Subject: Lousy weather for last month
Time: 9:57:27 PM EDT
Author: tprinty
I went on vacation hoping to do some astronomy in Florida. The weather was awful there and I returned to NH only to have the same lousy weather. So, I have not done anything astronomically related for the past month. I could not even watch the recent ISS passes this last weekend. The weather may shift by the weekend. Thank goodness the moon is getting out of the way.
Maybe I can get some piggyback images of the milky way. My desire to get all my finder images for my Messier webpage this year seems to be unlikely. Too many galaxies in Coma-Virgo as well as Ursa Major. I will finish them off in the spring and hope to concentrate on shooting Scorpio and sagittarius with the 200mm. We will see.
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Subject: still living - still learning (by mistakes)
Time: 6:33:32 PM EDT
Author: tprinty
Went up to dark sky site last night. Dew was a serious problem and interfered even with the Newtonian shots. I really have to learn to focus on just one thing. Last night, I almost broke the Pentax K110 when I dropped it to the ground because I was in a hurry. I lost the picture but the camera was fine. Call it a minor miracle.
I have been working on a camera bracket for the dovetail mount on the scope. I am almost there as a buddy from work is helping me with some scraps of metal we had laying around. I am close but not quite there. Hopefully, things will work out next time and I will be able to use it more effectively.
I also had problems with focusing last night. The dew may have had something to do with it as well as fatigue. Like I said, I had a lot on my plate and thought I could shoot some deep sky as well as my messier finder images. The finder images were just satisfactory (due to camera bracket issues) but adequate for what I want to do with them. I managed to get the southern sky objects so it is not such a rush next time I am out (M68, M83 and M104). As for the focusing issue, I plan on making a few tweaks to help out with that. We will see how that works out next time. I know the scope will focus becaue the stars were pinpoint in the eyepiece.
Lastly, the new mount is somewhat perplexing as far as the autostar is concerned. I aligned the scope with the pole and ran through the alignment cycle. Later in the evening, I asked it to go to M81 and 82 and the scope went to another part of the sky. I have to see next time if that was an alignment issue or the mount has some issues. Meanwhile the guiding of the mount is good. I almost wish the dec motor would move the scope more in the 1X speed. It seems to go so slow! I am only using a magnification of 200X but one would expect the motion to be somewhat visible. Going to 4x improves it but that makes the RA move to quickly. It will take time getting used to scope operations. I am still pleased with the mount. Once I fix this focus issue and have a bit more time in dark skies, I expect some great shots.
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Subject: dark sky first light
Time: 6:02:14 PM EDT
Author: tprinty
Went up to the dark sky site and was greeted by mosquitos followed by some fairly chilly temps (for late May). Got things running pretty well but I noticed that my motor drive was not tracking well. The initial alignment indicated the Pole star was some 17' off, which I thought was pretty high. After a bit of figuring things out, I realized my error. The polar alignment scope has a small circle along line that goes towards the center of the field. I thought I was supposed to put polaris in the circle. I now realize I am supposed to put Polaris at the center of the circle! When I did this, the scope reported my alignment was within 5' of the circle and all was well. The scope tracked well enough. It had some periodic error but was not significant. I guess I was fatigued and lost a lot of time trying to focus the 8". It was in focus all along but I am beginning to see that I have coma around the edges of the field. I bought a coma corrector many years ago from Celestron. I guess I will get some use out of it after all! Here is a picture I took of the scope setup showing the 8" with Nikon D70 attached and the 90mm F11 guide scope I am using. The Meade mount handled the load without a complaint. It looks like the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
I shot a lot of piggyback stuff initially as I am trying to develop photographic finder charts for messier objects. I had to nail a few down before they disappeared behind the sun. Twilight did not really end until 10:15 and I finally started shooting around 11PM. I decided M65 and 66 would be the easiest to start with and I got fair results. I took two 5-minute exposures with NR and ISO800 but the first was not centered properly. I then took a 10-minute shot but the camera battery died during the NR and got a very noisy pic. I did not want to bother trying again and I was beat by then. Here is the pic. Not too bad and shows signs of good things to come.
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Subject: working out the bugs
Time: 10:10:02 PM EDT
Author: tprinty
Well, I was going to go to the dark sky site until high cirrus clouds started to come in from the north. Satellite pics indicated the heavy stuff would arrive around 10PM at the site. Of course, I chose to stay home and watched the sky clear at sunset! However, looking at the IR satellite, I think it was not a bad idea because the sky looks like it is clouding up about the time I am writing this at 10:15PM EDT. I might have succeeded but I did not want to waste the gas or time. So, I decided to familiarize myself with the LXD-75 mount some more. I went through the autostar alignment and this time I was much better. Using an eyepiece at 30X, everything I went to was in the field of view. Some were very close and others not so good. I think the polar alignment was a tad off but that is a learning process. At least the scope went to Saturn, M65, M97, Spica, Arcturus, M3, and M13 when I asked it to and did not go someplace else! It will be a big plus when I want to go to objects in the sky for astrophotography. At least it will get me in the ball park! Not a bad night of learning.
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Subject: First light (sort of)
Time: 9:53:30 PM EDT
Author: tprinty
I finally got out and tested the scope/drive combination. The scope got first light but that really does not count since I have shot through the scope before. I did try out the mount. Because of clouds, I made some errors in autostar alignment. When I asked it to go to Mars, it was off by half the sky! Anyway, I did get a chance to test the drive. It seemed stable enough. I even took a 30 second exposure of Mars and M44 through the 8-inch without guiding. I was impressed. The scopes optics were a bit off so there is some distortion of the stars but the guiding appeared good and that was without using a guide scope or PEC. I can hardly wait to get a night out at the dark sky site. I expect big things. Here is the pic of the Mars and M44.
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Subject: on it's way
Time: 12:48:11 PM EDT
Author: tprinty
I decided to put my stimulus money to good use. OPT sent me an email telling my order had been shipped. What did I get? Just an LX-75 tripod/mount with autostar. It will be a joy to try out and my back will appreciate not having to use the LX-50 telescope outside the observatory anymore. Now I can mount my 8" F5 reflector on the LX-75, which will be far more easy to do and go to the dark sky site with. Hopefully, I will be posting first light results in a couple of weeks. I can hardly wait. Many thanks to the boss/wife for allowing me to purchase this item.
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Subject: Much better!
Time: 9:53:36 PM EDT
Author: tprinty
I decided to load the software for the Quickcam pro and use that tonight. The results were superior to the Philips webcam. For some reason it does not appear as sensitive as the quickcam. The results were pretty good. This was from a one minute AVI file where 617 images were stacked using registax.
I have a few more clips to process tomorrow but this looks promising.
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Subject: sneeze hack cough
Time: 6:38:33 PM EDT
Author: tprinty
Weather has been fairly nice for the last week. Unfortunately, I have not been doing so well. My wife got a cold/bug and now I have it. Maybe I can catch up on some image processing. Still have not made those movies I talked about over a month ago!
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Subject: saturn imaging
Time: 2:43:37 PM EDT
Author: tprinty
I got out on Saturday evening and did some imaging of Saturn with the Phillips webcam. I used qcfocus and got some really huge video files. That did not seem to improve quality though. This is the best image of Saturn, which was faint to begin with using my 2X barlow. I am not sure if Saturn is fainter or my old Quickcam pro was more sensitive (or the software allowed it to be more sensitive). Anyway, not bad for the first try in some time. The resolution is OK but I think I can do better.
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Subject: Pleiades Occultation!
Time: 11:08:51 PM EDT
Author: tprinty
For over 30 years, I wanted to see a Pleiades occultation. It always seemed to be cloudy or I was away at sea. In the past two years, I have seen three! Tonight was pretty good and the moon skirted the edge of the cluster. I plan on going through all 100 images tomorrow but here are a few images I took for starters:
This image was taken just before Maia disappeared. The photograph was taken using a Nikon D70 set at ISO 800 through my 8" F5 reflector. Exposure time was 2 seconds.
This was taken before moonset. Exposure time was 8 seconds.
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