TAG Pumpkin
GSSP Night 1
We left the house around 8am, 4 people, with a packed trailer, Skybox, and “way back”. We headed north via Chico and Susanville. Let’s call it “the scenic route”. The drive was […]
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
The Veil Nebula in Cygnus
The Veil Nebula is a stark test of your optical system. There is a huge brightness range among the various pieces. The size of the object is pretty staggering, too. And there’s […]
Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
IC1396, Emission Nebula in Cepheus
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 […]
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 […]
Everything went right last night
FocusMax worked. PemPro worked. Guido worked. I shot M106 (through Pumpkin — tiny, tiny) until the mount hit the safety limit, 150m total or so. Then, since it was still clear (although […]
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 / Observing Reports / Techniques / Technology
FocusMax – relearning the V-curve
Things have changed a lot since the last time that I ran Focusmax. Among other things, I have built up a whole new astro-PC, and I never really understood FM well enough […]
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
Camera / Gear / Solar System Photography
Orion Starshoot Autoguider first light
it’s real cloudy tonight. But, the moon is bright enough that I can still see it, so I decided to come out and get the autoguider focused so I can try to […]
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.