Getting ready for a short observing session

I overslept and will be heading to observe or play with the star model which is damaged. (Typo correction in blog press for iPad)

It's 11:30 kind if late to start on a work night.

I napped and overslept.

Here's my dinner.





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sorry no observing Monday night at the observatory

I spent a little time at the Wyandotte cable studio as a guest of the FAAC astronomy cable show.

I didn't spend a lot of time practicing an answer for the shows questions. We had a list of the questions ahead of time, giving us some chance to formulate our answers. I hope I didn't stutter to much in the interview. Anyway, there's going to be a second show about the observatory where they videotape the segment at the observatory.

I even created a brief video with some stills and limited video for a short piece. Thanks to the wonders of video editing I can work on that a little more and we can insert it into the show.

Over the weekend we were there and I was out a little late observing Saturday. Also Sunday, which was a bit of a waste of time, although we learned some things about the setup and connecting laptops to the Losmandy controller, somehow we destroyed the star model and have to enter a new one for the tracking of the scope.

We also tested goto meeting and showed live video, from a webcam feed of the observatory and live video of a video monitor feed. This is not the final setup for web broadcasting from the observatory, but just a test. It was fun, and we learned a lot from that.

An audio feed or perhaps a live chat from the observatory would probably make a feed much better, we were not sending audio over the net with the live feed.

That's it for now. It was a long day. I'd like to observe but I have to rest for work tomorrow.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Solar observing now

Trying to record a video clip with new Stellacam at this time


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Orion nebula about 16 degrees above horizon at 4:08am

Checking out Orion nebula before I go to sleep.

Wonderful night but a lot of ground fog rising.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Will be out at the observatory at 10;30pm for hours

I will be back out at about 10:30pm.

I'm raking a break after solar viewing and getting a few stills and video clips.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Joingotomeeting.com
376-774-723

The above link is active as we test looking at the sun online using the Stellacam and other tools.

The observatory is open for some testing via gotomeeting.

Sent from my iPhone



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sunday night and Monday were not good for observing

I met Dr. Timothy Dey for some observing Sunday night. This with some doubt as to how nice and clear it would be out. Soon clouds appeared and there were only a few openings from time to time to get a view of the moon or Jupiter. Jupiter seemed to be playing hide and seek for an hour or so. We sat and chatted, I cleared out some floor space, taking one support leg off the stand and removing a 10 inch newtonian reflector I had left inside from an earlier night of observing.

Tim also updated some of the software on the computer and loaded some antivirus software on the machine.

We had a good time anyway. Viewed the moon a bit and Jupiter a bit.

Monday night I received a text message from Sean, one of our newer members. He wanted to know what I was doing? Just seeing that text made me go out and take a look at the sky. It looked pretty good. I didn't check the clear sky chart, wanting to head out to grab a bite to eat anyway.

I texted back that I'd be out there. I put a late night message on a FAAC message system that I'd be out there likely until 12pm. It looked mostly clear with some threatening clouds on the horizon. By the time I actually loaded up my car stopped at a drive through and drove over, it became clear that clouds were moving in and covering most of the sky. There was a slim sliver of open sky near the west. Sean and his girlfriend arrived. She hadn't seen the inside of the observatory, so we gave her a quick tour of the observatory. No observing tonight.

With some of the hit and miss partly cloudy nights I've not even bothered to get the hopes up of those of you who might read this blog. If it's kind of marginal I may stop by to do some kind of maintenance, but I may not announce I'm there. I've tried announcing last minute to FAAC members using a different internet method we use, but often won't tell the public if I'm out there last minute. This is more to keep from wasting the time of others who would like to come out when there is good viewing. Sometimes I'm caught off guard with some late night clearing.

The other week (did I cover that in another post?) I woke up early in the morning and the sky was clear, so I headed out to view from the school grounds next to the observatory. I didn't even open up the observatory to use the telescope inside but instead focused on viewing with my binocular telescope. A visitor approached and started to chat. He never saw the inside of the observatory, so I opened up to give him a quick tour and we looked at four objects in the sky. Sometimes these things happen unannounced.

I'm hoping to get out near the end of the week. There may be more members of the club out Friday and Saturday if the skies are nice.

That's it for now. I took some shots of the observatory with the poor cloud conditions the past few nights and may post some of them later.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

(Luna) . . . And other times obscured

Posted from iPhone camera through the binocular telescope with a 25mm eyepiece giving 36 power.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Luna at times she peeked between the clouds

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

It's looking real bad now with tons of clouds, don't stop by

I just called one of the members and told him to stay home it's too cloudy out.

Sorry everyone who might have read this and hoped to stop by. Looks like mother nature isn't cooperating.

I'm going to leave early, there's no point in staying at an observatory to watch a sky full of clouds.

I'll walk the track and go home to sleep.

The weather looks to be bad for the nest couple of days. It may clear up Sunday night. I may be out Sunday night.

Greg


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I'm going to the observatory at this moment

12 pm Friday night

Some bino lunar viewing and we will see what happens sky wise.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I could also make out small craters with the 15mm eyepiece and the binocular telescope

For example this crater.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I got out for about an hour with the binocular telescope

Focused on looking at the moon and identifying craters. I identified a crater that shares the same name as a friend of mine. Also some other craters. . . some being quite small and others being larger of course. The relief or shadows near the terminator are simply spectacular through the binocular telescope. The maps and illustrations don't do it justice.

Here's a sample from moon atlas that shows a large crater in deep relief due to shadows that any telescope should easily see.

Image below from moon atlas.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Jupiter Thru Nexstar 4SE

****
Do you wonder where I've been. I've been under the weather. That is suffering from some kind of cold, ailment or whatever. It was so bad I thought I was going to pass out and felt sick enough to check myself into ER last week. I didn't know if I was having a heart attack or what? I felt dizzy and as if I would pass out any moment, so off to ER I went.

Tonight I'm still under the weather and I didn't plan out going out to the observatory, because I've been to much under the weather. I did however take a quick look out with my telescopes at home and took a few shots of Jupiter with my little Nexstar. The sky is so transparent and wonderful tonight. I wish I felt better and could have been out and opened up the observatory. It's also cool out and no bugs were biting.

I combined trips tonight, that is I took out my binocular scope briefly before eating dinner out tonight.

I felt like my back was ripped up pretty well and I haven't even done anything to cause that.

Finally after viewing the moon a bit, I drove home. Immediately seeing that the seeing looked good, I brought out the Nexstar. I decided to take a few photos through it, using the T mount on the regular eyepiece, and shooting through a 25mm and then 15mm eyepiece. Here's the results

****

Comparison of three Actual Size, jpg files. Unretouched, from Canon T1i.

These taken through a T mount (lower Right, inverted image) and a 25mm Plossl (handheld at 3x zoom into eyepiece), and through a 15mm (handheld, 3x zoomed into eyepiece).

No processing of the jpgs has been performed. All were displayed in actual size. Reduced sizes would make them sharper of course.

The effects of rely morning dew on the lens.

Here's an early morning photo from Dexter. When this was taken dew had fallen on the lens of the camera, obscuring the image details.

It looks almost like it's been manipulated with paint, but it hasn't been manipulated.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I had a grueling weekend with a lot of stargazing

I don't want to say how late I stayed out. But the stargazing at the observatory last Thursday, Friday night in Dexter and Saturday at Island Lake multi-club picnic took its toll. I was to tired to do any stargazing at home much less get out to the observatory.

Here's a poster example from a photo I took of my friend in his yard last week.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Tonight I'll be at island lake

Here's a photo from last night. I stepped into the frame while the camera was taking a 30 second exposure.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I finally saw the pleidies open star cluster this year

It's been a while since I saw this cluster. Nice to see it rise at the Dexter viewing location but it was nearly 3am when I noticed it being out.

So many bright stars it was difficult to find constellations. A pretty nice dark sky site compared to the urban setting.

3am might be a little late at the FAAC picnic viewing site tomorrow. I have a feeling it will be some time before m45 pleidies is visible for the observing or star parties.

I took to many pictures compared to what I thought I'd take out here and stayed out here too long. O decided to sleep on the couch out here and drive back tomorrow morning. At least the dew will clear off all the eypieces by sunrise. I had so much dew on stuff I left the caps off most of the eyepieces.

Time to snooze. . .




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Out at a darker sky location than Lincoln Park can offer

About four miles from peach mountain.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

No observing tonightsorry for the late

I'm out observing at a freinds house, sorry for the late post last night was fun. More on that later.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Will open the observatory tonight at 10pm and maybe earlier

If I open it up early I'll put a post out here, but I doubt I'll be there in time for solar viewing today.

We had a faac executive board meeting and I was at that today and have a few errands to run.

Didn't open the observatory due to weather and humidity

SO THE OBSERVATORY WAS CLOSED - Instead I observed from the Possum Platform at home.

There were reports of storms possibly occurring on the radio. It was very humid and hazy last night, especially around 11PM. While running a late night errand I looked up and saw it might be worth taking a look to test the atmosphere (bowl like clearing conditions). The clear sky chart report stated it would be cloudy and transparency would not be good.

I was too tired to open up the observatory. I didn't want to throw out a late night post and then have someone arrive late to be disappointed by poor seeing and humid conditions. The humidity we had last night might rival a Panama rain forest.

I pulled out a couple of small telescopes and observed at home (for a "quick" look). It's funny how a quick look can turn into a long look and then you're falling asleep outside instead of being inside.

Transparency was better than I expected from the clear sky chart, with little "flickering" noticable, but the consistant view was somewhat bubbling from the humidity. I don't know if there's a good way to say transparency seemed okay, but humidity hampered the view. I was able to see the great red spot or at last something that looked like it, through the binocular telescope with 15mm eyepieces.
(about 46 power.)

There was some dew as well. The heat and humidity seemed pretty oppressive. My glasses would fog up or dew up when I would set them down. It was like being in an unpleasant sauna, with a few bugs buzzing around. I sprayed myself with enough insect repellant to perhaps keep stray pit bulls away.

Memerized or perhaps just to tired to pick up and go back inside, I felt myself drifting into Rem sleep, well perhaps more like REM observing.

Nothing of major interest to report, just gazed at the moon and Jupiter for a long time. I was trying to see how many details I could spot on Jupiter. I get this perception or feeling that some of the moons are closer and coming around this side of Jupiter and others are further back when viewing Jupiter through the binocular telescope. I think this is more of an imagined than something that can be proved, maybe it's actually some kind of optical illusion.

THE WANING MOON
The moon was wonderful, a better view than the night before. The sky was clear and not showing a glow or colored effect from pollution in the sky. I could stare at the terminator line most of the night. Some of the craters and mountains shinied brightly out of the shadows due to their height. One large crater(sorry I didn't look up the name) had a rim that was bright and lit up but darkness surrounded the rim. Darkness was inside the crater walls. That crater looked like half a mirror test on a test stand, where the edge of the mirror is brightly lit up and the rest of the mirror is dark. While watching a star suddenly appeared next to the dark side of the moon. It was covered (occulted) by the moon. The moon had past over the star and it suddenly appeared and flickered in the night sky. it appeared near the top dark side of the moon. (Remember I was using a binocular telescope, so this would look like it was near the botton of the moon in most telescopes or photos.)

The moon had an orange tint the night before, but last night it was more cold and white looking. The image bubbled a bit near the outer fringe. Not a bad view for 36 power.

I searched for the ring nebula and could not find it. This is a small target. Perhaps to small for the small telescope I was using.(magnitude 9.5) If I had the 10 inch Newtonian out I'd have likely found it, but I only used two small telescopes and didn't want to drive to the observatory to use the C-14 or a goto mount.

I also tried to take a handheld photo of the area where the ring Nebula would be. It was to hot to play with the telescope and pull it off the camera tripod so I just flopped down on the wood deck to shoot handheld. I pressed the camera against my face trying to hold perfectly still while the 10 second exposure went off. I'm not even sure I had a good focus, it wasn't bad, but it was far from perfect.

While I was laying perfectly still on the deck;, taking a few photos, I imagined being attacked by a local possum who took up residence under our deck.

I tried to remain calm while imagining that the possum would attack -- perhaps defending her "nest" of little possum offspring. (Possums have 13 little ones in their litter or swarm or whatever we are supposed to call them.) The possum family of course bothers the neighbors. The possums have been eating our neighbors corn before our neighbors could harvest any of it. And one little possum has been poisoned and crawled and died in another neighbors garage ("stinking it up to high heaven".) I told my neighbor (who removed the dead body) the possums want to live on our property, eat at the other neighbors garden, and die on his property.

Possums have 50 sharp teeth but probably won't fight, or be aggressive unless cornered and they'd rather play possum/dead than fight most of the time. They are like a cute, big ugly rat. They are actually marsupials and can climb like a fat squirrel. They have hands and feet that grasp like our hands and carry their kids in a pouch. Also they rarely get rabies, but they are pests and love to eat out of gardens and local garbage cans.

They have an odor kind of like a skunk that they give off and reportedly leave dropping that are kind of like dog droppings, but smell worse. I don't know for sure what possum droppings smell like, hopefully I'm not rolling around on them on my deck late at night enough to start smelling like a possum.

DISCLAIMER: (I hope that I don't smell like a possum, but sometimes may play possum at work.)

Well the possum never showed up, maybe poisoned by eaten some rat poisoning. My handhel photos don't rate a posting here.. I could get a faily clear shot at 10 or 13 seconds exposure. A 20 seconds exposure was to blurred with obvious camera movement.

Reviewing the photos I thought, maybe I should be looking for the Hercules Cluster instead as it was obviously nearby. I focused on using the binocular telescope most of the time, and the mount would not supply a steady view while looking up near the zenith (straight up).

This morning thinking about how tired I've been lately a part of a line came into my mind and I tried to write a short poem around it. So here it is. . . kind of old fashioned sounding.

-----

My eyes are moon burned from looking last night,

with cold dark circles beneath.

The hot humid air, bubbling atmosphere,

drove my observing to grief.

-----

Hmm. . . funny what looking at an OPT website can do.

Photo above is a long exposure of me looking at the moon through the Vixen Binocular Telescope.

I was looking up the Lunt Solar scope that we have in the observatory on the OPT site. Ocean Pacific Telescope is one dealer that sells these and other telescopes. There are more expensive telescopes out there of course, but the 35mm Lunt Solar scope is a pretty nice telescope for solar viewing. Bigger Hydrogen Alpha setups are great and provide more detail. But a 60mm solar scope of this type could be in the $3500 range. And a 100mm in the $7000 to $8000 range. You can buy hydrogen alpha filters and spend nearly $8,000 to put a filter on a larger telescope. Often these filters may include a blocking filter and a special adapter that matches it from the same manufacturer, for instance Daystar makes some of these packages. You could easily spend $10,000 for a filter set for a larger telescope. We even have a member who has a filter set that would likely cost in the $8,000 range in our club. He states this gives much more detailed solar views than you'll see in a typical small solar hydrogen alpha telescope.


Many astronomers have small solar telescopes, one very popular one being the PST or Personal Solar Telescope. These cost about $500. You can get "dual filters" for the front of these PST instruments and that could push the cost over $1000.

But what about the 35mm dual filter Lunt setup? It's really nice, and after looking through it, that to me would be the minimum personal solar telescope I'd want, or something more expensive. Some of the photos on the Nasa site from the earth are through solar telescopes that are 60mm or larger. It's difficult to imagine taking a photo that was published through a smaller solar telescope. Is a telescope for viewing the sun worth the price? Well it depends on the astronomer I suppose. But considering it's easier to look at the sun during normal hours than stay up late to look at some faint object that might be affected by haze, it's clear that a lot of people find solar viewing a great pursuit.

In looking at the Lunt, meaning the exact same one we have in the observatory, one thing becomes very interesting and clear. The telescope is small and portable. But it's also not very wide. It's narrow enough to "mount in a binocular configuration". This makes a personal solar telescope purchase of the exact same model very interesting from my own perspective. Because it means there might be a chance to make a mount that would hold one I purchased with one from the observatory, for viewing at the Lincoln Park Site. It would be very interesting from my perspective, to pull up with a matching Lunt Solar scope with a mount and pull the Lunt from the observatory for a temporary use outside on a separate binocular mount. I have seen the effect that binocular viewing can have in enhancing the moon watching experience. I'd like to experience binocular or stereo viewing of the SUN through a really nice setup.

This is perhaps the "next buying temptation". But of course I'd have to be careful and probably go over the alternate configuration setup for use at the observatory with the club and the school system. I think it's a possibility, but I'm not sure how long it will be before I order a Solar scope to test it out. (Then again I could get a second Lunt without a mounting bracket or eyepiece even cheaper. I have dual eyepieces already for the binocular telescope setup.) Maybe I could fabricate the binocular setup and get into stereo solar viewing for about $1100 without figuring the cost of the mount. It's tempting to think about.

One thing to consider when solar viewing is the sun beating down on you as you watch and that heating you up and making the view uncomfortable as well. So some kind of make shift shielding is also a nice thing to plan for. In the observatory we can use the shutter to block out the sunlight from the viewer most of the time and just allow the sun to peek past the shutter into the Lunt mounted on the mount. With a Binocular setup, things would be a little more complicated for the shielding.

Okay, enough late night thinking about solar scope purchases, time to get some sleep. . . it's cloudy out.

A little better photo, but still not much compared to the view

As promised here's a photo through the eyepiece from the Canon t1i.

This photo still is not nearly as good as it should be. I'd estimate the view looking through the eyepiece showed 20 times more detail and many more craters than in this handheld photo.

To do the photograph correctly, I should have mounted a webcam like device to the telescope and taken a video clip or movie with this mounted on the telescope properly. With the Vixen, it's likely that I'd have to use "eyepiece" projection, which is not the case with many telescopes, for example the telescopes in the observatory. So I'd need an adapter that held the webcam over the eyepiece using "eyepiece" projection into the webcam. The video recording would provide many frames and good software would select the best frames and give me a photograph that would look as good or better than what we'd see in the eyepiece.

Because I continue to do handheld photos most of the time through eyepieces my photo suffer in quality.

Still you can get a rough idea what the view was like seeing this photo. Most cheap telescopes would give a view this well and even better than presented below.

When I get a proper webcam and adapter things may change. Or when we get the replacement camera for the observatory that should have movie capability. This will likely happen in about a month or so. With Astronomy you may want to take you're time and be patient, as many things in the sky will be there in the future for us to look at. Sometimes as consumers we forget that and tend to rush out to get the latest gadgets to look at the stars.

A simply horrible photo

Just to be sure I put something out I'm including this as an example of a bad photoof the moon through an eyepiece.

This is blurry and doesn't show any decent detail. The telescope shows so much more detail and fine quality than this junky photo I have to make excuses.

Why is it difficult to take a good photo at the eyepiece? Well there's a sweet spot, you need to hold the camera injust the right position and the iPhone 3 gs needs to set focus and exposure via a target which you can pick with a touch of your finger on the face of the phone. Then touching the phone to trigger the photo moves it aa well. You also don't have a zoom capacity to get a decent framing or vary the exposure. So you en up with shots like this.

This should have a lot more detail and there's probably 100 times more detail at the eyepiece.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

What to do when it's cloudy

Eat out.

When I returned home from Carters in Dearborn, the sky cleared up a little. This was later at night around midnight.

I had other errands to run. Once finished, I looked up and saw the moon rising with mist and clouds. Wanting to check out the moon a bit with the binocular telescope, I set it up for a quick look. The ridges near the terminator line were amazing to view. The night and conditions were getting worse, but I took a few shots of the setup and tried to take a handheld shot through the eyepiece with the iPhone camera. Those photos looked to be poor in quality, so I pulled put the canon eos and tried taking a few with that.

I didn't have time to upload those photos to the blog and didn't bring my camera to do any uploading during lunch, so the photo from Carters will remain in this post.

I'll try to post one of the other photos in the next blog entry.






- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone