TAG Observatory
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
NGC 6960, The Witch’s Broom, part of the Veil Nebula in Cygnus
NGC6960, The Western Veil Nebula, Supernova Remnant in Cygnus The Veil Nebula is one of my deepsky nemeses; it’s big (over 3° across if you get the whole thing at once), it’s […]
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
M13, Globular Cluster in Hercules
M13, Globular Cluster in Hercules This is a fairly large stack (70 2-minute images), all taken unguided from my new G-11 mount. The mount is really a big improvement over the CG-5GT. […]
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
M27, The Dumbbell Nebula in Vulpecula, composite
This is a stack of the previous 2 images of M27. The 5 minute image had nice blue nebulosity, and the 30sec images had some highly textured red, so I decided to […]
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
M27, The Dumbbell Nebula in Vulpecula
This is the first shot after I performed the UV/IR filter removal on the D70. Note that these images are 30 seconds long, 10 times shorter exposure than the image taken two […]
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography / Techniques
M8, The Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius
This is from the first night after I performed the “filterectomy” on the Nikon D70. This is a stack of 12 30 second images shot from my light-polluted Newark backyard (”total imaging […]
The long-exposure photography rig gets a new home
This is an updated photo of Rig now installed in the Ad Astra Observatory at Newark. This was taken very soon after the observatory buildout was complete.
Astro knowledge / Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography / Optics
M27, The Dumbbell Nebula in Vulpecula
It was this image that convinced me that I needed to do the filterectomy on the Nikon D70. According to S&T, The Dumbbell, The Coathanger, and Albireo form an equilateral triangle.
Maintenance / Observatory / Observing Reports
Re: Ad Astra Observatory now accepting photons
Looking good. D — “Jimbo S. Harris” <jimbo@jimbo.net> wrote: > I thought the Build Team should get the first look > at the output of the > fully functional Ad Astra Observatory […]
Deep Sky / Gear / Long Exposure Photography
M13, Globular Cluster in Hercules
M13, Globular Cluster in Hercules (the autoguider at Ad Astra Observatory is operational!)
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.