So this was the first time I have been able to get the new 10" Dob out to a dark sky site. The good news the Tube fits in the back seat of a Mazda 2! (which is what Haim rented)

The site was Silent Arrow which is a camping Lodge just outside of Mizpe Ramon, It kind of caters to the hippy dippy set, but thats OK. The 2 backpackers we met were both ( Read more... )

I finally go the telescope collimated the other day (Yea laser collimator) and tonight took it out for a quick view of Jupiter.  I had to do a quick ( Read more... )

So last night I found myself up at 0330 or so. I went outside and the sky was clear and Orion was right there ( Read more... )

Haim and I drove down to My standard observing site outside of Mizpe Ramon last night. Its about the darkest sky in in Israel which is to say it was WONDERFUL. I spent most of my time around Sagattarius ( Read more... )

So it looks like next thursday a friend (H) and I will be heading off to Mizpe Ramon for an astronomy trip. Really looking forward to it. I think I will bring at least 1 camera and see if I can get some sky shots. But I'm still limited to about 15s at f2.0 so things will be limited ( Read more... )

So I have been using a 5" ETX scope on a heavy tripod for astronomy, even in the back yard this fails to thrill me, to
for one thing it has a very narrow field of view and the tripod its on really does not work well for astronomy being a LF camera head.

SO at some point (G-d knows when) I plan to buy  This small telescope it is a 66mm APO and ( Read more... )

Its winter and even here in Israel at 32° North it still can get pretty damn cold at night. In prep for the next Astronomy trip to the Negev I am trying to work out my cold weather gear so that I can enjoy the desert skies without freezing my but off ( Read more... )

I like this section of the milky way photo. So i figure it will make a nice userpic.

A photo of the milky way taken from Mizpe Ramon Israel (I had it scanned again at higher resolution). The contrast was enhanced in photoshop but all the colors are quite real. The red areas are emission nebulae. I have included a version with of the file with labels


( Read more... )

I hate waiting, the photolab had told me that they would have my job done by this morning, that was optamistic. I got my film back, but they didn't have my scans ready, so they said that they would email them to me, its now 5:04 and they are still not here. I just called her and she said that they would send them after 5:30 ( Read more... )