Monday, August 22, 2011

Observatory will not be open to the public during demolition.

I was able to stop by the observatory and test a camera and PEC training of the mount last night.

I ended up taking a few long exposure photos of a comet called c2009p1 Garradd, which is shining at about magnitude 8.3. This comet can be seen with small telescopes but if you are in a very bright sky or surrounded by a lot of lights, you will probably need a very large telescope.

The tracking PEC periodic error correction we have put into the mount hasn't worked out very well yet. My comet tests that were longer exposures didn't look good. I was able to play with a shorter exposure of the comet and came up with a photo using Apple preview app. I made a lot of color and even curve color adjustments with the free preview tool, that runs on a Macintosh computer.

Below is a modified photo of the comet. This makes the comet look much different than it actually does when viewing it in the eyepiece. I have false colors in this photo. I modified the photo to make the trail of the comet look red.

It gives the comet photo an almost 3d comic book look.




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