Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

IC1396, Emission Nebula in Cepheus

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Sometimes you luck out when you’re “just testing”. I am still shaking out the kinks in my 350D workflow. I put the Ha filter back on the 350D last night. Focusing with […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

NGC7000, The North America Nebula in Cygnus

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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 […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

NGC7000, The North America Nebula, from Coyote Lake, CA

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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 […]

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Long Exposure Photography / Techniques

Coyote Lake widefields

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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 […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

NGC281, The PacMan Nebula in Casseiopeia

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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 […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

NGC 6888, The Crescent Nebula in Cygnus, from Coyote Lake, CA

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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 […]

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Astro knowledge / Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

M57, The Ring Nebula in Lyra

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The C9.25 finally brings some pixels to this tiny object. Shooting with a DSLR brings a different perspective on “useful astronomy targets” compared with most dedicated astrocams. In the beginning, there was […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

NGC6939, Open Cluster in Cygnus

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Again, Cygnus is not really my first thought when it comes to open clusters (at least, not ones that seem to have no nebulosity surrounding them). But this cluster could rival anything […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

NGC6946, Spiral Galaxy in Cygnus

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Cygnus is not generally the area of sky you think of when you think “hey, showpiece galaxy”. But here you go. NGC 6946 has been dodging me for years, so I decided […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

NGC4565, Edge-on Spiral Galaxy in Coma Berenices

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Normally, I don’t go in much for edge-on galaxies. I just don’t think that I really get enough pixels to work with for the amount of effort that goes in. But NGC4565 […]

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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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