Michael A. Phillips' Astro Blog: titan

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Fun with dancing Saturnian moons

And facebox labels!

Capture notes:
Seeing makes the rings quiver and nowhere as good as a few nights ago. I still have not touched the focus or collimation, but did capture Regulus in Red. My regular routine 1/15s per channel (still all channels full gain). Initially the fps were set wrong as I work the kinks out of this setup. That was not as bad as it sounds, I lost some frame per channel, but it was only 180s per channel. Fixed for the 2nd run at 300s per channel which is what I really like on Saturn especially with variable seeing. Seeing degraded towards the 3rd cap, despite more cooling between 2 and 3

Observer	Michael A. Phillips Mr.
Site	Home
Begin	2009-05-30 um 21:00:00-05:00
End	2009-05-30 um 22:21:00-05:00
Seeing	3 (fair)
Optics	C8i
Eyepiece	PowerMate (V=812.8)
Filter	Astronomik LRGB Color
Camera	DMK21AF04
Sitzung	2009-05-30 um 21:00:00-05:00

References

Sessions: 2009-05-30 um 20:30:00-05:00

Begin:	2009-05-30 um 20:30:00-05:00
End:	2009-05-30 um 22:30:00-05:00

Weather:	Seeing: 7/10 Transparency: 3/5 Forecast: Initially, 4/5 for both, but recently clouds crept in, which didn't appear at all in dusk. I hope the seeing holds!
Equipment:	Ubuntu 9.04 Linux and custom coriander on Lenovo T61 (Cepheus) 8" Celestron C8i SCT Lymax Cat Cooler DMK 21AF04 2.5x PowerMate Astronomik LRGB filters True Tek Color Filter Wheel with visu diag
Comments:	Bad drift even after a rough leveling of the tripod and auto-two star eq align. I didn't check the errors per axis, but I can't survive the drift without a reposotion of Saturn after 1 - 2 minutes, which is only annoying as I've yet to get scope control in Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty jackalope in Kstars/Indi. Took a break from Saturn imaging ~2140 for re-cooling of scope... not sure it helped, but back imaging at 2202

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Observer: Michael A. Phillips Mr.

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Site: Home

Longitude:	35.682°
Latitude:	-78.743°
Timezone:	UT-300 min

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Optics: C8i

Type:	SCT
Vendor:	Celestron
Aperture:	203.0 mm
Focal length:	2032.0 mm

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Eyepiece: PowerMate

Vendor:	TeleVue
Focal length:	2.5 mm

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Filter: Astronomik LRGB

Typ:

Color

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CCD Camera: DMK21AF04

Vendor:	The Image Source
Pixel:	640x480

Created: 06/03/2009 20:14:11

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Titan Transit Teaser 20090224

Observation logs

I think there's a name for titles like that, but at 25*F and early in the AM my brain's not so straight.

Bad seeing too.. looked like the whole continental US had bad jetstream. I hope someone west of here got better as it was fairly low on the horizon here.

I forgot about the time delay in stellarium but that was OK as I overslept a bit anyway. Most of the frames are washed out by the trees but you can make out the shadow in the final 3 or so frames. I also caught Dione in a few frames riding the upper left ring, long before it's transit. So no quad transit, but I was able to get something and that still counts! Lucky me, the sky was clear.

Animation from 1018 to 1114UT:

Object: Saturn and Titan

Planet

Origin:

ObservationManager - SolarSystem Catalog 1.0

Observer	Michael A. Phillips Mr.
Site	Home
Begin	2009-02-24 um 04:00:00-05:00
End	2009-02-24 um 04:10:00-05:00
Optics	C8i on CGE
Eyepiece	PowerMate (V=812.8)
Filter	Astronomik LRGB Color
Camera	DMK21AF04
Sitzung	2009-02-24 um 04:00:00-05:00

Visual impression

Titan transit!

References

Sessions: 2009-02-24 um 04:00:00-05:00

Begin:	2009-02-24 um 04:00:00-05:00
End:	2009-02-24 um 06:20:00-05:00

Weather:	Poor seeing Great transparency FREEZING 25*F
Equipment:	I used: Ubuntu 8.04 Linux and custom coriander CGE mounted 8" Celestron C8i SCT Lymax Cat Cooler DMK 21AF04 2.5x PowerMate Astronomik LRGB filters True Tek Color Filter Wheel with visu diag
Comments:	Didn't leave the scope out overnight and it may have impacted some but little of the conditions. I miss timed the Titan Transit becuase of the time delay / light propogation issues with Stellarium. I fixed that now1

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Observer: Michael A. Phillips Mr.

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Site: Home