ARCHIVE June2010
Trixie rebuild — Design ideas
Trixie definitely needs to be rebuilt. The 3-strut system is not working. So I am going to rebuild and try to fix two main problems. 1) flexure — replace strings with struts […]
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
NGC7000, The North America Nebula in Cygnus
This is my first HaRGB shot. It’s a combination of grayscale luminance data that I captured while camping at Coyote Lake, CA over the weekend, and color data that I captured from […]
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
NGC7000, The North America Nebula, from Coyote Lake, CA
This is my deepest image yet of NGC7000, 5 full hours (15x20m). This is with my normal Levels-and-Curves treatment in Photoshop, but it’s the full FOV. This was first light for my […]
Camping under dark sky, night two
On the second night of camping, I decided to mount Pumpkin, to make things a little easier on myself. The wider field made framing a lot easier, although focusing was a challenge […]
Long Exposure Photography / Techniques
Coyote Lake widefields
It is hard to describe how much fun I had shooting widefields from the tripod. A lot of the shots came up out of focus, and several more came up with star […]
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
NGC281, The PacMan Nebula in Casseiopeia
This is my first shot of NGC281. I attempted it a couple of years back, but came up essentially empty. Normally, the Casseiopeia Milky Way is not available until autumn, but I […]
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
NGC 6888, The Crescent Nebula in Cygnus, from Coyote Lake, CA
In retrospect, I probably should have shot RGB from the dark sky site and left Ha for the backyard. In addition, it was very windy, so I probably should have dumped Cassie […]
The Rig goes native
I am spending the weekend camping at Coyote Lake, near Gilroy, CA. This is the second time I’ve been camping here, but the rig has changed significantly since last time. In fact, […]
Astro knowledge / Gear / General / Maintenance
Preparing to go unplugged
As a test run before the Golden State Star Party this year, the family and I are going camping for the weekend at Coyote Lake. I haven’t been camping in quite some […]
350D arrives
I have been struggling with MaxIM DL for over 2 years now, trying to get things working right. Among the problems, MaxIM really likes to do everything in RAW out of DSLRs, […]
RECENT UPDATE
Polar Alignment Calculations
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 […]
Gear / Observatory / Telescope
Special Guest Star takes the mount at Hilltop O
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 […]
General / Maintenance / Observatory
Dome shutter is motorized again!
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 […]
Trixie 2017 – tube mods
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 […]
MOST COMMENTED
Observatory
Observatory 2.0 – Time has come today!
General / Maintenance
First Light, a deeper look
Mount / Observatory / Telescope
Observatory 2.0 – Result!
Observatory
Observatory 2.0 – The Pier goes in
Gear / General / Maintenance
Martin Farmer Wormblock installation notes
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
NGC2244, The Rosette Nebula
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
Another beautiful night.