Category: Observing Reports
Cloudy
There has been a limited amount of clear sky for the past few days. It has been doing the soul-destroying “clear in the afternoon, clouds at night” thing. I haven’t really missed […]
Focuser / Maintenance / Observing Reports
OAG installed
Tonight was cloudy, but the clouds were high and thin, transparent enough to see Orion, The Dogs, Moon, Mars, and that’s about it. So, I spent some time doing maintenance. I swapped […]
Clouds only at night
The sky has been somewhat tricky lately. I had clear skies a couple of nights ago, but used it to test the guiding (which seems not much improved by the worm block). […]
Cloudy again
It was cloudy all day yesterday and today. It’s OK, I needed the rest.
Deep Sky / Gear / General / Long Exposure Photography / Observing Reports
NGC2244, The Rosette Nebula in Monoceros
With the newly-tuned mount, I decided to try Pumpkin on some more unguided imaging. After the “baseline” from the previous night, I now wanted to see what this MFWB could really do. […]
Deep Sky / Gear / General / Long Exposure Photography / Maintenance / Observing Reports
Pumpkin by her lonesome
I mounted up Pumpkin by herself tonight. The mount’s been having a problem with guiding, very rough behavior in RA. I’m going to be tuning the mount up tomorrow, but the sky […]
General / Maintenance / Observing Reports
Another respite between stormfronts
The skies cleared again tonight! Second time in a week, with about 2 weeks of continual rain going on around them. Interesting. The moon is one day before 1st quarter, so I […]
And the rains returned
After the brief clearing between fronts Wednesday night, the rain started up again. El Nino is some serious stuff, I guess.
ATM / General / Maintenance / Observing Reports
The Astronomy Gods cut me a break
I can’t believe it. You would not believe how hard it was raining today. There was standing water on some of the stuff inside the observatory where it blew in the roller […]
Weather trends
Here’s what I was doing in January 2005 Jan ‘06 I was taking time off of astronomy and grinding a mirror. But here’s January ‘07 …and January ‘08 …*and* January ‘09 So […]
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.