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(1) Sirius (and Pup?) 01-22-02 Raw images (2) Sirius (and Pup?) 01-22-02 Processed images |
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Sirius imaged 01-22-02 (Raw, single images).
Imaged with AP 155, Nikon CP950 at 8
second exposure, UO 18mm Ortho, 5X Powermate (388X), attached with Scopetronix
Digi-T. I imaged Sirius to try to determine the exact orientation of my previous
11-18-01 Sirius image. Instead I captured this sequence of images over a period
of around 5 minutes. I made certain the bottom plane of my digicam was oriented
perpendicular to a North/South axis (although it slipped very slightly during
the series as you can see). Based on my subsequently imaged Jupiter being around
46 arcseconds, I calculate distance from the center of Sirius to the center of
what appears to be the Pup at between 5 and 6 arcseconds. These are raw, single,
unprocessed digicam images except for being cropped and reduced for faster
download. THANKS TO THE GENEROUS EFFORTS OF GREGORY PRUDEN, WE NOW HAVE A USNO
OPINION ON THESE IMAGES. CLICK ABOVE IMAGE TO VIEW USNO CORRESPONDENCE.
Sirius (and Pup?) imaged 01-22-02 (After
processing above raw images).
I decided to
process my set of raw Sirius images to see what it would reveal. The above image
resulted from several iterations of Unsharp Masking, Gaussian Blur, slightly
adjusting Brightness and conversion to Monochrome. I did the entire set
simultaneously with the text so you could see how everything was changed.
Obviously the tiny white specks are artifacts. I'm a bit more encouraged that it
could be the Pup but still have several potential elimination steps to check.
Below is the Chandra image of Sirius and the Pup.
Sirius is mag -1.5 and the Pup mag 8.5. The USNO
has informed us that the separation at the time of these images (1-22-02) was
5.43 arcseconds.
Chandra X-ray image of Sirius and the Pup
(10-28-99) Credit NASA.
Interestingly, the
brighter member of this X-ray image is Sirius B, the Pup. Click on image for an
optical image (rotated so North is down) of Sirius and the Pup from the McDonald
Observatory.
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