Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

Veronica's Last Stand — playing with exposure length

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I only have a few more things I can try before I have to give up on Veronica as an imaging scope on The Lemon-i. Tonight, I added a 2.8x “Klee” Barlow […]

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Astro knowledge / General / Maintenance / Optics / Technology

G-11 – Guiding Oscillation

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I stacked the 16 frames shot last night into a single GIF animation. There is a very strange “retrograde motion” thing going on during the course of an evening. I don’t know […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography / Maintenance / Optics

Another night of strange guide errors – IC 5146

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OK, this is getting silly. Either I have no idea how to balance a telescope properly (which is not outside of the realm of reason), or balance is not the problem with […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

Fall preview – NGC7635

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Cepheus is still a little low in the sky to get a full treatment. But I wanted to see what would happen if I shot an object that was low enough that […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

Veronica not showing her full potential — NGC 6888

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I’m having a tracking problem with the mount. This is all eerily familiar. Things run fine for a couple of hours and then the wheels fall off. This results in only being […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography

Working my way through a "zoomed" set of the images from last month — Sh2-101

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Saturday was cloudy, but Sunday night was clear, so I set up the scopes for another night of photography. I decided to shoot Sh2-101, The Tulip Nebula. I am still working on […]

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Deep Sky / Long Exposure Photography / Observing Reports

The Astrophotography Moon is back — Veronica gets a chance at Ha

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Now that the Gemini mount is back in service, I decided to try out higher-magnification photography with the new Ha filter. I had a little maintenance to do first; focusing both cameras […]

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Focuser / Optics

Re: call me crazy

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Art Morton wrote: > You hit the cruxes of the matter, the secondary size. The other thing > I remember battling was f/ and being able to see the secondary when > […]

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Maintenance

Re: Yes you are crazy

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Art Morton wrote: > I do not have data to forward, but what I remember is +- 0.00 to > 0.04~0.15 on each axis. I’m averaging more in the 0.2-0.8 range (I’m […]

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Focuser

Re: shortest possible drawtube?

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Hi Ron, When you get back from WSP, and during your next CNC run, whenever that is, I’d like a 3/4” travel drawtube with compression ring fitting. I’d also like to order […]

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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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