Michael A. Phillips' Astro Blog

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