(photo with this is iphone image handheld through the Williams 40mm.) Not that great due to secondary shadows, but better than what I could do with the homemade eyepiece I took along.
Viewing and testing the observatory all night I walked out to the mini parking lot where some cars park where the tennis courts used to be. I had left something to do and realized I had to get back into the observatory and drove quickly back into the spot. It' was 7AM and some cars were pulling in and people were parking near the observatory.
The doors was clear and you could see inside, fortunately I had locked it and went inside. A few people were outside and looking in. I couldn't let any of the kids inside because there were no teachers present. I had a productive all night session at the observatory. But I cannot recall what I looked at or what I saw.
Then I woke up. Funny how a dream can alter the way things are compared to the actual layout. There's something for the dream analysts out there.
Differences between the dream and reality. There is no small parking lot where the tennis courts used to be, actually it's just grass and a berm. There is no clear door on the observatory. People parents don't park behind a fenced in area next to the observatory.
There are no vertical internal partitions in the observatory, as if it's a larger observatory with more walking around space inside it like inside my dream.
BRIEF ACCOUNT OF LAST NIGHTS SESSION THEN DETAILS
Actually last night a 10 to 20 minute session that I had hoped to try in making a quick run and taking some photos of the moon through a homemade eyepiece and the 40mm eyepiece we have there, turned into a 2 hour session, that wasn't very productive. I'm not really sure where all the time went. I did play around more with the Losmandy controller, but it was pretty non-productive. I should have been reading or reviewing the manual. I found the wobble function, more by mistake than design. This causes the controller to sweep an area of the sky. I think some dobs like the obsession has a feature with the Sky Commander that is a circular search function to find objects with a programmable feature.
REAL LIFE FACTS FROM LAST NIGHT'S actual impromptu session.
I was really tired last night and needed to go home and get some sleep. But the sky looked fairly clear. Once again clouds seemed to threaten, especially earlier in the day. The clear sky chart showed partial visibility predicted with cloud cover. There was some kind of clear bowl or break in the clouds. The moon looked like it was covered with a little bit of haze not completely clear, but clear enough to get some test photos. I figured I could make a quick test run and find out how quickly I could get from my doorstep to the observatory.
I set a timer and took a photo on my iphone just about when I started. I started the stopwatch on the iphone as a timer. I went upstairs and downstairs a couple of times and threw on my boots. Didn't have much to grab before going. Took a bag of eyepieces and the camera adapter, just in case I gave in and decided to take some kind of real mounted shot. I planned on driving to the observatory, open it up and look at the timer so I'd know how long it took to get from my door to opening the observatory. Unfortunately the door was sticking and I was having problems with the lock before I looked at the timer. I fumbled around with keys and of course opened up the gate and walked through the snow, which didn't delay me to much. It basically took perhaps 5 minutes or less to drive over there. And maybe 5 minutes to open and shut the gate. I didn't leave it open. I didn't want uninvited visitors and since I'm not a FAAC group and it's still cold out, it was unlikely that anyone would wander by.
I think (I'm going to have to check my records) I sent an email to Greg Ozimek and Timothy Dey, giving them an update. It might have been a text message, yes I'm waking up now enough to recall it was an email via a "text to speech" program I have on the iphone called Dragon speech. Dragon speech works pretty well, but it needs you to state things like period to end a sentence and almost always throws a couple of words in that are wrong. I actually texted a couple of corrections while at a stop sign on the way over there. So it wasn't a perfect high speed run or something. But it would take about 10 minutes or less to get over there and open up the observatory, under the most perfect conditions. And that's just opening up the door, not the dome or whatever other stuff you'd do to prepare the observatory or plan or inspect the inside of it.
As it stood, it was 17 minutes before I was inside. I spent what seemed to be an extremely long 7 minutes just trying to open up the door.
Once inside I sat down a couple of bags I took along. One had a camera and camcorder inside. The other my limited set of personal eyepieces. Nothing to big to brag about in my eyepiece bag, I need to get better eyepieces, but haven't figured out how much I'll spend or exactly which eyepieces I'll be buying.
Thinking it would be cloudy and hazy I didn't plan ahead of time to go to the observatory and it was really to late to call up anyone from the FAAC club (at 11PM) on a Monday night, And what would I say, "hi I'm going to spend a few minutes here and the clouds should be here soon."
I figured I'd be there for maybe 20 minutes clouds would appear and I'd have time to perhaps take a few photos through the "Harold" homebuilt 2 inch eyepiece and through one of the bigger 40mm eyepieces at the observatory to compare them. I'd do "pedestrian styled handheld photographs" through the eyepieces.
I took three cameras with me. The iphone 3GS, a Canon t1i and a Sony HD Camcorder.
I could attempt taking stills with all three of these with handheld techniques and see how each eyepiece would stack up.
I wanted to use low powered big glass eyepieces as well. I had good results with the Harold homebuilt 2 inch eyepiece with the moon at home. This worked better however if I zoomed in and best it seemed with the HD cam up to this point. I thought it was the 10x zoom capability of the Sony HD cam.
I wasn't sure if I could get an entire shot of the moon with the C14 and these eyepieces. The C14 has a long focal length and would be high powered and have a narrow field of view.
Maybe I'd get an entire wide field photo of the moon, but we are talking about an F11 scope.
I hoped to take a few quick shots with the iphone and the t1i through both eyepieces and then quickly return home.
This might be a really quick run. 20 minutes inside a few shots taken and then I'll be back home. Little did I know the attraction of staying at the observatory, even when conditions are marginal.
20 minutes had already passed by the time the shutter was finally open. As the shutter opened it labored and squeaked a bit. I could smell an odor from the motor. This wasn't fun and it smelled like a bit like an electrical fire or perhaps a large amount of ozone from the sparks in the motor. Was this fresh ozone, or is the motor failing to move that cold and difficult shutter and burning a bit. I reversed the motor and closed the shutter a bit, hoping the reverse in direction would improve the shutters ease of opening. I wondered about a worse case scenario which would be a motor burning up and small fire starting in the dome. I wouldn't want to be there alone and have some electrical fire break out. That certainly wouldn't be nice. Maybe it's ozone, maybe it's a bad sign.
The motor "sparks" you can see physical sparks fly when you engage it. I can remember seeing it spark even in the old days now. More of a faint recollection than something that I can recall before seeing the most recent sparking show. I now recall seeing that same spark effect over 30 years ago when I was attending the school.
The dome opened up, no fire yet. I moved the dome opening allowing the moon to shine on the C-14. Lights were on. Outside a guy was pushing a shopping cart down the sidewalk near the observatory. He was heading down the sidewalk in the night toward Fort Street.
I shut the door and had all the lights on inside the observatory.
It took some time to uncover and then aim the telescope at the moon. I didn't use or attempt to use the goto functions. The controller moved the scope toward the moon. I'm still learning to move the scope with the controller which will take a little practice.
The arrow keys on the controller are logically set up. For some reason my mind always thinks the telescope is on an dob like mount, not oriented like the GEM equitorial, it's as if my mind thinks at first the up and down arrow keys will move the scope up and down, but the arrow keys cause the mount to turn in relation to the equatorial mount orientation. With the GEM mount you often have meridian flip and the telescope is moving on the DEC and RA axis. Depending on where you are looking the scope is skewed and moving in an axis that is different than the way a person would naturally hold the controller.
It takes a few minutes to get this mapped inside your mind and beginners likely would have problems thinking that an up arrow should move the telescope up, no matter where you're aiming.
The mount moved the scope to the moon.
I put the 40mm Williams optics eyepiece into the telescope. This is a 2 inch eyepiece. It's big and low in power compared to shorter focal length eyepieces. On a typical F5 Newtonian a 40mm eyepiece would easily show the entire moon.
The moon seemed to be outside of the field of view and didn't seem to fit inside the entire field of view. The C14 has a long (f11) focal length and it's not a fast scope without a field reducer. (or a hyperstar configuration.) I was using the scope without any alterations like a field reducer that would give it an F7 focal length.
Maybe it's my eyes and the iris and my position. It looked the the moon would almost totally fit. But I didn't look at it very long, because the moon was way to bright without filters and I didn't have a filter installed. The almost full moon was very bright and would quickly blind and ruin any hopes of good night vision just by looking at it. The moon of course is not the first thing a person should look at in a typical night, but this wasn't meant to be a typical viewing night.
After getting the eyepiece in focus. I started the iphone's camera application and tried to get a shot of the moon using the iphone. I've had better luck with a more powerful smaller eyepiece with the iphone than with big eyepieces.
In this case the brightness of the moon through the C14 played havoc with the exposure setting with the iphone 3GS. The auto exposure and focus were not settling down. It was more the case of firing off a few shots and hoping to catch something. I was thinking a low powered big piece of glass might be the best for phone camera photographs, for the public, but now I don't know if that's the case. With higher powered smaller pieces of glass and a little zoom you can get a pretty decent snapshot. The iphone and most camera phones don't have a zoom. It seems like you need to get part of the light cone and try to put the phone in position to try to avoid the obstruction that shows up. Maybe with more testing I can figure out if there's a good technique. I spent a little more time than a visitor would spend trying to get an eyepiece photo through the 40mm eyepiece and was disappointed with the results. i thought I'd get a much better photo. Then it was time for the Harold homebuilt eyepiece.
This is a wide field eyepiece. I estimated it at being at least 60mm in focal length and it provides really nice wide field views through the big Newtonian (big bertha). I thought it might offer a really nice wide field view and push the C-14's lower powered limits. I likely does this. It's field of view however is not that great, not as large as I thought it would be, with the C14. It has roughly the same field of view as the 40mm Williams optics eypiece. At 60mm estimated focal length it should have a wider field and not the same as the 40mm Willams, but perhaps the lens design gives it a more narrow actual field than one might expect. Maybe that Williams optics is using some super wide field design. I've since verified this Williams swan eyepiece is a wide field design and supposed to give pretty wide views. It does this, so the 60mm is not really performing badly at all, it's just the Williams performs with a very wide view.
I thought I might be experiencing the same power at first due to field of view. Maybe thethe home made Harold eyepiece was a shorter focal length?
This Harold built eyepiece throws a really long light cone however. I seemed to have more problems with the central obstruction and finding a good location for the iphone using the Harold eyepiece on the C14. When I review my blog post and look at the photos, the Williams performed better on the C14 than the Harold Homebuilt for iphone photography. I can't say the same thing for the Newtonian at home which may not show any advantage to the Williams eyepiece.
In either case, it was taking much longer than it should have ideally to get a picture using eyepiece and hand held techniques with both eyepieces and the C14. It would be something that would be disappointing for most visitors and not worth their effort. We would be better off using a mounted camera and perhaps emailing them a still later.
The t1i didn't fair much better. It didn't seem to be able to easily zoom and I basically had to hold it so close it could perhaps scratch the lens of the t1i to get a chance at a decent photograph. Maybe it was the cold, maybe I was being rushed. I can sometimes zoom in with a camera or the Sony Camcorder which has a more powerful zoom and get a decent still.
I had one pretty spectacular still handheld using my camcorder and the "Harold" lens on Big Bertha, which is a 10 inch f5.35 Newtonian. It seems the Harold lens is optimized to perform better on Big Bertha for photography. Maybe it was just a case of me spending more time with the Newtonian when it was warmer out.
The smaller field of view from a longer focal length telescope seems to hinder handheld photographs. Maybe a rich field excels more for pedestrian handheld shots.
I even tried to take a shot without the lens on the x1i. This held up near the telescope eyepiece. A person visiting would not do this. It didn't provide a good result or really provide any benefit as far as I can tell. Using the zoom didn't really provide much benefit either.
I picked up more secondary obstruction shadows with the Harold lens on the C14 than with the 40mm. This might mean the homemade eyepiece is just to low powered to be useful for the C14. I'd have to experiment more, but on the C14 it seemed to work better with the Williams Optics was more forgiving for iphone photography.
The camcorder was in my bag and I decided to pull it out and try it. I had some pretty spectacular results with Big Bertha and this camcorder and the moon. It gave me some pretty good stills. I had a lot more problems with the C14. The zoom with the camera didn't really overcome light cone and shadow issues. I didn't find a good setting or sweet spot. There were dark shadows on the photos. When I focused in deep into the image using the zoom image quality suffered.
Maybe it was the cold night and I was tired. I'm not sure why I had as difficult a time. Maybe it's the longer focal length and higher power. Maybe I was less patient. Maybe the focal length and resulting exit characteristics of the light cone just make it more difficult. I'm still not sure why I didn't get better results.
Taking handheld stills through an eyepiece takes a lot of experimentation if you're holding the camera and you have to shoot a lot of junk shots and be really patient. It seemed the zoom on the camcorder allowed it to give me really spectacular shots from the Harold eyepiece and my faster Newtonian. Perhaps that is the ultimate setup for handheld pedestrian styled eyepiece photos.
The Harold eyepiece gives me a bigger field of view in the Newtonian than a 1.25 40mm Meade eyepiece. So it seems like it's a lower powered eyepiece in the Newtonian and I'd estimate it as a 60mm 2 inch eyepiece.
All in all I was pretty happy with the results from the William 40mm 2 inch eyepiece on the C14.
I've spent to much time on this review and story and have to finish this later. I'll update it or add more comments and finish the story later. But really there wasn't much else that happened as far as getting a good photo or great views of other objects. I seemed to waste a lot of time with the mount. And I took a quick look at Mars finally, but clouds started to cover it and cut short any decent attempts at getting any good visual detail or decent photographs. Perhaps the best photo was a quick handheld shot of the C-14 and Mars outside the shutter in the same photo, through the shutter and thin clouds. This was shot without a tripod and handheld. A tripod would have done a better job as the exposure was 1.6 seconds.
No comments:
Post a Comment