My Backyard Blog

Endeavors of Exploration and Astrophotography

Logbook . . .

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January 4, 2011.

Hello Andromeda. Full setup with Stellarvue 80ED piggy back. Aligned with Betelgeuse and Mirach, high precision star was Mirach with a synch on Andromeda. Beautiful tracking all night, no major movements. Nebulosity2 for control of the Canon XSi DSLR camera attached to 80mm scope. Took well over 150 images at 30 sec subs. Had many to chose from but chose the darkest and cleanest subs to produce a final pic of 41x30sec (See blog and album). Dew heater power supply switch broke, so had to wing it with dew covers only. New 20mm illuminated reticle worked good until it fogged up pretty quick. Not to cold, high 30's. Very peaceful as usual, quiet night, just the roll and hum of the tracking motors on the LX90. A nice sound. Cheers.

Ocotber 8 & 9, 2010.

Comet Chasing! Way too much fun. The target was Comet Hartley 103P as it flew by the double cluster. Align stars were Vega (West) and Shedir (Cassiopia East). Great tracking, which is visible in the video, except for field rotation. It was moving so fast that I could only stack 3 subs for a final picture, without getting smearing. I used the double cluster as my goto point after focusing on a high precision star. Then, with the CCD cam hooked up to the LX90, I used the 80mm Stellarvue Raptor to find the comet and put it in the FOV of the CCD. Very dim comet with a short tail. Please CLICK HERE to goto the time-lapse video of this session.

July 11, 2010.

Full setup with 80ED piggyback. Manual 2-star Align stars were Arcturus (West) and Vega (East). Imaged M100, M27, NGC 4565. All three produce decent Lum images that are complete but need to be uploaded. I have noticed that Mid Summer images are not as crisp as Spring images, most likely because of bad seeing conditions due to humidity and atmospheric water and heat. These are nice images but I think they are a bit grainy and would fair better if they could be imaged in cooler weather, at least with the current camera I have now. Will be posting them soon to the image gallery section.

June 10 & 11, 2010.

Working with new computer and getting software up and running. Ran into issue with composite vs. uncombined saving of files, so I lost a whole night of imaging M102 because of this. Then went out the second night and got images of M102 in Draco. Align stars were Algeieba (lLeo) and Vega (Lyra). The image of M102 was too small for detail and really requires a much higher quality chip to pull out the detail. Looks like a fuzzy flying saucer. Will not be imaging that again.

May 5 & 6, 2010.

Full setup, imaging. Remote link to inside computer. Manual 2-star alignment on Pollux and Alkaid. Imaging target: M64, Blackeye Galaxy. Decent conditions. May 5th, Luminescence all night, over 200 images. Imaging near meridian, not so stable unguided. May 6th, Aligned closer to target, Pollux and Vindermiatrix. Better alignment compared to previous night. RGB imaging. Made a cardboard sleeve to place over the filters to prevent dew fogging. Dark subtraction failed half way through blue imaging? What is it with blue filters, I either have the worst tracking or something like this happens. Blue is bad luck! Re-took darks and continued for a decent LRGB image. With better conditions, would have brought out more definition, but happy with the image I whittled out of deep space from my backyard.

April 25 and 28, 2010.

Stellarvue Raptor 80mm ED on the Grab&Go M1 mount with Canon 1000D, no filters. Notes: After focus allow scope to subside all vibrations. This might be why I was getting cleaner images @ ISO 1600 - 1/4000th sec exposures. Even though I tried to test this hypothesis, it needs to be retested at all ISO's. (Just the scientist in me.) The 2 new images can be found in the image gallery. One is 92% full, and the other is 99.7% full moon.

April 17, 2010.

Non-imaging night. Trained drives multiple times until I was happy with complete precision. Calibrated sensors. Tested manual 2-star alignment with success on Alkaid and Pollux. Very nice tracking of M51, M109, and M101. Mars was in opposition of Beehive Cluster. Crescent moon for a portion of the night. Very peaceful evening with no pressure of LRGB before bed! LOL But I like the pressure if I know I'm getting data!

April 10, 2010.

Imaging, entire setup, f/6.3 FR. Alignment stars Auto: Capella + Regulus. HP Star = Dubhe. DSO: M82. LRGB. Notes: good tracking all night. Strong pivot later in the night. 4 hours of data. Had to refocus for RGB. Slight dew issues, but with turning up the over-ambient temps on the dew buster, the issues were quickly resolved. Even though there was good tracking in this part of the sky, I have had bad tracking in others. The autoalign stars are always very close together, which is a problem for me. In the past when I have done 2-star alignments I have been getting errors. But with recent testing, it looks like I do not get those errors when I do new calibrate sensors. Hmmm. Will be switching back to 2-star soon. Need to re-train everything. Decent image produced from imaging session.

March 20, 2010.

Grab & Go with SV80ED on M1 mount and Canon 100D DSLR camera mounted via 2" T adapter. To my surprise, when the moon focus came into view, I saw Pleiades M45 right next to the moon. This imaging session prduced a killer image of the moon and the moon with Pleiades right next to it. What kind of luck is that. This night was not planned. I was working with the data from the previous nights session. It was a "Yeah, I guess I could take a break and go see what the moon is doing . . ." These images will also be posted soon. Awesome stuff.

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March 19, 2010.

Imaging LX90 and SV80 piggy back. Took off the EyeopenerII and replaced the stock visual back to give fork clearance to the camera with a 105mm total backfocus distance and 80mm of spacer. Imaged M81 again and still too big for image circle on CCD chip. Note to self: Need larger CCD chip camera. Will work on M81 with DSLR on the SV80 next time. Was able to get a ton of data on M51 LRGB using filters for the rest of the night (~2 hours of constant imaging). Turned out to produce my best LRGB image yet, which I will be posting to the images section of the Backyard Blog soon. Pictures like that is what makes this addictive.

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March 6, 2010.

Imaging with LX90 piggyback SV80 full load. Using only 50mm spacer on camera due to fork clearance problems with the EyeopenerII visual back. Gain one function, lose chip image circle diameter! Worked with NexImage Camera on Mars. Got a video of Mars. Not in focus, not enough time to fool with focusing the camera. Pretty cool gadget though. Once I can get it in focus, I am sure it will produce some cool images of planets. DSI II I imaged NGC 3344 and M82 successfully. M81 was too big for image circle. GOTO problems with 2403. Good night and was remote CAT6 wired to desktop inside and had full control of scope and camera outside.

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Feb 13, 2010.

Stellarvue Raptor SV80ED Grab N Go / M1 mount. Too much snow for LX90. Aperture fever. Viewing only. Mars had depth of field as a true sphere. Red with minimal surface features, no polar ice caps visible. Barlowed 6.4mm, which is > max mag for SV80ED (166X). 150X mag before loss of focus. There was slight problem with perfect focus, which could be due to slightly overshooting max mag. Then went to Orion nebula. perfect crisp views. Tried to do some sketching but I totally suck at it, but hey that is what CCD imaging is for. Next went to Pleiades (7 sisters). Very crisp views of all 7 main sequence stars in FOV. Looked for M1 but could never find it with 80mm. Now I have imaging fever!

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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.

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Below is a list of the logbook entries for 2009, with Meade LX90 SCT 10 inch. As you can see, this is how bad the weather was in 2009. These observing sessions are also dependent on if the moon is shadowed or not visible, which creates yet another variable. There could be clear skies with a full moon. Not good for imaging, unless you are taking moon shots (which I plan to do more of this year with DSLR and SV80ED). Clear skies for 2010 !

2009

Jan 27. Viewing Misc.

Feb 21. Viewing Misc.

March 18. Planetary Viewing.

March 20. M65/M66, M87, M81, M82, M101, M34 Viewing.

March 22. M81, Saturn Imaging.

March 24. Alignment Testing, calibrate sensors, drive training. M101, M82 Viewing.

April 16. M3 cluster, M51 sketching, viewing. Tracking Test.

April 17. M3 Imaging.

April 23. M108, M97, M44, Saturn Barlow Viewing. M65 Imaging Session.

May 29. Alignment Testing.

May 5. Alignment Testing. Issues with alignment tracking. Vibration wobble, image movement/jumping.

May 17. LX90 sent back to Meade.

July 14. LX90 back from Meade with repair work. Train drives, testing, NGC 6992/6995, 6826, 6503, M27 Viewing. Tracking problem fixed.

July 17. Imaging. M29/ M27. f/3.3 FR Testing. Dew problems. Looking into better dew system.

Aug 25. Imaging with new DewBuster. M13 and NGC6503 30sec subs unguided, nice tracking. Image produced.

Oct 4. New balancing system. Testing f/3.3 FR, smearing problem with ACF technology. Imaging M31. Examples of star smearing produced.

Note: Found out the hard way. Meade f/3.3 Focal Reducer does not work with ACF optics technology. Thanks for letting me know, BTW. Traded for f/6.3

Oct 5. Imaging M57.

Oct 29. Viewing, Testing tracking on M57 all night, Jupiter viewing, banding detail.

Nov 8. Imaging NGC7331, Testing f/6.3 Best image produced so far.

Nov 9. Viewing, Imaging. NGC 6910, 7888, 7000, 7027, 6992, 6995, 6960, 7331. M39, M15. M33 chosen for Imaging target. Could not visually see M74.

Dec 11. Imaging M33 and M74. 20deg F !!! Remote Imaging session via CAT6 cable inside. Full control of all equipment outside. Testing/Imaging. Actually caught the arms on M74 (The Phantom Galaxy) with DSI II CCD. M33 was too large for image circle but nice detail.