Observing Reports

Re: Astronomy gods are fickle

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> OK, sounds better than 2 inches of rain and cloudy day and night. Cliff OK, whoever told the astronomy gods that it was funny to be 90� and sunny > all […]

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Deep Sky / Focuser / Gear / Long Exposure Photography

M8, The Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius

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An hour of M8 with Veronica, G11, motor focuser. I could use some more detail of the outlying areas (there are some nice dust globs out there), but when I tried to […]

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Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography

M17, The Swan Nebula in Serpens

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I tried 2 minute subframes, but that blew out the red channel, so I switched to 1 minute.

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Astro knowledge / Deep Sky / Focuser / Gear / Long Exposure Photography

M20, The Trifid Nebula in Sagittarius

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First attempt at the Trifid with Veronica. The G11 and the motor focuser are really helping. It’s so low that I had to wait for it to rise above the doorway of […]

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Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography / Maintenance

NGC 6960, The Witch’s Broom, part of the Veil Nebula in Cygnus

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Another attempt at “The Witch’s Broom” portion of the Veil. Despite this being almost 3 hours of integration time, This still came out pretty dim and noisy. Maybe 3-minute subframes would be […]

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Techniques

Polar Alignment Calculations

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Here’s a page that derives Polar Alignment Calculations. (update 5/2020: the original site is gone, so I found the text on Wayback and am inserting it below. This is by the original […]

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Gear / Observatory / Telescope

Special Guest Star takes the mount at Hilltop O

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The Astro Jedi needed somewhere to store his light sab—- I mean, bucket, and I was only too happy to accommodate him. I have decided that I need to come to a […]

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General / Maintenance / Observatory

Dome shutter is motorized again!

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I finally decided to bite the bullet and fix the shutter motor. Things went sideways last winter, and I’ve been opening the shutter manually (and tying it shut with rope, so we […]

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ATM

Trixie 2017 – tube mods

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I finally got around to cutting the MTA-UTA tubes to length; the only eyepiece that would come to focus with the focuser spacer in place is the Televue 55mm Plossl. If I […]

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