On the 5th of June, much of the world was treated to one of the rarest of all predicted events - a transit of Venus across the disk of the Sun. Visible as an extremely dark, sharp 'dot', this is the silhouette of planet seen against the intensely brilliant disk of our Sun. Though visible throughout the states, only beginning to mid-transit would be ( Read more... )

Its been at least two weeks since the last astro-SHINY post and after of all the recent weirdness - a picture post is overdue.

Today's theme - spiral galaxies. All of these majestic 'pinwheels' of stars, as and dust were imaged by the Doctor's setup - an 8-inch f/4 Astrograph + Canon 1000D (modified for red sensitivity) on a German equatorial ( Read more... )

Imaging 101

First, my latest image of the Whirlpool Galaxy or M51:


( Read more... )

Imaging Trials at Stooge's East

The Good..
Well, it was a very mixed bag last night. On the major PLUS side - the scope tracked beautifully, meaning that my polar alignment and scope balancing was spot on.

The BADI couldn't find a critical firewire cable for the planetary imaging camers - which meant I could NOT use the observatory computer ( Read more... )

..set....GO!

1) 12-inch LX200 mounted on new heavy-duty tripod - check
2) Scope balanced in two directions - check
3) Polar alignment of scope (a tedious process involving a method called 'drift alignment', tonight it took almost 2 hours) - done for both RA and Declination - double check!
4) Cleaning and checking planetary imaging cameras - check! ( Read more... )

My 'new' SHINY supply is quite limited - between the ongoing wet/cloudy weather and the move out of WinkleHaus. So my plan is to post only one or two images a week until the situation can be rectified.

One of the very last images I did back on October 20/21 was a moderately deep exposure of Great Orion Nebula, or M42. I've imaged it before, but ( Read more... )

Man, am I tired..

I got yo bed at 7:30 AM, after a full night of imaging. Did Jupiter, Mars, plus all sorts of galaxies, nebulae and clusters. Here is a sample image - and this is NOT the best of the night!

M33 - the Pinwheel Galaxy

( Read more... )

Clear, cool skies.. - check

Less than a two-day old Moon.. - check

Prediction of extremely stable atmospheric conditions.. - check!

Using a personal day for Wednesday = all NIGHT imaging run.. Double Check ( Read more... )

The weather sucks. I mean it, it absolutely blows monkey chunks. It has been cloudy and/or monsoon-style rains for almost two weeks straight now. I'm suffering severe telescope withdrawal. My observatory's days are now numbered, and yet - I can't even use it unless I can find/invent a cloud-rain filter.

But I found something to go SQUEE over. It ( Read more... )

My new modified Canon XS DSLR arrived on Monday afternoon. It is a 10.1 mega-pixel beast that has had the original IR-blocking filter removed and replaced with another that doesn't cut off the deep red signal. It has about 20x the sensitivity in deep red, plus much lower noise and 'live view' capability - things my current 350XT doesn't have ( Read more... )