Solar System Photography

Pretty conjunction tonight

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Venus and Mars have been putting on a show for the past month or so, and once a month, the Moon drops by for a visit. I missed it last month, don’t […]

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Astro knowledge

The Wolf Moon, January 11, 2017

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All of the full moons of the year are named. I don’t know all of their names, Harvest Moon comes to mind, but like there are 12 or 13 of them, and […]

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Solar System Photography

Achievement Unlocked!

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The Junior Astronomer has now earned the title Junior Astrophotographer. First, let me say that this photo took a long time to process, because somehow my lunar processing mojo went out the […]

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Camera / Gear / General / Maintenance / Techniques

Starting to get used to the gear

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There are a lot of variables in astronomy in general, and in astrophotography in particular. This must be aligned to that must be set like this… so that the rig will just […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography / Observatory / Solar System Photography

Hilltop Observatory – First Light

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We did it! It’s been a long hard journey, with lessons learned, and ducks carefully put into rows. Four years of design and development all came together tonight. The sky was even clearer tonight […]

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ATM / Gear / Telescope

Trixie takes a test drive

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It was a gorgeous sunny day today in Seattle (very strange for mid February), and the clear skies held up until nearly 11pm. Kismet or dumb luck, I knew that this was […]

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General / Observing Reports

Lunar Eclipse 2011

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I woke The B up to see the lunar eclipse this morning. It’s the last one before 2014. Moon was looking good high in the west (it was much farther north than […]

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General / Observing Reports

Losing track of a satellite

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It’s been really cloudy in Washington. That’s normal for spring. Well, really, it’s normal for whatever time of year. It’s a cloudy place. The clouds, coupled with my total lack of astronomy […]

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Gear / Solar System Photography / Telescope

Trixie the Astrograph — first light!

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I had a few small tweaks to do, and I was ready to roll with Trixie 2011. I focused the camera on the moon; this involved no small amount of gymnastics, as […]

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Solar System Photography

Bay of Rainbows, Feb. 26, 2010

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The Sinus Iridium, or Bay of Rainbows, is a pretty feature that I found by checking it out in the finder. I had fun trying to ID all the lunar features that […]

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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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