Friends have asked if I got pictures of the comet (Lovejoy C/2014 Q2) and I’ve been reluctant to admit, that, yes, I have, but that they are pretty bad pictures. The first was a wide field shot in which I imagined seeing the comet’s tail streaming gracefully among the Hyades and the Pleiades. For tracking, … Read more
Since I’ve been using the Takahashi FSQ106-ED with the STL11000, I’m getting wide field images, about 3.9 x 2.7 degrees. So the fields contain numerous cataloged objects that would be nice to identify. Pixinsight offers a workflow to “solve” the image which provides accurate WCS coordinates that are added to the FITS header; and an … Read more
We had a really clear night June 3rd, following a cold front, so I set up an imaging run on M64, the descriptively named “Black Eye” galaxy. I got a good hour of luminance data, but only about 15 minutes each of RGB. I haven’t made anything acceptable with the color data yet, but the … Read more
After the crazy weather we’ve been having , it was a treat to see Venus, Jupiter and Mercury crammed together into a neat triangle after sunset. Mercury can be hard to find in the twilight, and it sure makes it easier to have Venus or Jupiter as a marker. Tonight we have both! Mercury is … Read more
I intended to get a good hour in for LRGB on this, but as it turned out the guiding was intermittent and I really only got 4 each good RGB frames for 20 minute total exposure. So the image is not deep. I’ve started using CCDStack and, when calibrating the frames, was getting a “negative … Read more
We’ve had a rainy week and 5 or 6 inches of rain, but it cleared up nicely. I planned a run on M99, which I had botched a few weeks before. i unparked the scope, fired up the camera & coolers, opened the roof and aimed at Denebola to check the aim. That accomplished, I … Read more
In my continuing, ongoing shakedown, I set up a full LRGB series of M65 (NGC 3623) on the clear, moonless night of April 3. The forecast was good, so I set things running and went to bed. Somewhere in the green series, things murked up a bit, and the tracking crapped out for some of … Read more
I had a few hours before moonrise, and wanted another stab at NGC 4435 & 4438. I thought I had good focus, and was getting about 5.5 FWHM on the focus run, but it looks like the focus drifted quite a bit during the run. NGC 4435 and 4438; 5 x 300 with 12″ LX-200 … Read more
For amateur astronomers, a “sucker hole” is when it looks clear enough to set up, but as soon as you’re ready to get started, it clouds up again, and you feel like a dope. We’ve been waiting for Spring to get started for what seems like forever. I first heard spring peepers March 9, and … Read more
After I got a glimpse of Pan-STARRS, it looked like it would be clear enough to open the Hut. I wanted to run some more v-curves (calibration runs) in FocusMax, but apparently I had the steps set too small and the center focus position set too far off. So the run took forever and didn’t … Read more