TAG Target Selection
Astro knowledge / Deep Sky / General / Long Exposure Photography / Technology
M87, Elliptical Galaxy in Virgo
I have avoided the Virgo Galaxies for years. The reasons are many, but chief among them is that a lot of the Virgo galaxies are elliptical, which essentially means that they look […]
Still learning the mount
I tried some new stuff last night and screwed myself up. I was all mounted and focused, so I decided to work a nice easy object, and chose M81. M81 was near […]
Deep Sky / General / Long Exposure Photography / Maintenance / Observatory / Observing Reports
Five hours of Guided images
…with zero dropped subframes. I spent a little time refining the polar alignment last night. I am still getting some drift while running unguided; I calculated it to be about 6′ from […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
General / Maintenance / Observing Reports
Another respite between stormfronts
The skies cleared again tonight! Second time in a week, with about 2 weeks of continual rain going on around them. Interesting. The moon is one day before 1st quarter, so I […]
Astro knowledge / General / Maintenance / Optics
Guiding — um, oops?
After speaking with Art tonight about my guiding workflow, it seems that I have been doing things… in a manner which would probably give me problems if I tried to do longish […]
Deep Sky / General / Long Exposure Photography / Observing Reports
Pushing the limit — Pumpkin in a windstorm
The seeing was pretty bad last night, as in “wind blowing so hard that I thought the leaves rattling were raindrops and ran outside to check”. This wreaked havoc on Veronica’s guiding. […]
Astro knowledge / Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography
Pumpkin's Return — A breath of fresh air
After 10 days of fighting Veronica, I’d had enough. Tonight, I swapped the camera back to Pumpkin, rebalanced, and tried my luck at two targets. With Cassiopeia showing above the house, I […]
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.