Pictor Radio Telescope Observations.

Pictor radio telescope is a free to use open source radio telescope based in Athens Greece.

The web page is here:  https://www.pictortelescope.com/
On the webpage you will find all the information necessary to do a radio reading similar to that I will document below.

Using the scope I have done a reading to detect the 21 centimeter hydrogen line present in our Milky Way.

From Wikipedia :  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_line#In_radio_astronomy
Further reading links can also be found on the Pictor radio telescope web page.

For the layman like myself this all means that we are able to detect the arms of the Milky way using  the 21 centimeter hydrogen line and map the shape of the spiral arms and our galaxy.

Pictor radio telescope allows us to make these reading for ourselves.

The Pictor webpage recommends making two reading knows as the "On/Off" technique.
The radio telescope is in Athens and pointed directly at Zenith.
So in order to conduct my "Off" reading I needed to choose a time frame when the plane of the milky way is off beam.

My "Off observation was done on the July 18 2019 at 17H49.30(UTC +3).
Below is a screen shot from SkySafari showing Zenith in Athens at the same date and time as the "Off" reading. As you can see the plane of the Milky way is completely of beam(About a 9 degree circle around Zenith).

And here are the technical details that I received from the Pictor radio telescope when doing the "Off" reading.

Your observation has been carried out by PICTOR successfully!

Observation name: King 3 Off 18 July 2019.

Observation datetime: 2019-07-18 17:49:30 (UTC+3)

Center frequency: 1420000000.0 Hz

Bandwidth: 2400000 Hz

Sample rate: 2400000 samples/sec

Number of channels: 2048

Number of bins: 1000

Observation duration: 1500 sec

Observation ID: 46875938

Your observation's averaged spectrum, dynamic spectrum (waterfall) and Power vs Time plot are attached in this email as an image.

And then the image with the plots.

Comparing this image to those on the Pictor web page this is a good "Off" reading.

In the plot you can see three evenly distributed peaks in a wavy pattern.

Now the screen shot from SkySafari showing the time and date of the "On" reading, the plane of the Milky way is arching through the Zenith here and should allow us a good "On" reading.

Then here are the details for the "On" reading.

Your observation has been carried out by PICTOR successfully!

Observation name: King 3 On 23 July 2019

Observation datetime: 2019-07-23 10:53:56 (UTC+3)

Center frequency: 1420000000.0 Hz

Bandwidth: 2400000 Hz

Sample rate: 2400000 samples/sec

Number of channels: 2048

Number of bins: 1000

Observation duration: 1500 sec

Observation ID: 41118127

Your observation's averaged spectrum, dynamic spectrum (waterfall) and Power vs Time plot are attached in this email as an image.

Below is the "On" reading.

As you can see there is now and additional peak at the 1420 Hz line, it is also clearly evident on the waterfall.

So we have now detected the 21 centimeter hydrogen line and a arm of the Milky way using the Pictor radio telescope!

Here is a GIF that illustrates the differences more clearly between the two ot images.

This was a super fun exercise that can be done by anybody with a internet connection and a is great way to do some introductory radio astronomy observations, all absolutely free on the Pictor radio telescope.

My thanks to the folks at the Pictor radio telescope for making this resource available for us to use.

Messier 17, NGC 6618, A Sketch.

NGC 6618 is better known from the famous Charles Messier catalogue as M17.

M17 is a bright diffuse nebula located between 5 and 6 thousand light years away in the constellation Sagittarius.  It is also known as the Swan, Omega Nebula and in the Southern hemisphere it is known as the Lobster Nebula.

M17 was first noted by the Swiss astronomer Jean-Philippe Loys de Cheseaux in 1746, it was also later seen by the French astronomer Charles Messier in the same year and he included it in his Messier Catalogue as M17.

M17 has a visual magnitude of +6.00 and is visible to the naked eye under very dark conditions away from city lights and no light pollution.
It is easily seen even in smaller scopes under moderately light polluted skies, due to my local light pollution, most of the Nebula is washed out, with only the bright core visible to me.
From my backyard the closest naked eye star is Mu Sagittarii, a third magnitude star, from there it is a easy star hop in the eyepiece. 
Once at M17 it is a easy star hop to M16, another bright nebula.

The star charts below are taken from Cartes Du Ciel and show the general location of M17 in the night skies(as seen from my southern hemisphere perspective) and a closer chart of the region.
These are purely posted as a guide and to give you an idea of where to locate M17 in the night skies.

This sketch of M17 was done on the evening of 6 July 2019 from my light polluted backyard in Durban, South Africa.
I used my Orion XT8 telescope with a 25mm(48X) eyepiece for the sketch.
The sketch is done on black A5 sketching paper with a white pastel pencil and thin paint brush.
The stars have been done with the pencil and the nebula is gently brushed on with the paint brush using some white pastel dust.

I took a photograph of the sketch and put that into photoshop.
The camera picks up the texture of the paper and gives it a mottled look or what astrophotographers refer to as "noise". So using photoshop I darkened the background a touch to hide the paper texture, if you take a closer look you can still see some of the texture.
Then I put the circle around the image and added the text.

Then for some fun I took the same original photo of the sketch and ran that through Startools as you would any other astro image.
This then allowed me to add star colours and sharpen and define the magnitudes a little better. Startools also lets me add star spikes which gives a nice effect.
And so I have a digital sketch from my original paper sketch. I like it, hope you do too!

First up is the original sketch, warts and all.

And then the fun bit.

Thanks for taking a look, comments are always welcomed!