Category: General
Astro knowledge / General / Observing Reports
Chinese zodiac
Chinese Year of the Rat this year (my “sign”, you guess which multiple of 12 I am). I’ve decided that the “rat” constellation must be Aries, since the “Ox” is clearly Taurus. […]
insomniac quick look
Nice moon and Jupiter pairing last night at 3am in Freeport, Bahamas.
ATM / General / Maintenance
Maintenance woes
I didn’t have a good month of photography due to the fires, and I’m a little bummed about that. I’m starting to realize that I have zero fully functional telescopes right now, […]
Pointing model building
I have noticed that I have to run multiple iterations of Polar Axis Correction to get it right. Last time out, I had to run it about 3 or 4 times, plus […]
news from the front
The wind rolled in for a few days around the new moon and gave me a chance to do some astronomy. Also, my lungs cleared up some. Now the weather has stagnated […]
General / Maintenance / Techniques
pointing model building
When I build a pointing model using PAC on the Gemini, I get this strange behavior, where the error numbers are very large and then get smaller and smaller to some fairly […]
Pumpkin – new field flattener
Pumpkin’s field flattener showed up last night. It’s a 0.8x reducer, too, which I didn’t really want, but I’m dealing with it. I didn’t do a great job at focusing (just eyeballed […]
Astro knowledge / General / Observing Reports
better to be lucky than good
So I’m on 2 trips, lasting 2 weeks each, in the next 6 weeks. As you know by now, the astrophotography part of the month is only 2 weeks long (from 3 […]
ATM dreams
I also collected all of the ATM photos into one place. I need to crop and resize, but I’ll have a decent record of the process. I’ve really enjoyed it. It makes […]
HOWTO – calibrate a laser collimator
I bought an Orion laser collimator, but suspected that it was out of collimation, so I tried to adjust it, and got it *really* out of collimation, so I needed to realign […]
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.