TAG D70
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
IC 5146, The Cocoon Nebula in Cygnus
First shot at the Cocoon. Apparently, there’s a dark nebula in the area, too, and I probably got it, but I’ll have to go look at the full frame again. There’s probably […]
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
M33, The Triangulum Galaxy
A first shot at the Autumn galaxies. I was having a lot of trouble with astronomy lat night for some reason; My focuser motor is on the blink, I got my T-ring […]
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
NGC 6888, The Crescent Nebula in Cygnus
Another try at the Crescent. Two hours of integration at f/5. Could still use some work.
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
NGC 7635, The Bubble Nebula in Cepheus
I’ve been looking around for new nebulae to shoot with the f/5 scope. The night’s shooting was going well, so I decided to try out The Bubble Nebula. It’s pretty small (on […]
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
M31, The Great Andromeda Galaxy
Veronica’s FOV is too tight to get all of Andromeda, so this is just a shot of the central region of the galaxy. M32 and M110 were hugging the edges of the […]
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
M27, The Dumbbell Nebula in Vulpecula
I tried a longer integration time on M27 (2 hours’ worth of 3-minute images vs. an hour of 2 min)… I think that I’ve reached the limit of what I can achieve […]
Deep Sky / Focuser / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
M8, The Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius
An hour of M8 with Veronica, G11, motor focuser. I could use some more detail of the outlying areas (there are some nice dust globs out there), but when I tried to […]
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
M17, The Swan Nebula in Serpens
I tried 2 minute subframes, but that blew out the red channel, so I switched to 1 minute.
Astro knowledge / Deep Sky / Focuser / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
M20, The Trifid Nebula in Sagittarius
First attempt at the Trifid with Veronica. The G11 and the motor focuser are really helping. It’s so low that I had to wait for it to rise above the doorway of […]
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography / Maintenance
NGC 6960, The Witch’s Broom, part of the Veil Nebula in Cygnus
Another attempt at “The Witch’s Broom” portion of the Veil. Despite this being almost 3 hours of integration time, This still came out pretty dim and noisy. Maybe 3-minute subframes would be […]
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.