My Backyard Blog

Endeavors of Exploration and Astrophotography

My Backyard Blog . . .

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January 18, 2011.

Okay, so the battle at hand is getting all of Andromeda M31 in the camera frame or field of view. A lot of people have given up and just taken two halves of the galaxy to make a composite image. I might have to resort to this because I cannot justify buying a $5-10,000 CCD camera with a ginormous high quality chip. Well I could, but my wife really is the person who could not. I have my eye on the Kodak 8300 chips that are now around $2000 without the filter wheel. I had my chance this Christmas to argue the point of trying to see if Santa would bring me one, but then again, I would kick myself if a year or two later, the price dropped considerably, or some upgrade caused a closeout of the same camera for $800 bucks with a free solar telescope or something. So again, I decided to wait it out and place my vote on the exponential rate of chip technology and supply and demand, along with a lot of competition in the marketplace.

Anyway, so I figured that my wife's Canon XSi has a chip around 23 mm.!!!! I've had my eye on it for some time and have used it mainly for moon pics with the 80ED, which I took unguided with a remote shutter release. This time, I used the Nebulosity2 computer program to control the camera. Awesome! After much testing indoors, it ran perfectly. I could set it up for 50 x 30 sec subs, and it just burned through them like clock-work. I piggy-backed the SVR80ED onto the LX90 and got really good tracking the whole night. I have learned to manually 2-star align depending on the object of interest, where both stars are around 45 degrees in the sky and completely opposite from each other in the sky. The second star aligned is always the star closest to your object and often times is also used as the high precision star if you chose to go this route for GOTO accuracy. But, hey, Andromeda is pretty easy to find with the naked eye, and if you want to synch, you can just synch on Andromeda. Everything worked great, and I was having so much fun I took over 150 subs, just to have a lot to choose from while stacking.

The night was quiet, dark and cold, in the mid 30's. Looking up at the milky way, all I could hear was the sound of the gears and drive motors from the LX90 tracking Andromeda. A lot goes through your head during these times, and you realize that it's all worth much more than just a picture. I will soon do a post on the book I am reading right now, The Eerie Silence, by Paul Davies. After reading most of this book, now when I look up and see what is really out there from photons on a computer chip, there is the feeling of both complete cosmic loneliness and overbearing joy of being alive.

To see the final pic of Andromeda from this session, CLICK HERE.

Cheers.

December 14, 2010.

Had some trouble in November. I was trying to get out to do some imaging of Andromeda before it got too high in the sky, but when I went to take the LX90 off its base, it would not detach. There is a double sided thread adapter that the Meade factory screws in with cement to allow for the tripod bolt. After an hour on the phone trying to explain this to Meade, and a few pictures later, we figured out that the cement had failed. They wanted me to send it back in, and I know better. So I figured out how to carefully do it myself, and make my own make-shift tool to screw the screwy thing into a tight spot. I really do question the mechanical engineer who put that down on blue-print. Must have had one too many home-brews the night before. So I fixed it, but the weather has not been very nice to me. Right now it is clear for a change, but also 15 degrees, post winter storm, and I just don't feel like barely being able to move my fingers. Even though I can run the scope from inside the house, there is still a lot of outside time and especially when tearing down 50 different parts. I chose to stay warm tonight. Andromeda (M31) is now in position to begin its decent down the western horizon, which is an opportune time for imaging. My plans this month are to use the LX90 for tracking and image with the piggy-backed Stellarvue 80mm and the Cannon DSLR camera, controlled through the computer (Nebulosity2). My goal is simple, to get the whole galaxy. Usually, you are trying hard to increase magnification with clarity to see a very distant object, but in this case is is the complete opposite. In order to do that you need both a wide FOV and a big camera chip. With this setup, I should get the whole galaxy. I am attaching below an image I took of M31 in 2009 with the 80mm and the DSI II Pro CCD camera (small chip). The best I could do was the central core area. It is a big galaxy, but the biggest obstacle is how close it is to us. M31 is our next door neighbor. Until next time. Happy observing, and clear skies to all.

October 15, 2010..

Finally got back out for 2 good sessions with Comet Hartley, recorded in my Logbook on this site. The first session was great, but I saved all of the files under FITS format and had a hard time making a GIF movie out of that. So I went back out the next night and saved everything under JPEG. With some help from Yahoo Groups, I was able to convert to GIF using Advanced GIF Animator (a great program). Then it was simple to change it to a WMV format for YouTube upload. It is one thing to construct images of galaxies, but it is a whole other ball game to image something close by that is moving very fast. The best I could do for producing a single image of Hartley was 3 stacked subs, because if I did more than this the comet smeared. The final result can be seen by clicking HERE. If you then click the image it will take you to the YouTube video. Up Next? Back to galaxy chasing, since there are not many good comets around. But that was a lot of fun. Cheers!

September 28, 2010 9:39 PM

This summer has sucked, big time, for astro-imaging. Most of the summer was full of hazy nights. Not good for imaging because it causes very grainy images, at least with my setup. There were a few nights last month that were killer for imaging, and I was too involved with running my home brewery to get the scopes out. But I did get to SEE some awesome stuff with the refractor, no imaging. I have posted my July imaging for M100 and M27, finally processed. M102 was cool, but not good enough to post. My new goal is to get images of the comet Hartley, which is passing down through Cassiopeia during this time. I am starting to see the trend. Fall, some in the winter, and a lot in the Spring. These are the times of the year that bring the best results in my neck of the woods. It is going to start up soon enough, and my scope lenses are cleaned and ready for action. Just waiting for the clouds to go away. Hope everyone had a great summer. Time to start imaging again . . .

June 15, 2010 10:32 PM.

I just wanted to shout out a thank you for all the cool feedback I have gotten from Astronomy Soup. This began, and is still used as my resource organization so I can quickly get to places on the internet. I never knew it would be used as much as it is by other users. To be honest, I didn't know people were reading my blog posts! Here is an example of what a teacher quoted about AS.

"I wanted to tell you that as a student teacher working on a lesson plan, your page was a great source of information."

Thank you!

Finally, I was able to image the other night. Here's a classic "Mark" story for you. So my laptop computer crashed, the one I run my telescope and CCD from. SO I got a new, "faster" laptop (Dell D630) and spent about a week getting all the software loaded and all the drivers functioning together without bugs. Okay, good right? Not so much. I had aligned on Algieba in Leo and Vega in Lyra. Man, I had perfect tracking with minimal Alt/Az movement in the north west as M102 was dropping down. I mean crystal clear images. I must have collected over 200 images that night @ 21 sec each! Well, if anyone knows the Envisage program, when you first boot it up, the default "save-to" file option is "Save every composite image" in JPG. I was in a rush to start imaging and was used to my old default. Well, since I only had like 5 changes in position, I had saved 5 images !!!! in JPG!!!! What you want is "Save all uncombined images" in FITS. I will say this happened more from habit of knowing that my new default was Fits with uncombined. But now that I think about it, I should have been more thorough in my setup. I am still calling myself an idiot for it. That was the biggest BLONDE move I have pulled yet, except for the night I got attacked by mosquitoes, and had to pause the operation to drive to the store for OFF.

Well, the next night was not as good conditions, but clear, so of course I had to re-image M102 damnit! I had decent tracking, not as good as the night before, but decent. I think the transparency was bad and there were also invisible clouds in and out all night. If you have ever imaged M102, it sounds like a good idea because of the Hubble pics you see, but in reality, unless you have a $10K CCD, forget it. It is 50 million light years away and it is very small and edge on. I will post the final image soon so you can see what I got. I worked with it a bit last night and was not impressed. But this blog is not just about all the "good", it is about all the "bad" too. So there you go. Everything has to fit together perfectly, instruments, alignment, tracking, object, weather, software, darks, lights, etc. This is what keeps me coming back to the astrophotography experience. It's not just about a nice picture of a distant galaxy taken from your backyard. Its about perfection getting you there, and if you are a perfectionist, this hobby is for you. Just make sure you have a couple of cold brews on hand . . .

June 14, 2010 9:29 PM.

Okay, I'm back. Its been pretty crappy weather for imaging (rain, muggy). But this Spring was killer for clear skies and some of the best images I have ever gotten (at least with the CCD I have), especially the new image of M51 ! Click here! I can't complain, much better than last year's 6 months or more of solid cloudy skies. One thing I have learned with astronomy and imaging is that if you want to get good at it, you have to get good at using all your resources to track the weather, even real time radar tracking. These resources for me are, first, the 10-day forecast to get an idea, using weather.com .gov. and .org. Accuweather is also good, as they have an "Astronomy" section. Then I rely on the clear sky chart from the Canadian Meteorological Center. http://cleardarksky.com/c/LkMtclVAkey.html . The code was written for where I live by a great person, Attilla Danko. It was very nice of him to do this for the astronomers in this area. It really narrows down cloud cover, transparency, seeing, darkness (where the moon is), wind, humidity, and temp. Once I have decided that a night looks good for imaging, I begin to watch the changes that occur at the last minute to the local weather.com by-the-hour predictions. These can change drastically in a matter of hours. What looks to be clear skies might turn out to be mostly clear or partly cloudy at the last minute, even though the Canadian data has not updated. Then sometimes mostly clear means there is an invisible layer of clouds overhead that you cannot see; or there might be clouds moving out with clear skies behind it, or possibly a gap of clear skies between 2 cloud fronts. This is where the real-time cloud radar comes in handy at weather.com, there is also a new radar future prediction sequence now. As long as there is no chance of rain, I have my scope aligned and tracking, ready to image (if I have stars between clouds), and I am watching the radar for the clouds to clear out. Like I said, you have to become an expert in using your resources for weather prediction to plan an imaging session. I have found it to be an added bonus on top of astronomy, because you get to learn a lot about your planet's weather while also studying what is outside your atmosphere, way outside . . .

April 30, 2010 9:44 PM.

This is my most recent report while I was out with the Stellarvue Raptor 80mm ED on the Grab&Go M1 mount with Canon 1000D, no filters (April 25 and 28, 2010). I love this because the moon that used to piss me off, because I could not image deep space, is now my friend. If you can't beat Em', join Em' ! I am starting to like moon imaging, here's why. It takes about 2 minutes to remove the SV80 from the LX90, pop it on the M1 mount, pop in the T-ring and adapter to the Canon DSLR, put it on the scope and go outside. Spur of the moment kind of thing that gives instant aperture fever satisfaction. What I had to learn was that you didn't just take a picture and go back inside, you took many pictures as you focused the SV from one end of focus to the other, with micro movements of the focus. Also, I have learned to take a series of these groups in ISO 400, 800, and 1600. So when an imaging session is over, you have burned through 50 - 100 pics. I also use a remote shutter release which is key to efficiently performing this process. I am not sure why, but the best pics I have taken have been at ISO 1600 with 1/4000th sec exposures. The lens is already in its upwards position, so it is simply a matter of a high sensitivity chip with a quick capture of light. Not sure why, but this is optimal for my system when the moon is bright. At ISO 800 the exposure times are, of course, cut in half but the final images are just not as clear (when the moon is bright). It should be the other way around. Bright moon, lower ISO, dim moon, higher ISO. One hypothesis I have is that I am going too fast during imaging, meaning I am turning the focus knob and hitting the shutter release too soon, and not allowing the telescope to diminish all micro-vibrations - so of course the higher speed exposures would be optimal for this. So towards the end of my imaging session, this hypothesis struck me, and I re-did my ISO 400's allowing time to subside vibrations. Still the same result. Perhaps it is a chip sensitivity thing, if anyone out there has experienced this before shoot me an email via the contact page. I will test this again the next time out. You can see these two new images in the image gallery. But with the way my personality is, I really don't give a crap what I have to do to get that perfect image, as long as it is as close to perfect as I can possibly get it. I'll take what works for my setup. Click Here for Recent Moon Images, scroll through the images.

April 17, 2010 2:05 PM.

If you have seen the "News Articles" section of Astronomy Soup you will see the article about Dark Flow. I think this is the most interesting discovery to date in all of astronomy. Dark flow is the movement of all galaxy clusters in one 20 degree window of the universe, between constellations Centaurus and Vela. The cool thing about it? No one can explain it! I somewhat believe in the Big Bang. It is a pretty solid theory, but I think there is room for more than just a simple big bang, or possibly more to the big bang to help it make sense. Sure I think the universe is expanding, and yes the string theory sounds good too that the universe would swell to its limit and then retract in again. All the theories are cool, but then again, we can only theorize with the small amount of the visible universe that we have to work with. And yes, 14 billion light years (the age of the visible universe) is small. Let's put cosmic background radiation aside and ask the question I have been asking my entire life . . . what is beyond the visible universe? Well, folks, for the first time we have proof that there is something gigantic with a lot of gravity beyond the visible universe. This object is 46.5 billion light years away. And guess what, it is so freaking big and has so much energy that it is pulling entire galaxy clusters towards it. If the universe is expanding, then what and where is it expanding into? Is there another universe larger than ours curving into that 20 degree section of the universe with mass so large that its gravity is affecting the movement of galaxy clusters in our universe? Or is it indeed a portion of our universe that is not included in the "visible universe" that contains a huge object that is cannibalizing the bits and pieces of our visible universe?

This goes back to one of my hypotheses about the evolution of the universe from a big bang's prospective. We know that galaxies are spinning toilet bowls sucking in their surroundings and pulling them with the energy of the black hole in the center. We know that galaxies merge and become larger galaxies. What if we were living during a time when galaxies were in the process of merging into one large galaxy, where all galaxies in the universe act as a single galaxy and eventually spin into one large galaxy. At this point and many billions of years after this formation, the large black hole in the center of this mass would eventually eat itself. At the point when the last star is swallowed up by the black hole, and there is nothing else left to internalize, something happens . . . A Big Bang . . . again. Then all of the matter is released and the process begins all over again.

Whether this is true or not, it helps explain why there would be a big bang, similar to how the string theory explains expansion and retraction. But, now take Dark Flow into the equation. Could this object beyond the visible universe actually be one large galaxy sucking everything that we can see into it?

Or, if you are spiritual . . . could we have finally found the first proof of Heaven?

Chew on that for a while . . .

March 21, 2010. 11:48 PM.

Sometimes things work out for a reason. Tonight I had intentions of gearing up the Stellarvue 80ED Raptor on the M1 mount for some DSLR pics of the crescent moon. With that being said, I went out around 10:30PM. This is a real treat compared to the intrinsic preparation for deep space imaging. But once I had the Canon 1000D camera up and running, I was in for a shocker. Pleiades (M45) was right next to the moon! The cool thing about the live view on the Canon is that you can set the ISO to 100-400 (or whatever) and adjust the exposure time in real time, meaning that you can actually see how bright or dim the moon will be in the pic - just by moving the exposure knob. You can also set the exposure to BULB setting, and with the remote control shutter release you are able to count the seconds. More than 3 seconds and the stars of Pleiades began to smear (without a motorized mount). 2 second shots turned out to be best. The observing session only last about 30 minutes, and it was incredible to be able to be a part of this cosmic "kiss" of the moon and M45. Some of these shots will definitely be posted soon, along with many others. You go from 3 feet of snow to a great weekend like this, and it is all worth it ! One thing I will say is that it is important to have flexibility with your equipment. Lessons learned for the better. Carry on . . .

March 20, 2010. 9:33AM.

Again, another perfect imaging night. All I can say about last night is M51. The tail (handle) of Ursa Major (Big Dipper) is low in the NE sky at the start of the night and makes the big upward turn throughout the night. M51 is located near the end of the handle. The crescent moon set late around 10:30, and when it went down, it was like someone hit the light switch. I was able to remotely control and collect data from 10:30 until 2AM and with in RGB color! Usually I try to get as many objects as possible in Luminescence only, but last night after imaging M81 Lum, I decided to stick with M51. Even at 1 sec exposures you could easily see the entire object, including the background elliptical galaxy. Last night was a strange cosmic experience, as there was a great sunset, a perfect crescent (setting) moon, lots of meteors, satellites zooming by during alignment through the eyepieces, and then a great imaging session (and no neighbors had their porch lights on!) I wish every night could be that way. I will say that the previous night was nothing in comparison as I fought with the equatorial wedge all night. Polar alignment with a 50 pound scope is not fun to learn, which is why I switched back to Alt/Az last night. Let's just say there are tricks to be learned for grab and go polar alignment.

March 10, 2010. 9:43PM.

Wow, we finally had some incredible weather! Even the "transparency" and "seeing" were good last weekend. That is rare. Usually you have a cloudless night, but the "seeing" is always bad and the transparency is variable depending on the weather front moving in and out. Friday night was clear early on but turned into clouds later, thank God for Radar. Saturday night was perfect. I imaged Mars with the new NexImage video cam (interesting camera, I have a movie of Mars now), then NGC 3344 face on galaxy, then M82 cigar galaxy and finally, of course, M81. Hope to get some of my images up in the next week or so. So far I have stacked M82 and the detail is pretty amazing. What a violent galaxy. If I had more time I could get into some second-night-out RGB color images! Well, now the clouds (rain) have rolled back in and we are grounded again. That's why when you see clear skies coming, you really do have to jump on it. I have found out that it is better to prepare and start setting stuff up far in advance, as this helps move the night forward, of course this does not apply to all of you out there with observatories. I'm a mobile guy.

The other aspect I have been perfecting is remote control of my outside laptop computer via my inside desktop. With UltraVNC software and a 100 foot Cat6 cable, you can run everything just like you were sitting outside, especially when it is 20-30 degrees out. Once you are aligned, really all you have to do is be outside for the high precision star focus and centering, make sure you see a hint of a faint fuzzy on your 1-10 second exposures, and go back inside. With Autostar suite, I have control of the telescope movement, and then with Envisage (or Nebulosity2) I have control of the CCD camera.

One of my new projects that I will be working on is taking flats for both scopes. I am building lightboxes for them, but also looking into another route for the 10inch SCT. No matter how hard I clean all equipment in the optical path, I get black dots showing up in the final stacked images. I am sure that the only way to get rid of this is via taking flats. Take darks for white pixels, and take flats for dark flecks, dust, etc.

The cool thing about having cloud breaks is that you have time to really focus on putting all the data together into images, which takes much longer than collecting the images!

More coming soon in response to the cool stuff on the News page of Astronomy Soup! And also hopefully finishing all of the pages on AS.

Cheers . . .

Feb 23, 2010. 10:28 PM.

Snow is still covering the ground in the back yard. I could probably get out there with a shovel or just wait for the sun to melt the rest of it. Life is beginning to get back to normal, and as long as we do not have another blizzard for 3 weekends in a row, I should be able to start imaging again. Knock on wood. I was able to get out the other night with the SVR80ED on the M1 mount Grab N Go (recorded in the backyard logbook). It was nice just to observe. I finally got my mount for the red dot finder on the 80ED and got that all lined up. Amazing how much trouble a red dot finder saves you. So simple and so ergonomic, well maybe the way to explain it is less frustration in trying to find stuff by eye-balling it down the OTA.

Even though I did not have the LX90 out and all my contraptions set up, there is still that element there that is a major component (for me) of observing/imaging. The quiet of the night (besides the occasional dog bark because I run into something). The tranquility of viewing an object so far away, unseen to the naked eye or even through binoculars or small telescopes. Taking in a fragment of our environment that many people either don't really think about much, or simply don't give a rats ass about. And that's okay if they don't, but I think if they could experience one night of observing and taking in the quiet of nature and the void of the night sky, there might be changes in oneself. Perhaps not a liking of astronomy or even looking at DSO's through a high powered telescope . . . but that feeling of a closeness to the Earth and the Universe. There is no other way to describe it. For me, part of all of this science/hobby is just that. Feeling like I am in some way connected to it all, and not just in philosophical thoughts about why am I here, and the rest of the deep thoughts we all have.

Connect, feel, explore, let your eyes see 100 Million light years into the past and catch the photons that the Universe is throwing your way . . . just being a part of all that . . . is half of the game.

Feb 16, 2010. 8:18 PM.

HOT TOPICS . . .

If you have seen the NEWS section of Astronomy Soup, there are a couple of articles that are hot topics. Technology is impressive, with the new SkyVoyager iPhone being able to control a telescope. I'm not real sure it is a necessity or that I would ever want to use this; its more of a novelty, but still it is cool to see what technology can do from the ground up, impressive, but possibly over-kill.

Art detectives using Astronomy to solve the dates and times when famous paintings were painted? Pretty cool, and it is solid evidence for interesting facts. Hey, I guess those detectives have to have something to do. It's just amazing that we know so much about the world around us to be able to go back in time and nail down a 5 minute window when and where a famous artist sat to paint. However, I think that without a space program, our future of understanding our environment is dim . . .

So, now that we are on the most important subject, what is the deal with Obama cutting the cord on NASA's parachute?! I mean, damn, nothing like tar, feather, and frying the #1 space agency in the world. The way I look at it, this man is in no way a scientist. Scientists understand that knowledge and technology are what builds a curriculum. NASA is not just a space agency for the US government, it is an American icon, which represents our history from the past 40 years. I believe that it is a huge part of who we are. I understand the trying times of economic growth, I get that, and I get the whole cut cost, put the money somewhere else (where it can go to waste, possibly). But completely cutting the cord is a bit much. The problem here is that it is not about the current day decision, it is about the future. We have seen this twice, once when Challenger blew up, and second when Columbia burnt up on re-entry. Both instances took years for NASA to get back on its feet. One small change means long-term cut-backs on space exploration advancements. Based on what the news is stating, the damage has already been done, regardless of whether or not a different president would reinstate funding to NASA in the future. The egg is fried. The end of the space shuttle program is depressing enough, but at least NASA had much to look forward to with going back to the moon, which would set the stage for a nice future for human space exploration.

I am sure there is a whole other train of thought, and I am also certain that I do not understand the political reasoning behind cutting costs, but if I may, from a naive perspective, how much has been spent on the Iraq war compared to the space program? Long term, not per day. Since we deployed troops for Desert Storm in 2001 until now, and how much has been invested in the space program during that time? If you click on this website, you will be floored at the real time cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to date. http://www.costofwar.com The actual cost to date has been calculated to 1.05 TRILLION. I am willing to bet that a war of such resistance could probably use a little trimming on funds as well, or how about this . . . wanta' save this country some money? - end it, pull the plug. How about that? It would look good in the history books, "The 10 Year War". Coming to a Theater near you . . .

War or NASA? I could go on and on about this, but bottom line is that we understand cutting funding, but completely shutting down the #1 space agency in the world is a bit absurd and a far premature decision. Did he say commercialized space flight to the ISS, joy rides? Come on, this is not a circus! This is not trips to the top of the Eiffel Tower to take pictures. This is 40 years of serious knowledge, possibly the most intelligent curriculum that the human race has to offer! NASA didn't fail, NASA did everything right. NASA was simply failed.

Feb 12, 2010. 11:14 PM.

This science (As a scientist, I don't call this a hobby), this science . . . is sooooo . . . in the hands of the Earth. Think about it. We rely on the weather, the fluctuations of the Earth. We can do all we can to have the best equipment, the best technology, the best software, etc. ... learn as much as possible, and still, when it comes that time . . . that time when the moon is either not full or hidden behind the Earth (which is usually about a 1-2 week window), WE STILL HAVE FREAKING 3 FEET OF SNOW ON THE GROUND!!!!! I tell ya what . . this is why I make homebrew!

Just got my Stellarvue ring set in today for my F50mm finderscope. Works like a charm. Here's the story. I had the SV50mm somehow fed through the Meade finder scope mount. Not so much . . . even not so much for the Meade finder scope fitting in its own mount! The Meade finder scope kept falling out! Some of the scews would not screw in all the way and the compression screw really serves no purpose. Don't get me wrong, I love Meade and their superior optics, but damn, some of their engineers need to wake up and take notes or go out and use the equipment! Anyway with the SV scope and the Meade mount, I could not get the star centered (star was too high). So now I have the SV50 rings fitted to my LX90 and just waiting to get out and align it, and then get on with the imaging!!!

If you look at my sky chart, tomorrow night should be perfect. Now I need to shovel out 3 holes for my tripod legs. Easier said than done. Our 3 feet of snow is now frozen. I need a hair dryer . . . or a backhoe. Or a beer. Hmmm.

Feb 8, 2010. 10:51 PM.

Snow Snow Snow. More Snow tomorrow!!! Errrrrr!! I have like 3 feet of hardened snow in my backyard to dig out so I can put down a tripod. Could be a while until we see clear skies. The major obstacle right now is the enormous amount of snow on the ground, and not if we will have clear skies anytime soon. Well, since we are on the subject, umm, will we have clear skies soon? Most of 2009 was not clear skies. If there were clear skies during the day, the clouds would roll in at night. The last time I was out was, umm, let me check my log book . . . Jan 15, 2010. Click here for my Log Book, where I have listed my 2009 activity, and this is trying very hard to image.

Jan 15, 2010. First light with SV80ED Raptor piggy-backed to LX90. Aligned all optics on Polaris. Alignment stars: Rigel/Procyon. HP on. Testing new ADM balancing system. Imaging M31, SV80ED+DSI II Pro CCD. NW descent in sky. Very stable tracking. 100's 30sec subs unguided. Processing: Need to take flats, was able to cancel out donuts with Nebulosity2 stacking over DSS stacking, not sure why. M31 not fully in image circle FOV, but nice detail. Should be taken with DSLR larger chip. Introduced to a great program for planning sessions: New Astronomy CCD Calculator. Now Free! Click Here.

Feb 1, 2009. Welcome to my Backyard Blog. The purpose of this Blog is to have fun and provide an example of my trials and tribulations, exploration and astrophotography ups and downs, of the finest moments and the worst. This is a real world record of a field of science that is not cut and dry. There are many different technologies working together to obtain one final result, and that is not always so easy. If I could have blogged my past year, you would all think I had lost my mind! Which I think I did. This science has a huge learning curve, and through this Blog, I wish to share this endeavor with anyone interested in reading. Feedback is welcome. Cheers, and clear skies, Mark.

Comments? Just send me an email via the contact page. Thanks!