Deep Sky / General / Long Exposure Photography / Maintenance / Observatory / Observing Reports

Five hours of Guided images

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…with zero dropped subframes. I spent a little time refining the polar alignment last night. I am still getting some drift while running unguided; I calculated it to be about 6′ from […]

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Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography / Mount / Telescope

Veronica gets a shot at the NJP

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Buoyed with the success of the NJP with Pumpkin, I decided to start upping the ante. Pumpkin was mounted offset to one side, but I decided that Veronica should be balanced over […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

IC1848, The Soul Nebula in Casseiopeia

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This is the first time that I’ve been able to catch this object. The autumn nebulae are elusive for some reason. But I figured I’d try it before it dips below the […]

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Deep Sky / General / Long Exposure Photography / Observing Reports

Pumpkin unguided testing

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I hesitate to call this a postable image. It’s really just “what I could get” with “the skies I had” and “the equipment as it sat”. 5 years ago, I would have […]

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Deep Sky / Gear / General / Long Exposure Photography / Observing Reports

NGC2244, The Rosette Nebula in Monoceros

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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. […]

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Deep Sky / Gear / General / Long Exposure Photography / Maintenance / Observing Reports

Pumpkin by her lonesome

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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 […]

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Deep Sky / General / Long Exposure Photography / Observing Reports

Welcome back, Veronica — and welcome back, awful guiding problems

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Well, it was clear tonight. That’s about the best thing that happened tonight. The scope booted up and is working eh, ok. The polar alignment is off, and I never did check […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography / Maintenance / Optics

RCC first light

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The camera is out there capturing an unguided shot of M42 for the RCC’s first light image. …and here it is. As usual, it’s another M42. This is 30 frames, 2 minutes […]

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Deep Sky / General / Long Exposure Photography / Observing Reports

Pushing the limit — Pumpkin in a windstorm

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The seeing was pretty bad last night, as in “wind blowing so hard that I thought the leaves rattling were raindrops and ran outside to check”. This wreaked havoc on Veronica’s guiding. […]

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Astro knowledge / Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

Pumpkin's Return — A breath of fresh air

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After 10 days of fighting Veronica, I’d had enough. Tonight, I swapped the camera back to Pumpkin, rebalanced, and tried my luck at two targets. With Cassiopeia showing above the house, I […]

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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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