Hosting ATEO Images on Astrobin

After carefully seeking out an online gallery solution for their Deep-Sky Image Database of images taken by the Astronomical Telescope for Educational Outreach (ATEO), the crew at Insight Observatory has selected Astrobin.com as the platform.

AstroBin is an image-hosting website specifically designed for astrophotography. The service was created out of the desire to end something that had been going on for too long... The waste of incredible material to the sea of chaos that the Internet can be. For years, fantastic astrophotographs have been uploaded to Internet Forums, often with little or no data, or to general-purpose image hosting websites, invariably with no data attached.

Such an image would be seen by some people, then quickly forgotten, and reduced to nothing more than a bunch of pixels in the giant wasteland of the Internet.

Screenshot of IC 5067 - The Pelican Nebula Imaged on the ATEO on Astrobin.com.

Astrobin is the response to an effort to host, collect, index, and categorize the output of astrophotographers all over the world so that their precious data would serve a purpose, and have meaning forever.

This online service also allows "groups" to be created that will benefit Insight Observatory in separating and keeping track of data collected by school groups and individuals that utilize the ATEO remote robotic telescope located in New Mexico well as other third-party remote telescope networks they use.

Besides being able to describe the details of the image on their "Technical Card", Astrobin has useful educational features built into the website such as overlapping plates that label stars and other objects over the image as well as a "Sky Plot" chart that displays the deep-sky object's exact location.

http://www.astrobin.com/users/insightobs/

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Featured Deep-Sky Object - M33 - Triangulum Galaxy

It has been a while since we published a post covering featured deep-sky objects. In the past, we have been posting articles regarding objects in the night sky such as galaxies, nebulae, and star clusters complemented with images taken by the staff of Insight Observatory using a remote robotic telescope on the iTelescope network. Due to our recent projects such as automating a 32" Dobsonian telescope, assisting the W. Russell Blake Planetarium with its newly installed digital imaging theater, and implementing our Astronomical Telescope for Educational Outreach (ATEO-1), we simply haven't had the time or resources to do so (which is actually not a bad problem to have).

M33 - Triangulum Galaxy imaged on the Astronomical Telescope for Educational Outreach by Insight Observatory.

Well, it's about time we started again. In recent weeks we have been performing tests on the ATEO remote telescope, preparing it for educational and public use. As numerous images of deep-sky objects during testing were acquired, we figured why not post them on our blog as a "Featured Deep-sky Object". The first deep-sky object to feature is M33, the Triangulum Galaxy imaged by Insight Observatory Managing Member / System Engineer, Muir Evenden. Muir imaged the Galaxy with our 16" f/3.75 Dream Aerospace Systems astrograph remote imaging telescope with a 5-minute exposure with the luminance filter, stacked with 2 minutes of red, green, and blue filter exposures. These images were then stacked and processed using PixInsight. Post-processing was then done in Adobe Photoshop by Insight Observatory Managing Member / Project Developer, Michael Petrasko. The result of the image detail is surprisingly impressive considering there are not many exposures comprising the final image.

The Triangulum Galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 3 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. It is cataloged as Messier 33 or NGC 598 and is sometimes referred to as the "Pinwheel Galaxy", a nickname it shares with Messier 101. The Triangulum Galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, behind the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. It is one of the most distant permanent objects that can be viewed with the naked eye.  Using a small pair of binoculars with a wide field of view, the galaxy is easily detectable. Being a diffuse object, its visibility is strongly affected by small amounts of light pollution. It ranges from easily visible by direct vision in dark skies to a difficult averted vision object in rural or suburban skies.

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ATEO Images the Andromeda Galaxy

After the success of achieving first light with the Astronomical Telescope for Educational Outreach (ATEO) on August 31, 2017, another clear night at Pie Town, New Mexico allowed us to continue testing the online remote robotic telescope on the morning of September 1st. It was now time to start testing the filter wheel and a bright deep-sky object would be a fitting way to make sure the filter wheel was functioning properly.

As we were using the TheSky software on our imaging computer, we saw that The Andromeda Galaxy, also known as M31 and NGC 224 was in a decent spot of the sky to get a series of quick images using the filter wheel. Fortunately, all went well with using the filter wheel with the CCD camera. We imaged the galaxy with quick 60-second exposures through the LRGB filters. No flats or darks were applied as we still need to create those. However, We did some slight processing using Photoshop. Needless to say, we were very pleased.

NGC 224 (Messier 31) - The Andromeda Galaxy 60-second LRGB Images on the ATEO-1.

The Andromeda Galaxy is the nearest large galaxy to our own, at a distance of about 2.5 million light-years. This object is classified as an Sb spiral and it is a major member of the Local Group. It lies in the constellation Andromeda and is the most remote object normally visible to the naked eye, though, under really dark skies, observers can sometimes see the M33, the Triangulum Galaxy.

Once the telescope is ready for educational and public use, we are confident the Andromeda Galaxy will be a favorite target for imaging. We look forward to seeing everyone's results!

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