January 2, 2012 – 3:43 pm
The new imaging gear arrived on Saturday, 12/31 and was gathered, and ventured out for its first light.
Had some stumbles learning to use everything, but eventually produced this shot of M42, The Orion Nebula
Focus was a bit off, demonstrating the need to go ahead and create a Bahtinov mask, which was done the following day, 1/1/2012
This improved things a great deal, though bad seeing (2/5 at best) still left us with some ‘fat” stars.
Less data due to shooting these frames at ISO 200 for 150 seconds. i went with the lower exposure to hopefully “fudge” the wobbly stars a bit, and at least keep them round. it worked ok, I think.
December 29, 2011 – 8:21 pm
Went up the road to a local neighborhood park, primarily because the back yard is a swamp right now.
HEAVY light pollution up there, between nearby streetlamps and passing traffic. This didn’t ruin the evening however. Met a neighborhood resident named Jama, and gave him a brief tour of Venus, Jupiter, Pleiades, Andromeda, and M81. Seeing wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible either.
Tried to get a better handle on the polar alignment procedure, and did some shots of M81. The light pollution made them unusable, but it appears I’m getting closer with the alignment.
Plan is to try a drift alignment soon.
December 22, 2011 – 3:48 pm
Do all the big numbers overwhelm you? Let’s make this simple…
December 18, 2011 – 8:00 am
Went to Center Hill Dam. An EXCELLENT dark site. Bit of low level light from the dam and power station, but nothing problematic for astronomy…just the occasional danger to night vision.
M31 is naked eye visible, and stunning in the scope. M1 visible in the scope. Pleiades is amazing naked eye.
Tried to shoot M1, but 20 :30 and 20 :60 produced nothing but a very faint smudge after stacking…quite disappointing really. Definitely demonstrated the need for the new AP equipment, to be able to get longer exposures, and more of them.
Mechanically, the dew shield and dew heater worked flawlessly. Frost had covered much of the car and exposed part of the OTA by around 9:15 or so…but the front glass remained clear and dry through 10:00 pm when I packed up. I’m very pleased with the results of these two DIY items.
December 12, 2011 – 11:27 am
Very good night for viewing. Above Average – Good conditions in all criteria, nice dark blue ClearDarkSky plot.
Joby came over to share in a bit of the enjoyment as well. Andromeda, Delta Cephei, and Zeta Piscium gave us an hour or so of enjoyment, after which Joby left.
Upon his departure, I returned to M31 (Andromeda) for my first attempt at “real” Astrophotography. I wanted to capture about 20-30 images and some darks/offsets/flats and work with DeepSkyStacker to see what I could accomplish.
I wound up with:
- 10 x :30 Light
- 10 x 1:00 Light
- 1 x 2:00 Light
- 10 x :30 Dark
- 10 x 1:00 Dark
- 1 x 2:00 Dark
- 10 Offset
- 10 Flat
Of these, DSS found 16 lights with a “score” above 15. All 10 of the :30′s and 6 of the 1:00′s, which it used, combined with the others, to produce:
(Link goes to higher res version)
All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable night.
December 8, 2011 – 7:55 pm
Well. That sucked.
Was all excited about the first clear night in 5 days…got everything set up early, was all ready to go. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand….
Couldn’t see squat thanks to the bright moon and neighborhood Christmas lights, got dew/frost on the scope, and not a single attempt at any sort of image came out even remotely decent.
Bleh.
December 6, 2011 – 6:29 pm
Took the new C6-SGT out for its first powered session, had about 2 hours before the clouds rolled in.
Alignment went smoothly, added some calibration stars and things tightened right up. Got right on Andromeda Galaxy first try, invited Al and jay over to see “the smudge”.
After Andromeda, gave them a “tour” of Jupiter, Vega, the Moon, Capella, and Pleiades…all of which giving me a chance to familiarize myself with the scope and controls.
Finally put the adapter and T-Ring on, hooked up the EOS 350D, and tried a bit of Lunar imaging.
October 14, 2011 – 2:58 pm
For those of you who regularly chat in our chat room, be aware of some upcoming changes:
- At least one new room will be added, and the “structure” of rooms will change. The default “main entry room”, which is currently the Gathering Place, will be renamed, and there won’t be any chatting there.
- The “Gathering Place” will be renamed to something like “Parent Chat” and be created as a seperate room off the main entry way. The new room name will appear in the drop down list of rooms on the logon page. Simply select it before logging in, and you’ll be dropped right in there. That room should remain selected for all future logins as well.
- If you forget, don’t panic. You should still be able to enter the toom simply by selecting “Rooms” on the right, and double clicking the room in question.
- Another new room, devoted to coin collectors and chatters, will also be created. Everyone is, of course, welcome there, but the conversation will, as a rule, be specific to numismatic topics.
- The profile system will be fleshed out soon. Everyone will be encouraged to edit their profile to whatever degree they feel comfortable with.
- A great many new avatars will be coming along, most of them specific to the coin chat room. Users in either room are, of course, welcome to use them if desired.
- Last but not least, the Halloween theme will be coming soon as well.
None of this is really a big deal. Just select the room you want at the login screen, and things should work and function just as they always have.
September 28, 2011 – 6:37 am
Just in case you’re THAT curious.
