (both at the University of Minnesota) to study the end stages and instabilities in the most massive stars in the universe.

The $62,000 grant includes money to upgrade the capabilities of the 16-inch telescope at Henry Barber Research Observatory to observe “supernova imposter.” A supernova imposter is an an eruption equal in magnitude to the visual brightness of a supernova that many of the most massiv stars have atleast once on their way to becoming a supernova. The great eruption of Eta Carinae in the 1850′s is the prototype for these types of events. More recently supernova searchs have been discovering similar events in other galaxies. The physics and exact nature of these violent events are not well understood.

http://news.uis.edu/2011/08/uis-professor-awarded-national-grant-to.html

Prof John Martin’s Article in June 2011 issue of Gemini Focus magazine

(June 2011)

The June 2011 issue of Gemini Focus magazine contains an article written by UIS Assistant Professor John Martin about his use of an infrared camera on the Gemini-South telescope to image the interior of the nebula cocooning the star Eta Carinae. Read about it online at the Gemini Focus web page:

http://www.gemini.edu/images/pio/e_newsletters/201106_gf/index.html

Astronomy-Physics University of Illinois Springfield