Michael A. Phillips' Astro Blog

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Great seeing on Saturn 2009-02-07

Best seeing I've seen since early September! I used the lymax cat cooler extensively, for 30-45 minutes at times. Re-collimated and ran some tests on the moon. Starting imaging long before Saturn hit the meridian and just before I got too tired to stay awake I tried a monster 5min per channel LRGB session. The CGE was up to the task and I had to do very little corrections. This is the result. My best of the season! I managed to catch at least two moons that I'll have to process seperatley and post later.

I was happy to see such steady seeing after an average start. Some things that I payed close attention to while processing: Shadow of rings on globe, shadow of globe on rings on lower right, Cassini division on both sides and growing gap between the rings.

Also, to all you youngin's out there (Hey, I'm a stark 33 stil!), when the seeing's good make sure you spend some time soaking the light of the object into your eyes. It's all to easy to get wrapped up imaging. I smiled big for the views on my screen but even more to see it sitting still in my 4mm and 9mm eyepieces!

Steady Skies,

Mike

Friday, February 6, 2009

My 1st light with the new setup - M81/M82

Begin:	2009-02-04 um 20:08:01-05:00
End:	2009-02-04 um 23:59:00-05:00

Weather:	S:? T: 3?/5 Clear, cold and WINDY!
Equipment:	Optics: Meade LXD55 Mount: CGE mount on JMI Wheely Bars Focusing Aid: STI focuser Shutter control: Hap Griffin long exposure cable Software: MaximDL Operating System: WinXP Lenovo T43 driven via RDP from inside the house
Comments:	MY 1st light of the Meade LXD55 and CGE!!! What a pleasure to wheel the whole rig out of the garage into the driveway! Used my Celestron knowledge to get a rough align and was able to get fair results of 90sec+ exposures. At f/5 and ISO800 there is a LOT of LP Setup on M81 / M82 to get lots of subs, staying warm inside now as the outside temps dropped into the upper 20's Align was in the double digit of minutes error after a 2x iterative align. No PEC, no polar scope, no guiding, no drift align.

Details of the new setup here: http://maphilli14.multiply.com/photos/album/48/Astronomy_-_Equipment_-_DSO_Setup

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Thanks

"Thank you Lord for thinking about me, I'm alive and doing fine."

Sunday, February 1, 2009

"Near" the Apollo 11 Landing Site

I think the forecast for the night was better than it actually was by a long shot. After checking the collimation I would have guessed it was 5-6/10, but looking at the focus/collimation test on Castor (great double BTW), it was a mere 4/10. I setup to grab Venus and the moon before a longish night on Saturn. One of my music buddies, John, suggested that the Apollo 11 landing site was in prime view and that I should try imaging it. I did and was happy to have a fresh target even though the seeing was poor, thanks John!

First a clean image:

Then one marked for reference:

I actually found the google moon maps useful, have a look and see if I got it or not!
http://www.google.com/moon/#lat=0.769019&lon=22.532958&zoom=7&apollo=

Mike