Michael A. Phillips' Astro Blog

Friday, November 7, 2008

Astronomy - Solar System - Lunar Gallery

A collection of all my Lunar Photos

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Jupiter 2008-10-01

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Labels

Object: Jupiter

Planet

Origin:

ObservationManager - SolarSystem Catalog 1.0

Observer	Michael A. Phillips Mr.
Site	Home
Begin	2008-09-30 um 20:30:00-05:00
End	2008-09-30 um 21:40:00-05:00
Seeing	3 (fair)
Optics	C8i
Eyepiece	PowerMate (V=812.8)
Filter	Astronomik LRGB Color
Camera	DMK21AF04
Sitzung	2008-09-30 um 20:30:00-05:00

Visual impression

Transit of Io. Poor seeing, but a good 45min+ time lapse imaging session shows the spot where Io is/should be.

References

Sessions: 2008-09-30 um 20:22:00-05:00

Begin:	2008-09-30 um 20:22:00-05:00
End:	2008-09-30 um 22:00:00-05:00

Weather:	Forecast called for clouds. Surprisingly it cleared near dusk and stayed clear until a line of STRONG T-storms came in at 3am the same night. Seeing was avg or below 4-5/10 T: 3/5
Equipment:	I used: Ubuntu 8.04 Linux and custom coriander 8" Celestron C8i SCT DMK 21AF04 2.5x PowerMate Astronomik LRGB filters True Tek Color Filter Wheel with visu diag

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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

M31 - Andromeda Galaxy via piggyback

Observation logs

Large View

With Labels

Object: M31

Galaxy in And

Alias: NGC224, Andromeda Galaxy

RA:	0h 42m 44s
Dec:	41° 16' 06"
Size:	178.0′ × 178.0′
m(vis):	4.5 mag
Origin:	ObservationManager - Messier Catalog 1.0

Observer	Michael A. Phillips Mr.
Site	Home
Begin	2008-10-26 um 20:20:00-05:00
End	2008-10-26 um 23:30:00-05:00
Seeing	4 (bad)
Optics	Tamron
Lens	Zoom
Camera	Canon XTI
Sitzung	2008-10-26 um 20:20:00-05:00

Visual impression

Good visual check on main core area. Also showed well in a single 4 min exposure.
Visual rating: Simple conspicuous object in the eyepiece

References

Sessions: 2008-10-26 um 20:20:00-05:00

Begin:	2008-10-26 um 20:20:00-05:00
End:	2008-10-26 um 23:30:00-05:00

Weather:	Clear, good transparency and no moon. Seeing was below avg.
Equipment:	Canon XTi with Tamron zoom lens piggybacked on the C8i, MaxDSLR on WinXP T43 driven via RDP from inside the house
Comments:	1st attempt at full remote setup. I found a tracking was good after a 2 iter 2 star eq align: Az: 00' 21" Alt: 06' 03" Good for 4+ min piggybacked exposures! No network coverage in the garage forced me to setup a quick, ad-hoc x-over network between WinXP and Linux. Static addressing on both ends and FAST transfers! :P

>> Observations <<

Observer: Michael A. Phillips Mr.

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Site: Home

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

>> Observations <<

Optics: Tamron

Type:	zoom SLR lens
Aperture:	50.0 mm
Focal length:	200.0 mm

>> Observations <<

Lens: Zoom

Vendor:	Tamron
Focal length factor:	200.0 mm

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CCD Camera: Canon XTI

Vendor:	Canon
Pixel:	3888x2592

Astronomy - Deep Sky - Galaxies

Friday, October 24, 2008

Neptune 2008-10-15

Observation logs

Object: Neptune

Planet

Origin:

ObservationManager - SolarSystem Catalog 1.0

Observer	Michael A. Phillips Mr.
Site	Home
Begin	2008-10-15 um 19:50:00-05:00
End	2008-10-15 um 22:10:00-05:00
Seeing	3 (fair)
Optics	C8i
Eyepiece	PowerMate (V=812.8)
Filter	Astronomik LRGB Color
Camera	DMK21AF04
Sitzung	2008-10-15 um 19:50:00-05:00

Visual impression

Neptune rises 1st and is dimmer than Uranus.Unfortunatley this makes adjusting to an object much harder. Finding was not as hard as I was thinking it was. A simple Precise-GoTo got me within the ~60* FOV. I double checked against Stellarium and was amazed that there it was! I was even more amazed to see it as a smallish disk visually. It's very dim, bluish and small, but there it was! RGB settings: RG - 3.418sec exp ; 928 Gain B - 3.418sec exp ; 1024 Gain 90s capture time per channel at above settings. RGB x 4 iterations = 3 captures per 'session' x 4 sessions. Therefore each RGB channel gets 4x .avi's stacked together. Each 90s capture resulted in 24 frames x 4 'sessions' in total about 100 frames per channel, best ~75% used (estimate) Darks taken and applied in Registax Lum for moons settings: Clear Filter (IR/UV Block) - 3.418sec exp ; 1024 Gain ; 50% Gamma 58 frames total and ~30-40 stacked Darks taken and applied in Registax

References

SETI reference:

Red Shift 5 Reference:

And CalSky reference:

Sessions: 2008-10-15 um 18:45:00-05:00

Begin:	2008-10-15 um 18:45:00-05:00
End:	2008-10-15 um 23:30:00-05:00

Weather:	Forecast called for S 4/5 and T 3/5 Actual S: 4-6 T: 2-3/5
Equipment:	I used: Ubuntu 8.04 Linux and custom coriander 8" Celestron C8i SCT DMK 21AF04 2.5x PowerMate Astronomik LRGB filters True Tek Color Filter Wheel with visu diag Since the 3 day stretch of good seeing in early Sept, I have used the T61 Also used WinXP and IC Capture with the TrueTek Hand Controller for > 1sec exposures
Comments:	To get Uranus and Neptune I had to move exposures beyond 1 second. Currently the custom coriander 1.0.0 does not support exposures beyond 1 second. Even at 1sec and 3.25fps I was unable to get usable data. As quickly as I could I switched to WinXP and IC Capture for camera control. A reboot and install of drivers burned some time, but a valuable lesson in prepareness. I did try to leverage previous whitebalance exercises on Jupiter for Uranus and Neptune. I found tracking and alignment horrible, but since finding 6-7mag planets isn't easy, I decided not to re-align. More and deeper exposures would have helped the moon shots.

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Observer: Michael A. Phillips Mr.

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Site: Home