TAG 300D
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 […]
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 […]
FocusMax – Pumpkin is about dialed in
I was able to boot up FocusMax tonight and just go directly to “find star” and then “focus” and then “run 10 V-curves”. It had no problem finding a star, getting it […]
Accessory / Focuser / Gear / Maintenance / Technology
Pumpkin focuser characteristics
ASCOM driver: EasyFocus Min steps: 0 Max steps: 30000 Speed: 250/Full Pumpkin + 300d + FF/FR + no Ha + IDAS LPS = position 23456
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. […]
Gear / General / Maintenance / Optics
Pumpkin's eyeglasses
I picked up a Field Flattener (which also happens to be a 0.8x focal reducer, which I didn’t necessarily need) for Pumpkin soon after getting the scope. The performance was a little […]
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 […]
Deep Sky / General / Long Exposure Photography / Observing Reports
Welcome back, Veronica — and welcome back, awful guiding problems
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 […]
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.