It's been a busy holiday

I noticed the sky looked clear out so I went out to take a look and see if I could catch a view of a sleigh.

I went by the observatory at about 11:35pm. There was a slight breeze and thin clouds starting to cover about half the sky.

I took the cover off the c14 and opened up the observatory briefly to take a peek at the sky.

I looked at m42 could see dive stars in the trapezium with the 33 mm eyepiece. Nice dark lanes as well very clear and transparent or so it seemed.

Then I looked at Jupiter which was in some thin cloud haze. Jupiter with the 15mm eyepiece didn't look very good. I placed a 25mm eyepiece in the c14 for less power, more detail and a smaller planet but not much due to poor seeing conditions.

I didn't allow the scope any cool down time. A 5 mph breeze came in through the dome making it seem colder than 34 degrees. I snapped a picture of the telescope thus Christmas eve and then shut the place down. Locking up I left and decided to put this brief post out.

It's cold out there, better for north pole flights than viewing.

(below the c14 telescope aimed at Jupiter.)



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Sunday night I didn't open up hjro although it was clear out

Tonight my back was sore and it seemed pretty cold out. I like to open up and star gaze, but because I was feeling under the weather, I decided to stay out of the observatory.

I decided instead to grab a couple small personal telescopes and use them at my house. I wanted to just grab a quick view of the sky. I was primarily interested in looking at Mars, hoping to see it with a high power view.

I grabbed my Nexstar 4se and took a low and high powered eyepiece out. Aiming the next star 4se at mars, with a 32mm showed a well defined disk.

When I dropped the 8mm eyepiece in for a high powered view I was met with a bright fuzzy dancing orange colored object. Not exactly a great view. There was a slight cold breeze out and frost on nearby cars. The view was better with the lower powered eyepiece. I also looked at m42 and saw better views from the 32mm eyepiece again. Streetlights and neighbors lights didn't help much.

I then grabbed my little f4 four inch rich field scope to do some handheld wide field viewing. I took a 32mm eyepiece and 25mm eyepiece. Keep in mind the view is very wide for this telescope, so it's like looking through a binocular, or one side of one and easy to use handheld without a tripod. But this limits one to low power.

I also took my canon camera out to take a few photos of myself looking at the night sky. Below is one or two photos.

(I'll post more about the HJRO list later.)

With the 32mm eyepiece in I looked at m45 and m42 and mars briefly. M45 was nice at low power. I spent most of my time setting up the camera and taking photos with the self timer. Handling the camera and camera tripod without gloves meant I would be touching cold metal at times, this caused me to feel colder, faster.

After looking at m45 I had enough of the cold and decided to put away the scopes and head inside to warmer surroundings.

I took my iPad to White Castle in Lincoln Park and imported a few stills from the camera to post them here.

Below, standing on the deck, ramp looking toward mars.



It's darker in the back yard, less street lights to interfere, although some lights from the other streets. Below I'm looking up toward m42, m45 the seven sisters, can be seen over the top of the house.

M45 is near the center of the photo the mast of the tv antenna almost points to it in this photo.

These photos are 8 second exposures at iso 3200c





Below, Grabbing the small f4 white telescope, I walk through one of the exposures. The telescope looks like it's still standing there because it was there for about four seconds during the exposure, sitting on the railing. By the end of the shot it was in front of me out of view as I was looking away.



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Things to do when it's cloudy out.

Astronomers can have a normal life, or almost a normal one when it is cloudy out. We don't feel the urge to run out and observe or photograph the stars, planets, and other objects when it's cloudy out.

Our normal life or one that is less dependent on weather related joys of clear skies can resume. We can dream about new equipment, research what we'd like to buy. Perhaps even sell a telescope we don't use much anymore and get ready for the next one. We might even work on building a telescope, but that is often not done as much as it used to be in the old days.

Probably each week I spend a few hours looking or thinking about buying telescopes, cameras, some new mount or other thing that will give me another option to enjoy astronomy. A person can get pretty obsessed with a hobby.

Sometimes I tend to get to enamored with the prospects of new equipment. Since I'm often at the observatory with others and we are able to look through and use a perfectly good c14 telescope there, it's almost never a dream about buying or owning a large 14 inch telescope, but often a more pragmatic thought of getting something that augments the viewing at the observatory. For example a small telescope I can setup quickly and use somewhere else or use at HJRO. After all the big telescope is inside the dome, so I can simply setup a different small telescope outside if we need another telescope for the crowd or to provide a different kind of view to visitors. So I often think of augmenting the view.

I think one of my weaknesses is I'm a bit lazy on the astronomy side. That is I ignore the facts on astronomy a bit too much. I need to read more about the basics and read more about astronomy. There are so many equipment options and distractions now days that it's easy to focus on the equipment more and forget to read up and learn what is going on with astronomy in general. Much of the news is often equipment related and equipment sales help drive advertising. There is also a lot of news that is going on in astronomy that is available over the Internet and with the new gadgets we can look this stuff up. I have an iPad for example and there is a ton of facts about astronomy that is out there on the net or tucked away in programs like Sky Safari. These have tons of reading about various stars, objects, stories behind the shapes and constellations that have been put into the myth portion of astronomy, their history, etc.

A lot of history and facts about the sky doesn't change. Many new discoveries happen that are more current. I read somewhere that something like 80 percent of what we know about astronomy has been discovered since 1980 or so. It's almost tempting to use this supposed fact to ignore older astronomy books. Think about it, if 80 percent of what we know has been learned in the past thirty years, then even if I knew everthing, about astronomy that was written in books up to 1980" I'd only know about 20 percent of the stuff.

It's interesting sometimes to dust off old books or even scans of old books that are really old and read what these scientific texts said about astronomy. Even if the stuff was wrong at that time and some of the facts were off, it's interesting to see how these earlier scientists guessed at what they saw. For example some old books might talk about some nebula as if it was a nebula, but we now know that the object they were writing about is a galaxy and not even a nebula. Some older books from the late 1800s referred to the Andromeda nebula, not knowing it was a galaxy of stars. They thought it was just a dust cloud.

There are some things I need to perhaps do to make it easier on me or easier for visitors sometimes when they are at the observatory to make their visit more enjoyable, I think one of those things is to create a small menu of options and use this as a list of things they can do or experience at the observatory. This involves equipment lists and options mostly. The objects in the sky may change and some of this of course is limited by what we have at the observatory at any given time. Some of these options could vary from night to night, but to just have a list of these things would be beneficial to be able to go over them. Sometimes we end up looking through the c14 and everyone who shows up gets to look though it and of course wants to look through it, but there are so many other options, which can vary depending on how we setup to observe. I suppose the more you visit the more things you could experience or see at the observatory.

Many visitors may just be happy to look at a couple objects, maybe Jupiter or Mars or the moon and then go on their way. Others want to see as many objects or certain objects and they may bring a request list of objects or just ask what we are looking at.

Sometimes I have a small telescope setup to show what smaller telescopes can show or excel at. We have three telescopes inside, but other telescopes can augment the viewing experience.

I'm going to chat about the list in the next few posts and put this list out more like a list. Kind of like a scratch pad of options that I'm working on. This way others might have an idea of things they would hope to take away from their visit.

These options aren't just what we can do to look up but also how would we document your visit. For example sometimes we take low light exposures of people looking through the telescope inside HJRO, and other times we take long exposure photos of guests or members of the club while they are outside either looking through the telescope or even posing just standing near the observatory. These can be nice things to have to remember your visit. So it's time to at least work on that list. Because sometimes I'm just having so much fun looking through the telescope that I easily forget to mention the options we have for visitors. I think an option list can make things fun and perhaps make your visit more memorable.


Okay now for a few things for the list these being easy:
- Show the original mirror and talk about the original telescope and restoration. This being the tour of our small observatory.
- Show photos on the wall. This isn't often done at night because we keep it dark inside the observatory.
- Show how we open and close the shutter and rotate the dome.
- Wide field view through the Meade refractor.
- Views of the sun through the Meade refractor using the white light solar filter. We only use safe filters for viewing the sun, don't look at the sun unless you have an astronomer explain and verify you are using a safe filter.
- view the sun through the solar scope hydrogen alpha viewing.
- View through the c14 a nighttime object.
- show you one of the ways we take photos of the moon, planets or other objects through the telescopes. There's more than one option.
- show you the way we take movies through the telescopes of objects for later processing using the Stellacam or Meade camera.
- Show you how we use laptops to take images using a camera to control a camera.
- Show you how we can choose an object using the sky software on the observatory computer and point the telescope to find an object.
- show you how different focusers work on telescopes. This of course happens during observing.

There are a lot of things we can show you at our observatory. We can chat about this stuff for hours and hours and still just scratch the surface of many of these topics. I guess having a list might be a good idea. Most of the things above can be done easily by the club members giving tours with equipment that is owned by the school system and available to all of us. The next post will be more about some specific options that are available, but more dependent on extra stuff we bring along to the observatory.




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Observatory will be open tonight at 9:30pm

It is very cold out so chances our we won't be at the observatory to long.

We may only be there for a couple of hours.

Dress extremely warm if you come by to observe for a few minutes.

I recommend layers, long underwear, even snowmobile or ski pants, in cold weather. Hats, gloves etc.

Stop by and check out a cold view of the sky.

There is a full moon out tonight so that will obscure some viewing opportunities. We will look at Jupiter, the moon and other objects. M42 is out.

This is not a school club event for high school students. Those under 18 need to bring a parent.

We have a small radiant heater we sometimes turn on for guests but this can hurt the view so we like to keep it off as long as possible.






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Finally we put.a seal in to stop a drip in the observatory.

Thus seal we choose to test the process doesn't work completely.

This is likely because I'm using a rubberized foam and it has pores in it that may allow water to travel through.

We don't have a bracket holding this in place yet either. We are going to use a better rubber seal and have it swing into position.

For now 80 percent of the leaking is likely stopped with the temporary seal. We will work on getting a 100 percent solution with the proper hanging hardware next.




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Old scopes and new scopes at HJRO photo from 2010

Here's a picture from the summer of 2010.

This shows the old telescope, which is a white 10 inch Schmidt Newtonian, built in 1963 by Nelson Lewis of the Detroit Astronomical society.

In the back by the wall is the old tube, which was disposed of (more on that later). You can see that old tube was 9 feet long. That telescope was also completed around 1962, before the observatory was built. That large tube held a 12 inch Newtonian that our middle school/ junior high astronomy club used to operate.

So there is two telescopes that are old, but one is disassembled with the mirror coating damaged and the mirror removed. The white tube ten inch telescope was used by many years from 1984 until 2003 or so by "the telescope man" a FAAC member named Harold Thomason. Harold had thousands of people look though the white tube telescope many in Dearborn Michigan in front of the library and police station. This telescope has a nice history,

When I saw the Newtonian telescope listed and overheard Harold talk about it, I wanted to see it. I checked out the white Newtonian and when I first saw it I was reminded of all the old telescope ads in the old days when large white tube Newtonians were in an making the person in the foreground look small. This Newtonian reminded me of those old Newtonians on their monster mounts and it was a little intimidating, to think about setting it up and using it. When I looked through it I was blown away by the optical quality. We looked at Jupiter and there were some clouds and dew the night I bought it, I could tell this was a great optical telescope and also it had a really nice wide field of view being an f5.35.

The Schmidt corrector was custom built back in 1962 by the same company that was building Celestron corrector plates.

In 1984 when Harold bought the telescope he called the company that built the corrector and asked what a replacement would run. When he mentioned the focal length, the guy on the other line said, oh that's a custom size. We can build one for you but you won't want to hear the price.

The price for a replacement corrector $1800.

Harold wanted to know in case it was broke. Of course at that price, if the corrector broke it would be cheaper to purchase a new telescope.

For the next several years Harold used the telescope and finally he had other smaller telescopes and a C14 of his own, so it was time to get rid of the big Newtonian. That's how I ended up with it.

Harold made a few different modifications with the telescope. I haven't really made any and probably could do a few things with the scope.

The telescope has a very small secondary mirror and is setup for visual viewing, not astrophotography. The mount is a mount Harold bought in 1984 for the telescope. The mount doesn't have a DEC motor just right ascension. The motor pulls 1 watt of power. It's an AC motor.

The mount is on wheels. I can wheel it out of the observatory, but I have to be careful because we raised the floor when the club and volunteers rebuilt and refurbished the observatory and the floor being raised, makes the door much shorter, so care has to be taken when wheeling it out as the scope has to be tilted and aimed out the low doorway before being wheeled out. Also the size of the base makes this a very careful and difficult process as the base has to be fitted through carefully.

Sometimes the telescope is stored in the observatory, other times I remove it for observing or storage elsewhere.

That's a little bit of history on the old telescopes.

The old large tube telescope was on a mount that was a manual mount that had been constructed with coffee cans and cement as counterweights. The old mount and scope were replaced with a new mount and telescope thanks to a grant from Toshiba Inc that the school system won. This allowed the school system to get a renovated observatory for basically no cost. There were many donors, and there is a plaque with some of the donors from the restoration in 2009.

We have a c14 and Losmandy Titan mount with a Meade 80mm f6 APO refractor and a Lunt 35mm HA solar scope in the observatory. We also have a couple of basic cameras for the observatory and I bring a t mount for anyone who happens to visit who wants to mount a canon Eos camera on the telescopes.





Things look a little different today. The tall dark Newtonian tube is gone, it's actually in Dearborn now.

There is a large shelving unit inside the observatory today which is not shown in the photo.

Greg

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The sun today as seen by many 8th grade students at HJRO.

Below is a photo I took today of the sun through our solar scope in the observatory.

The sun today through the hydrogen alpha Lunt solar scope.

This is a 35mm dual etalon filter solar scope.

Photo taken at 1/60th of a second handheld with canon t1i Eos camera.

Altered slightly with curve filter bringing up RGB mid tones a bit and sharpened slightly. (program app is called Filterstorm for iPad.)

The faint curved pattern that looks like a wave shadow on the left side is artifacts from the RGB color sensor in the camera. A monochrome image sensor would not show those false patterns.

The rest is pretty close to what was visible, but detail in the scope was better for those who saw it in person.

We had six classes of thirty students visit today during the day.

The first two classes were not able to see the sun because of clouds however.




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Economics of restoration

It's difficult to justify the cost of restoring old telescopes. Especially when they are old homebuilt telescopes. If they are large and have an old mirror in them they might require recoating or in the case of the telescopes from HJRO that were disposed of, re-polishing or re-figuring.

In the case of the f5 8 inch it could take a lot of work to republish the mirror, this would involve building a tool and setting up a pitch lap to match the telescope. Removing the old coating and then setting up a stand and test equipment to do measurements. Polishing a mirror is the most difficult and precise step in making a mirror. The pitch lap is sitting on the mirror with a type of polish that is almost like maple syrup in consistency. It's a fine polishing compound that is more like syrup than fine grit that is in a water when you are grinding the mirror. The mirror moves stiffly on the polishing tool which sits below the mirror. The fine grain or more like lack of grain in the polishing compound makes it difficult to push and pull the mirror in strokes as it's moved and sits on the mirror tool or pitch lap on the mirror tool.


A mirror tool normally is created when the mirror is build, a matching piece of glass that is the opposite shape of the mirror and has a convex curve that matches the concave shape of the mirrors surface.

The pushing and pulling of the mirror over e tool takes it's toll on the backs of those working to finish the mirror. Many mirror builders when they get older and have more money have said to me, "mirror building doesn't require much brains, but you need a strong back.". I can testify to this when we build mirrors back on the 1970s.

So what does it cost if you get a professional to fix the mirror. I got a quote from a premium mirror builder to get an idea what it would cost to restore the mirrors that were in the two telescopes in HJRO.

The old 12 inch would cost about $1000. The old 8 inch mirror $600. This does not include aluminizing the mirror, which is an additional expense.

Now let's consider the other expenses to fix the 12 inch and get it up and running. The tube was pretty heavy, it's large and rathr long at 9th in length. It would require a mount that was heavy and well build a permanent pier, a large cover over it, likely another observatory dome. And it would be a narrow field of view instrument. It's f7.17 in focal length. It was close to perfect and would likely cost close to $1500 to restore the mirror.

The mount would have to hold a huge telescope and you'd need a big ladder.

The mount would run $5000 or more. The ladder might cost $600. So we are in the $7000 range to restore the telescope without building an observatory.

I have found memories of the telescope, but I don't have an extra $7,000 laying around to restore this old telescope.

Now consider that a member of the club has a 12 inch f5 reflector, a MEADE light bridge Newtonian truss telescope for $600. This is a used telescope and has an f5 focal length. That's a lot wider field of view and it's a Dobsonian telescope. I have no doubt the mirror on the old telescope is better for viewing planets than the light bridge, but the light bridge is portable and it's less than the cost of starting to fix the mirror in the smaller 8 inch Newtonian.

There are a lot of good telescopes out there already build and also in the usd market. This is why many won't build telescopes today or fix old telescopes.

It's a lot easier to buy a new one.

Sometimes old telescopes end up in a museum or showcase in a large observatory display. We don't have room in the Lincoln Park museum for that huge 12 inch tube. It's old and looks beat up. It's large and to stand it up on end means it can be tipped over. It's rather large to hang from a ceiling. This is why old tubes often end up in the trash.

I squirreled away the old tube at a friends garage. But he's run out of room. The telescope has no practical value, so today it's going to finally be disposed of.


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The observatory should be open tonight

We plan on observing tonight at HJRO. Visitors are welcome but children should be accompanied by a parent.

DETAILS and more ramblings of a tired astronomer.

It's clear out today and many Faac astronomers are wisely sleeping and catching up on some missed sleep from last nights viewing.

We were open last night but I only announced it on the FAAC yahoo group last night and not my blog. If you drive by and see the dome and shutter open please feel free to stop by and visit. I don't always announce openings here, especially if we have group visiting or many people asking me if we will be open.

We will be open tonight and basically anyone is welcome. There are some little technical problems we've been having with the mount, which we will work around and have been working around.

We looked through the C14, Big Bertha a ten inch Schmidt Newtonian, a small Bushnell telescope and my vixen binoculars. We didn't look through the small Meade refractor at all last night.

We had about a dozen people attend viewing last night. They were able to look at Jupiter, the moon and other objects as well. We looked at the ring nebula and the dumbbell nebula. There were other objects they looked at, but part of the time as others were operating the telescope I was outside setting up other telescopes with and viewing M45 and Jupiter outside.

Early in the evening we had three visitors, the family of school worker last night and we had one of our members brought another youngster for observing. We also had a Faac member bring two college age guests. And then there was Tim, Art, Rick, and last but not least Brian all FAAC members there to observe, chat and generally have a good time. For most of the night Tim, Art and others ran the telescope and I was able to wander around and hopefully not distract others to much. Jennifer our FAAC newsletter editor (and president of the HFCC club) was there as well. She stopped by for a short visit and probably stayed for about an hour.

Seeing was at first was a little marginal, with some thin clouds early on. Visibility improved to "very good" as most of the clouds were gone by about 9:45pm. Seeing and transparency were very good and we could see a lot of detail when looking at Jupiter. We were able to get some pretty high powered pictures when Brian was there later in the evening.

Brian met some of us during a break at White Castle on Fort Street, and we returned to view with Brian from about 12:30am to 2am. After Brian left, Art and I looked briefly at M42 and then we closed up at 2:30am.

We expect to be open tonight. Parents can bring kids out or kids can bring their parents. This is a nice way of saying it's not a night where we have teachers out so children should be accompanied by parents.

-- To fix and adjust my big ten inch telescope, that "fell"
We will be doing some work, likely in the early evening perhaps with the mount and also perhaps optical aligning Big Bertha, my ten inch newtonian that is currently setup at the observatory.

I had a slight accident last night and that large telescope actually fell over with it's mount while I was moving it back into the observatory. The tube weighs 50 pounds and the entire rig weighs 200 lbs, so you can imagine my surprise as I tried to slow down the fall of this telescope as it started to tumble toward the ground. This happened while I was moving the telescope and happened because I was rushing a bit and in a hurry. One cardinal rule of astronomy should be take your time and be patient. That's a rule I broke, and I almost broke my telescope because of it.

This happened because I was rushing and didn't slowly keep and eye on the telescope and mount. I had a temporary mount adjustment I did. Believe it or not I had a towel that was locked into the mounting bracket and it was a large towel that can drag and hang down. This was a dumb adjustment fix, and it should have been removed.

This was temporarily fix using the towel as a bracket spacer to have the tube locked in more tightly in the mount. The mounting brackets foam is old and I was using the towel to act as a shim to allow the tube to be in the bracket more securely, but that towel was to large.

When I was pulling the telescope and mount (on wheels) into the observatory, one of the wheels of the mount caught the towel that had fallen down and was dragging on the ground. I didn't notice this. When the wheel caught on the towel the entire telescope and mount tipped and started falling.

Fortunately I was in front if it and basically partially slowed the fall as it fell partially down on my leg and ankle. This slowed its fall enough to prevent the telescope from a major break. Had the front corrector plate broke, it would have been a total loss of that telescope which was built in 1962 and has had thousands of people look through it.

Fortunately it didn't break, but a scrape of blue paint is on the tube from it sliding partially against the door of the observatory on it's way down. That paint can likely be removed and buffed off, or remain as a battle scar.

So we may spend a bit of time adjusting the optics on that ten inch Schmidt newtonian telescope and I need to rework that mounting bracket removing that towel.

Tonight we will be observing Jupiter, the moon and other objects.

Last night near the end of the night we observed Jupiter through the C14 and saw a lot of detail, but we could not see additional detail with a 13mm eyepiece or most high powered eyepieces at the end of the night. This could have been due to sky conditions deteriorating as far as viewing. It could also have been due to heat thermals inside the observatory as we had a heater on for a short break between observing sessions and that added heat is something that can cause hot air to rise and ruin viewing. We typically turn on a heater at the end of a cold night to warm up but not during viewing.

It's very cold out so dress warm and in layers if you decide to come out, because it's easy to get chilled and cold. Remember clear skies allow the heat to radiate back into space quicker, so when its clear out the nights will often get cold quickly. So dress warm if you decide to go out and observe tonight or stop by to join us.

Some visitors stay for ten or fifteen minutes, look at a couple of items and then move on. Others stay for hours, but on cold nights they should be prepared and dress warm. One rule for astronomy is You cannot be dressed to warmly. Dress in layers, if your dressed to warmly you can always take off some extra item.

We have one coat we can loan people, but little else to help someone warm up if they are cold. Sometimes we take a break and send someone out for hot chocolate. Last night Tim brought a heating pad to sit on. The theory we are testing is we might be able to have a heating pad or two to sit on in chairs and warm the astronomer without effecting visual viewing much. But in reality any heat, even the heat from one human body standing in front of the telescope can cause thermals to rise up and disrupt imaging. Some die hard imagers who take astrophotographs, report that they can see thermals from deer who walk near their observatory and they will never even walk in front of the side of the telescope when they are imaging. They keep thermal heat currents down.

During late night imaging last night Brian noticed some images going out of focus. I opened and closed the door to change air currents as there was a slight temperature difference and it was colder outside with a slight breeze outside. My thought was different cold air rising through the shutter might cause the image to improve. The air likely rushed through the dome more as it was cold air and a slight breeze was felt in the open doorway. That didn't improve the image, but actually degraded it. So we shut the door.

We experiment a bit and learn each night. Probably for most visitors looking out they will not notice the difference in the view with their eyes on the eyepiece if we have some heat or even the IR heater on facing someone behind the telescope. We test this sometimes, especially when some visitors are feeling the cold.

It's a bit of a challenge sometimes. Some FAAC astronomer visitors dream about the day we might have a warming shack or building nearby, perhaps next to the observatory that can be heated for astronomers and guests. We might use that as a control room, to store extra chairs and perhaps as a presentation Av room. It would be nice to have a warming shack of course next to the observatory for guests and astronomers. We are of course dreaming and haven't made any serious proposal or decision to try to lobby for that yet. We might even bring a trailer and park it nearby to use as a control room near the observatory. Control rooms are more useful to astronomers who are doing more imaging. For an observatory where the public is visiting, it would likely be better to use some additional small building or trailer as a warm up shack most of the time, just a place to warm up, perhaps look at computer software and charts. It's difficult to say all the advantages we'd have from a second structure.

I can write more about this in another blog entry later.

As you can see I'm writing a long post this morning and probably need more sleep.






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Jupiter near opposition looks good when the sky is favorable

In the last week Jupiter was at opposition, closest to the earth and opposite the sun. During on clear night a couple of other members of the Faac club and I looked at Jupiter. The view was one of the nicest I've seen all year.

I could see 8 or 9 bands and fine gradients in color in the planet.

The attached photo was taken with my Canon t1i. A single exposure through a 25mm eyepiece. The detail looked better to our eyes than this photo shows.

I was actually out late at night a few nights last week. Unannounced as I got out there late. There was a lot of humidity and the air was cold and dqmot a couple of the nights, but the views were worth it.

I felt a bit of cold in my old bones, and that chill drove me out of a couple of the observing sessions with temperatures in the high 30s. That cold damp weather requires serious warm clothing and I found a good winter coat, layers and long underwear helped a lot.

We turned on the IR heater during part of our last observing session, and that helped take some of the chill off. Wooden floors help some.

It was cloudy and hazy out tonight. I have not looked at the sky as I type this very late at night tonight. I really don't want to go out tonight or be tempted with a great view. I'm resting up a bit. I kind of tweaked my neck looming up to high through an eyepiece and have been resting a bit hoping the pain will decrease.





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Aurora, northern lights were seen at HJRO in Lincoln park by Faac astronomers

We were setting up and adjusting the telescopes tonight and I had my telescope outside to do some observing.

I looked up and saw a red glow. It looked like a large sky glow event one would see from a steel mill. It was in the north west and also extended toward the east. I had heard that there was an alert about a cme blast that could cause auroras and immediately hollered for other astronomers to look up and view the aurora that we could see.

It was bright and I quickly grabbed my canon t1i and set it up on the tripod to take a few photos. Some of the photos were not as focused on the stars as they could have been, but I was in a hurry.

I shot them using iso 3200 and ten second exposures.

The bright exposures makes it almost look like it's daylight outside, but the glow is from the northern lights.

We didn't see any green as far as I can tell from our location, but may have missed some of the initial green displays. A few of us were calling and leaving messages to other Faac members who lived nearby to tell them to head out and take a look to see if they could see the aurora display.

When I called Rick Arzadon, his wife told me that he was outside looking at the red sky and I told her it was the northern lights.

Within five to ten minutes, the glow greatly decreased and could only be detected with long exposures as it diminished.

We had a fun time viewing through the greatly improved c14 as we did a star alignment of the secondary mirror and had many other fine tune adjustments happen with the software.

We had a great night. I left at about 2:30am.

We even had a local visitor who owns a 6 inch dob and often travels to Monroe to view the sky in a darker location. He was a graduate from LP high school and told me he never looked through the telescope in the old days. I gave him a faac card and invited him out to the club meeting. We showed him m42 through the c14 and Jupiter through the 49 year old ten inch Dobsonian, Big Bertha.

Very bright at first almost from horizon to horizon, in light polluted skies.



Eastern view above western view below




Starts to fade below. . .






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A string of bad nights, full of clouds.

This week we didn't have any decent observing nights.

We had some progress today in setting up the newer computer in the observatory.

I arrived just in time to pull one of the telescopes out of the way to give the four of us Faac members more room.

George showed up with his box of toys, to adjust the telescope and we all worked on installing the software. Well to say we all worked was probably not exactly true. I for the most part chatted and perhaps was more of a distraction than a work helper and George and Tim setup the software. Art was there as well and during part of the time they were working on the observatory I left to grab a late dinner at a local fast food place. Then I grabbed some hot chocolate drinks from Tim Hortons. Not exactly a productive observing night as the clouds covered the sky. We were going to insure we have good secondary mirror alignment in the C14, that's another story. We didn't have a chance to star test the optics, because there were no stars.

Tim was feeling the effects of the cold while we were there and I grabbed the IR heater and turned it on. I was feeling a bit of the effects of the chill of fall as well. Temperatures are supposed to drop down to near 36 degrees tonight.

More software tests and driving was performed. We tweaked the mount and slowed down the slew speed.

We chatted about a new star model and some steps we should take in the near future to setup the mount and test the model and various new models we put into the computer and goto controller.

That was about all there was to it. We have higher speed wifi access to the Internet now and it will be even better within the next week according to reports from Tim Dey.

It's a good thing Leo McMaster didn't call the high school astronomy club out tonight as we didn't have clear skies. Supposedly they would clear later in the evening according to some forecasts, but at 11pm when I was returning home from a late night pizza trip in Dearborn, the skies were still cloudy in Lincoln Park and Dearborn as well. A week without observing, but of course plenty of time to talk about equipment and possible setups in the future. I also showed a couple of short sequences from some interesting shows I've seen on Netflix which involve astronomy. The nice thing about the internet and smart devices, is even if there is clouds we can still search out information on the Internet and find something to talk about regarding astronomy.

Here is another picture from the past week. This one was sent to me by Brian Kutscher who took this with his camera.

The two star like trails in the photo are likely aircraft.



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A mystery coded message

A coded message one of our astronomers found tonight near HJRO. What does it mean?





Probably only the writer knows.

We are reinstalling software to control the telescope on a new computer in HJRO tonight.

Sky is partly cloudy. We might do a little observing tonight if we have any time.

Tim Dey, Art Parent and I are at the observatory.

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Ford Amateur Astronomy Club short recap of HJRO first week of this month

I skipped a few brief opportunities in the past couple of days to observe. This was due to the cold weather and a bit of sniffles. I decided to stay warm, rest up and wait for the next observing event at the observatory.

I wrote and article for this months star stuff newsletter, it's basically a write up about what has been happening at HJRO from my perspective.

I wrote about the observing events in relation to an entire week of observing.

Basically we had the Monday visit of scouts, lphs astronomy club members and Faac. Then I went observing on Tuesday with Faac members who provided telescopes at the Wayne library for an astronomy presentation there. The presentation was given by Faac club president Gordon Hanson.

Then Wednesday I did some image experiments at HJRO and had a fellow Faac member call up and then show up to take some photos with his canon Eos slr camera.

Then thursday, Art Parent and Sandra Macika, both Faac members showed up and we did a bit of observing. Sandra pulled out her drawing pad and did a sketch of Jupiter while looking through the eyepiece.

To draw a sketch of planet you don't just take a peek and draw it from memory, you need some serious eyepiece time and Sandra sat in the observing chair and sketched for several minutes while Art and I sat and chatted about many astronomy subjects and my wish list of the moment.

Then Friday we had an observing night for the Lincoln Park High School Astronomy club. The name of the school club is "astronomy club". In the old days we had a club at the junior high and we had only a few high school members who stayed in the club. The name of the first astronomy club was actually,the "Lincoln Park Astronomy Club" which when you think about it was a name that sounded like a club name for the entire city. We didn't really have a city astronomy club however. Some clubs like the Warren club in Warren Michigan, have the city name in their club names.

Here is a photo of the Tuesday observing event from Tuesday the forth of this month.

This was a photo of some club members who showed up to setup telescopes. There were a lot of young kids at the event at the Wayne Library. They were very excited about the event and a few were ready to run around and had a lot of energy. It seems that it might be better to have two astronomers per telescope instead of one per scope when a lot of small kids are present, that gives one astronomer the chance to constantly watch the telescope and the other volunteer can chat with people in line and answer questions. We might experiment with this kind of setup in future events when many young kids are present. That won't be necessary for older observers like the new club however.

There may be an ideal observing and star party setup, we probably haven't figured that out with an organized approach however. There is to much chance for random and independent operation of each telescope which is parr of the fun of the event. Everyone has their own idea of how to improve these events, but often each event is not controlled or run in a very organized manner. I tend to wander and tend toward a more chaotic mode of operation. This means I favor letting everyone kind of go their own way, and that can have it's drawbacks at times.

I still don't know how to best use the iPad at an event, it can become such an interesting distraction at times I end up showing small groups the iPad and astronomy software on that

(Six Faac astronomers at an astronomy event at the Warren Library.)






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We had a great time at Hector J Robinson observatory last Monday

There was so much going on, but unfortunately we had thick cloud cover and couldn't observe.

We had a lot of video clips taken by the Faac cable show and by a scout videographer as well.

This was the first visit of the new astronomy club based at the high school.

I stayed out of the way and manned a telescope outside as well as talked with a bunch of visitors and a few of the high school club members.

We had a half a dozen Faac members show up and bring their telescopes.

Sandra, Tim C, Brian K, and Rick A, had their telescopes out. (I'm not including their last names because this is a quick post and I'm too touch in a hurry to look up all the spellings.

Sandra had a 14.5 inch Dobsonian telescope out. Art Parent and Tim Dey were there as well. Professor David Cinabro presented a Meade deep sky imager to Mr. Rockwell the Lincoln Park superintendent.

Much of the presentations were captured on video tape. There was a little creative staging of scouts looking through the telescope, but unfortunately this was just for the show and didn't really occur due to clouds.


It was still fun to show off the observatory and the equipment. Sandra gave a talk on how her telescope worked and had it aimed at a local radio tower in the area. I aimed my binoculars at the tower as well. The moon peeked out very little through the clouds later in the evening but it was still covered with many layers of clouds and was barely visible. A few people got a short glimpse of the moon.

Tuesday skies were clear and some Faac members did a telescope and astronomy outreach at the Wayne public library.

Wednesday I went out late and looked through the telescope at HJRO but I didn't announce it as being open because I wanted to do a test and was suffering a bit from allergies or a cold, or some kind of bug perhaps. My throat was bugging me. I toughhed it out and Brian Kutcher ended up coming out as he emailed me and we worked on imaging with the Meade. We had some problems with the mount not tracking well. Brian took some shots with his Canon Eos as well and we did a little bit of visual observing very late into the morning hours. We left at about 3am. The Orion Nebula at 3am with the 8mm eyepiece and oxygen3 filter looked really awesome. Although the stars were not sharp at that high power the nebula looked like a thickly spun cobweb, the type you might see in the woods.

We were at awe at the view of m42 in the 15mm with the u2 filter as well.

Here's a photo from Monday night.




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The observatory will be open tonight.

We are hoping for partly cloudy skies.

We will be filming some clips for a Faac cable show early in the evening and will have a few special guests.

We are also looking forward to meeting a bunch of LPHS students that have checked out the new astronomy club forming there.

Professor Dave Cinabro from Wayne State University will be presenting a Meade Deep Space imaging camera to the school superintendent. At least that is what I've heard as being a part of the activities.

We hopefully will be viewing the moon and ore objects as the weather permits.


We have at least three or four astronomy club members arriving from the FAAC club and will have telescopes setup outside if all goes well.

I believe we may have a scout group and some members of Henry Ford Community college Astronomy club as well. There will be a lot of people present so if your an occasional visitor and used to a quiet time of observing, this will be much more busy, with less scope time, but more telescopes and people.

If your a Faac member and want to stop by bring a scope or binocular or just bring yourself, we will have plenty of equipment and people there for a fun time.

Greg


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Early Monday morning I went to HJRO and shot a photo of mars and the beehive cluster

I woke up early Monday morning and noticed it was still clear outside, but hazy. I went outside to see if I could view Mars and the beehive cluster. I used my vixen binocular telescope which isn't really a wide field telescope, but should offer 2 degree field of views pretty easily. They were to far apart, so I pulled out an f4.2 four inch telescope. With the 32mm both were barely inside the field of view, a 40mm eyepiece worked a little better. The Canon t1i on the Meade with the t mount seemed like it might get the teo objects in. Maybe the beehive and mars were to far apart. I decided to give it a try.

So I quickly loaded up and headed to the observatory. The inside of the dome was moist. There was a lot of haze and moisture in the sky. I was able to get a photo, but had to turn the camera so the 3/4 frame sensor could get both objects in the field of view.

There are some flaws in this photo.

And I'm not even trying to edit or tweak this photo, because of it's flaws.

There are some halos around mars, like spikes that may look like a diffraction pattern exists.. It's as if the side of the telescope was blocked by the part of the shutter or something. Perhaps causing the spike. The stars might be a bit out of focus as well I didn't have much time and was in a hurry as I got there late in the morning.

Mars in in the top right hand corner. The beehive cluster also called M44 is near the bottom and partially cut off. The beehive cluster and Mars will get closer and closer until mars will appear in front of the beehive cluster next Saturday morning. You have to be up around 4am to see them both as they rise very early in the morning.

Right now, if it was clear out you could see these in wide field binoculars or a wide field telescope. Something like an f4 reflector with a 40mm eyepiece. This photo was shot with a Canon t1i Eos camera mounted on the Meade 80mm f6 refractor with a t mount. A wider field telescope or a camera with a bigger full frame sensor would have shown a wider field of view. By the end of the week if we have clear skies we will have a better view.




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HJRO will be open tonight

The observatory is open tonight.

If you enter the small gate beware of construction materials and walk to the fence by the track. Then follow the sidewalks to the observatory.

Try to avoid the dirt by avoiding the grass.

An alternate route in would be to come in the fate by the tennis courts. If you drive in please park off the grass and away from the fence like other cars there so we can back out if we need to run an errand.

Kids bring your parent(s) if you want to visit as this is not a class or teacher sponsored event.

Jupiter rises at about 10pm but we won't have a decent view of it until 11pm or so.






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Hfcc club visit page 2

Brian Kutcher brought two telescopes.





He's looking through an Orion F4.9 Newtonian telescope here. It showed some pretty impressive views.

He also had his Celestron C8 setup as well.





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Hfcc visit page five photos

A shot inside the observatory, with only the red lights showing some of the visitors inside.

Below is one of the frames of a flash shot from my 3d camera. This is not a 3d photo however, just one of the frames.

I may post a 3d anaglyph later, the iPad can't import the 3d photos directly using the camera connection kit and I'll have to use my home computer to get that setup.



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Hfcc visit photo page 4

At 3200 iso with a five second exposure the moon almost looks like the sun over their heads. Above her shoulder below the street light is the planet Jupiter.








Here's another photo(above) that could stand a bit of rotation and cropping. I'm just sending this out on the blog as it appeared in the camera. No photo retouching on this one.

Looking at Jupiter below.

Notice the lower panel on the shutter is down, so the c14 inside was looking at something else, probably a galaxy or star cluster.


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Hfcc club visit, more photos page 3

I know I should have framed these a little more level. I'll have to rotate these a little if we plan on putting them in a newsletter.

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Shots from tonight's visit by Hfcc astronomy club

We had six Faac members and four scopes operation at one time.

About a dozen to fifteen people out tonight.

Here's some photos taken at 3200 iso and five second exposure.


Focus is set on stars so subjects close might not be as sharp as stars in the sky.




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Will be at Kensington Metropark tonight

Hopefully we will have some clear skies for some observing but there is a tent and covered vendor area.

Lots of astronomers and telescopes should be there.

Last night we had nothing but rain but it was still fun to chat with others about astronomy. I spent much of the evening chatting about astronomy imaging with a fellow member of the Faac club, Larry Hoffman.

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dgs/kensington/

Link with information if you happen to be in the mood to drive by Kensington metro park and check it out.




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Amazingly more people have been showing up when we didn't announce the site as being open.

We've been out on some clear nights, but due to construction activities we haven't been announcing we'd be out there.

We've been experimenting trying to register the supernova on a camera photograph with m101, but had no luck in getting the photo to look good.

Part of the problem is sky glow and our location being in a very bright environment. We are in the city so there is a lot of sky glow.

We don't have the best astrophotography cameras, actually our Stellacam is a video camera which supposedly does it all, but it used video signals and really is a enhanced video camera. This limits it's quality of output and usefulness.

A blog reader asked me if he could come by and see the supernova. The short answer is you can stop by, but I don't think you'll see the supernova and m101 visually. The supernova would appear as one of a few stars if it's bright enough and we can locate it. We may locate it and see stars and part of the core of the galaxy and guess which faint star may be the supernova, but you probably won't know which one is the supernova while looking because you may not even see the core due to skyglow to figure out which star is the supernova. So if you looked at the sky right now with the c14 from the observatory you may see a field of stars and say I saw it, but you may not be able to tell which star was the actual supernova.

The supernova is getting more dim we believe because it may have been discovered later than scientists thought it was. It may not be getting brighter but fainter and the weather doesn't look promising for viewing.

If we are out we always welcome visitors. We are often out but are volunteers so we don't have set hours. We are usually out between 9pm and midnight on clear sky nights. Sometimes I go out there very late at night but I don't announce it because the sky clears and most people are already asleep. If we are out there we almost always welcome any visitor that stops by as long as they are over 18 or with a parent or guardian.


Here's a test process of an earlier shot of m42 I took some months back at HJRO. This is the core of the Orion Nebula. I played and adjusted the color curves of this image using a new app I downloaded on my iPad called "Filterstorm". This is a pretty fun iPad app and may not be as good as more advanced apps but is fun to use and play with and does a pretty good job on photos. It introduces some noise and doesn't have as powerful a noise filter as some desktop apps.




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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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Observatory will not be open for at least a week

Due to construction tear down of the stands at the football field.

This presents possible hazards at night for visitors.


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This morning I took this shot with my iPhone

I was not sure when I would be out last night and i arrives at 2 am at hjro. This photo was taken with the iphone through the c14. The c14 had an 8mm eyepiece and a 2x Barlow making the view at the eyepiece 977 power.

This photo was processed and balanced a bit using a few filters in a program app called Picoli on my iPhone as well.

The original still also was using the iPhones zooming feature making this even higher power than 977x.

The dark spot on the right of the photo, is a piece of dust somewhere in the optical system.



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Last sundry and yesterday, Tuesday I was not at HJRO

I was not at the observatory. Perhaps if it's clear tonight I'll be out there and open up.

Here's a photo I took, from a different location where I was observing from.

This photo was a 30 second exposure at iso 3200. I also brightened up the resulting photo two exposure ratings inside an app called super camera, and applied an HDR night filter to the photo.

You can see the double cluster as two small smudges in the photo below and also something that looks like a smudge kind of like a comet in the photo. That smudge is near the right side edge of the photo and is actually the andromeda galaxy.



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No observing tonight unless I arrive late

I'm heading out to a different location to observe tonight.


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Had a great time looking at the sun today

Met with Harold and we were out there for three hours or more. We looked at the sun and did some test photos and frame grabs using the canon camera and the Stellacam.

I can't pit an image here at this time but I will later in another post.

We found the very high magnification of hr Stellacam on the c14 with the hydrogen alpha showed a lot of dust specs on in the optical path.

We turned the filter, Renee the t-filter adapter, changes and rotated the diagonal and the camera, the dust specs remained. In place. It wasn't dust on the surface as the offset 4 inch filter was rotated in a different position over the front of the telescope.

There must be dust on the internal surface of the primary or secondary surface. Considering we were using about 800 power it's probably something we should expect to run into.




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Solar observing from 3pm until ?

Solar observing with a huge new temporary ha solar setup at HJRO in 5 minutes. This is an 8 inch aperture hydrogen alpha setup Harold is bringing by.


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We will be open this Friday night at 9:30pm

We will be open tonight for observing.

Children need to bring their parents as we cannot give tours unless you are accompanied with a guardian.




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We are out observing tonight if anyone wants to show up

Tonight we will be open until 2am or possibly 2:30am


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At old Chicago pizza looking at the moon

Looked at the moon an Saturn today at old Chicago pizza


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At almost 500 power Jupiter showed detail via iPhone

Video clip with iPhone looking at Jupiter through the C14 at Hector J Robinson observatory this morning.

Not bad considering we are looking through almost 500 power. Truthfully it looked a lot different through the eyepiece. You could see detail like this at lower power, but the higher power like this 8mm eyepiece looked fuzzy to the naked eye.

The iPhone needs a big image in the eyepiece to get a good exposure. Other cameras are much better than the iPhone for this kind of thing.

But I only had my iPhone out last night so I did the best I could with that phone.


The music was Pandora radio playing a Miles Davis jazz channel. We don't normally play music when others visit, I had mucus out there because I was alone.

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Will be opening up the observatory at about 9:30 tonight

We may be doing a little bit of adjusting if the telescope due to a computer telescope mount issue but we still plan on having fun.

Some club members should show up as well. If you'd like to visit it should be a great night for viewing and we may have other telescopes setup outside as well.

If you under 18 you need to bring a parent along as this is not a student event. So bring out you mom or dad and check out the stars with us.

Tonight we will look at Saturn, the Saturn Nebula and the ring nebula as well as other objects.

Maybe even Pluto with the help of our Stellacam video camera.

But we won't be looking at the moon as it's bot out tonight.




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Will not be open today due to haze and other commitments

I might head out to a place near the waterfront in Wyandotte to look at the full moon. But I won't open up the observatory tonight.

There is a lot of haze and that would adversely affect viewing and I've had a busy day.




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Video pullback of moon at restaurant parking lot

Late last night I was at Buffalo Wild Wings.

I ended up taking out my telescope and showed about a dozen customers Abd a few staff members the moon.

Here's a short video of the moon as my iPhone video tapes it for a few seconds. I pull the camera off the eyepiece and you can see the moon up by the street light in the parking lot.

The moon looks pretty good most telescopes as it's our closest neighbor in space.

It looks a lot better with your eyes looking through my telescope than this video shows.

We will be open tonight at the observatory, but from 8 to 10pm there will be a meeting at the observatory with members of the observatory special interest group. We always welcome visitors, and if you happen by we should be able to show you a view through one of the telescopes on site.

We might be doing some experiments with equipment configurations, our computer equipment and possible cameras on the telescope. But we try to take time to show visitors sone objects through the big telescope. We will likely have smaller telescopes outside of the observatory as well which can give good views as well and it's often nice to look at a few objects or through smaller telescopes and then work your way up looking through different telescopes and then end with a view of one or more objects through our large 14 inch c14 at the observatory. That is usually a fun way to visit an observatory and we should have at least two telescopes setup outside for visitors.

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We tested taking photos with the solar scope yesterday

Tim Dey and I did a test of the Lunt solar scope. We wanted to see if we could take photos using a different camera and a t ring.

We were not able to directly mount a Canon eos and take a photo because the light cone thrown out will not reach the sensor chip.

Many don't use this scope to do photography of the sun.

There may be a modification that Lunt has to allow photos through the Lunt. We have a small 35mm scope so it's not often used by astronomers for photographing the sun. They often use 60mm or other large telescopes. Those solar telescopes are much more expensive.

We will likely be getting a modified tube from Lunt. Thus will be shorter and allow kore photography options.


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Will return at 10:30 pm for more viewing

Despite some haze and marginal skies we plan on opening up tonight.




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We will try to do some solar observing at approximately 5:30pm at HJRO

Today is Tuesday ad I'll check out the sun at 5:30 pm

Visitors are welcome but children under 18 must be accompanied by a parent or school teacher to be admitted to the observatory.




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Here's a video clip of the moon observing I threw together

Not in any way an astro photograph but just a sample of what you can see. Actually the moon looks a lot better than the video will show. But this is an iPhone.

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Did a little bit of sidewalk astronomy at Old Chicago Pizza

Tonight I went by a local restaurant and setup my binocular telescope to view the moon and show anyone who happened by the moon. About 20 people stopped for a moment to look at the moon.

Everyone seemed pleased. Then after running an errand I decided to see how bad the skies were at the observatory. Keep in mind the weather forecast was saying it would rain tonight and I expected clouds. I didn't announce the observatory was open because I expected poor visibility and possible clouds. I put a last minute post on the Faac user group that I would take a look at the sky from HJRO and updated a few with sone test shots I took of Saturn with my iPhone looking through the eyepiece.

You can't get really good shots of a planet with an iPhone, but I like to toy around with it sometimes to see what I can get. Here's a sample photo below from the iPhone.

Saturn through the c14 using a 15mm eyepiece, iPhone at the eyepiece.
I also shot some with an 8mm eyepiece and also uses a Barlow for sone shots. The weather was clear enough for visual and 15mm eyepiece views bit much more didn't reveal better images, just larger fuzzy images with no additional detail.

Good viewing at lower powers could see Cassini division with 25mm and 15mm eyepieces.

There was some marginal seeing at times with warm air currents. Some stars twinkled which is not a good sign for astro imagers.





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Observatory will be open at 9:30 tonight

Children under 18 mist be accompanied with a parent to view through the telescope.

Enter through the small gate near the Jr High parking lot.

Greg


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Okay I'm back

I went out if town to see the shuttle launch in Florida.

It was a great experience. While down there I went to the beach. Explored and toured a couple of lighthouses and toured NASA

Also I went very quickly through a couple of air force museums on the way back to Michigan.

Here is a shot from the NASA tour.


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Last week we viewed the moon and worked on the observatory

Here's a fairly lousy photo of the moon using my iPhone


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It looks like clouds tonight we won't be open

Doppler radar shows clouds and we have clouds and haze here.

We won't be opening up tonight.

I was in Florida last week so I didn't have any posts for here but I heard Tim Dey opened up the observatory with Art Parent last week.


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Another sketch from LPHS

Here's a sketch of mercury setting in the evening last week over the high school. I took the picture from the top of the football stands.

The planet was low and impossible to see with the naked eye due to glare from the lights, but I saw it with binoculars. I was able to get a photo with an eos camera and processed it into a sketch using super camera app last week.

Mercury is the small dot above the chimney to the left.

You may have to click on the image and download the larger image to see the planet in this photo sketch as it's fairly small.



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A Great iPhone app - super camera app

Greg Ozimek, an active FAAC member met me at a local Taco Bell last week. We met to grab a quick snack and he had a pair of iphone charging cables he ordered over the Internet. These are affordable and were really convenient because they are longer than normal iPhone cables. As Greg was ordering some other cables he added them to his order for me. At Taco Bell I picked them up and paid him for them.

Then the fun began.

Greg recently purchased an iPod touch and has been researching some apps. He showed me a free app called Super Camera by Blue Onion Soft. This is a great piece of iPhone software and they have a slightly more advanced version with more filter and frame effects that cost 99 cents.

I immediately bought the dollar version and we started to play with photos at Taco Bell. Some great effects can be had even inthe free version of the app with a filter called sketch.

There are photoshop effects that can do this, but doing this in the iPhone or iPad quickly is a real blast.

The sketch filter seems to work best with architectural and building elements. Sometimes it works okay with soft and round features in natural objects but often its better with buildings.

Here's an example from a shot at HJRO.

But don't take my word for it, check out the quick sketch below my iPad made in less than 20 seconds.




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Tonight idid a quick test of registax software on a moon avi file

I was busy today and noticed the moon was out and the skies were clear but wouldn't be for long.

I decided to quickly get a clip from the Stellacam using the Meade refractor and try to see if registax could process it.

The pc at the observatory had been loaded earlier with registax 4 which is software that can convert avi movies from webcams into improved still images.

This was just a quick test and there is a lot to learn with thus software.

I didn't plan on spending much time there. The version four software chocked on avi files giving a frame decode error. I downloaded version 5 and the program stated it was version 5 beta when it launched.

Version 5 beta didn't choke on the same 5 second avi file.

I used default settings which took a long time to process.

At the end of processing the user can play with wavelet processing of the resulting image. This will give more relief and sharpness to some features like the edges of craters.


Here's one of the resulting images. I will likely spend a lot more time playing with registax in processing future video files taken at HJRO.

Is is just a test and there is a lot of room for improvement.




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Two nights of observing

Tuesday we had eight Faac members show up at the observatory. We had a few telescopes setup outside.

We were looking through these telescopes at M42, Saturn and the moon. We didn't look at a lot of objects but sone played with aatrophotography with cameras they brought along.

It was a great time.

Then Wednesday I was busy and couldn't get out until late. I decided to try something different. A spur of the moment bike ride and attempt to take a small scope along. I figured I could look at the moon at my destination if there was a spot for a tabletop mount.

I took a small scope to Old Chicago Pizza in Southgate Mi.

About ten people at the restaurant were able to view the moon. I took a 25mm, 15mn and 2x Barlow with me so we had four powers to use during my late dinner sidewalk astronomy session.

Here is a photo of last nights setup at Old Chicago.





I took a few photos if the moon through the eyepiece of this setup after eating a late night dinner. Below is one of my quick iPhone pictures of the moon.

Some turned out better than others. I don't have the entire moon in the shot below.


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The Hector J Robinson observatory remained closed Sunday night.

With poor visibility early on the threat of rain and winds we kept it shut up tonight.

Here's a picture of the observatory, sketched from an earlier night.




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Beginners night tonight at island lake

http://www.boonhill.net/faac/other/observe.html

See link above for the map.

Clear sky chart says it will be clear, but radar shows a lot of clouds tonight.

The clear sky chart is usually correct, but a few times each year it gets the forecast wrong.

If winds were moving clouds quickly we'd have clear skies by 7pm. Or if winds moved the clouds south.

I'm thinking that clear sky chart will be correct and we will have some clearing, but I think the clearing will be later in the night. We will have some demos and sessions for beginners if you arrive early.

My guess is it will be clear at spring mills pond by 10pm which is late and late viewing will be pretty good, but not excellent. A good view in a darker site is almost as good as an excellent view in a very bright site like the observatory site.

Weather and clouds at the observatory typically are an hour or two behind the site that is 50 miles west of us, so I'd expect conditions to not be very good in Lincoln Park early in the evening anyway.

So I'll be going to Island Lake to meet with other club members and visitors this evening.

I'll take a couple of small telescopes but others will likely be bringing larger ones.


Below is the current cloud conditions.



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I have a new toy, which is a stereo camera that takes 3d pictures. It's a Fujix w3 3d camera. It's really nice.

I tried taking a 3d picture of the moon tonight. This was late tonight through my Bt-80 binocular telescope. The moon didn't turn out very good through 3d stereo. I may be able to improve my moon photo 3d technique over time.

I was hoping to give people a sense of how cool it is to look at the moon through a binocular telescope, but you really have to look through a telescope that has the binocular feature to get the real impact of stereo viewing. The BT-80 seems to show the moon really well at 36 power, which is quite a bit more than most average binoculars. It sometimes looks really nice at higher power as well. I have to work a little on alignment of the binocular telescope at the higher 48 power using 15mm eyepieces. There is a little optical alignment issues with it. The view is so much better live.

Binocular telescopes can give some really interesting views of the moon, under less than ideal conditions. I know this may sound funny, but slight amounts of moving clouds with thin cloud cover moving over the moon can be stunning with binocular telescopes. The added effect of stereo viewing can often cause a more wonderful effect. Even viewing through thin tree branches when the moon is low can be interesting. It may sound funny to say that sometimes the view is more entertaining through these marginal conditions, but it seems true.

Last month during the rise of the full moon, with the shore ion event, the wide field of the binocular telescope with the low moon combined very nicely with some objects in the foreground flying past or or near the moon's vantage point. I saw a couple of jets and some birds fly past the moon or near it, This gave some added excitement to my viewing. Almost like bird watching and moon watching at the same time. Geese were flying down the river.

BEGINNERS NIGHT at Island Lake Recreational State Park
We have a beginners night tomorrow night at island lake recreational park, at the spring mills pond. This will be from 7pm until 12pm. Island lake is located near Kensington metro park. It's on the other side of the freeway. It's a state park and requires a different sticker, than the metro parks. If you can find Kensington metro park you can find Island lake.

The spring mill pond is about 3 miles away from the main entrance gate at Island Lake.

This event will have a few instructional demonstrations, one being how to collimate at Newtonian reflector. Another will be a sky tour. These are free but you have to pay or have a sticker to get into the park. If you have a telescope and are wondering how to use it you may be able to get help as well with that. If you call ahead the Ford Amateur Astronomy club they may be able to insure someone there will have experience with your kind or brand of telescope, but we often can deal with a wide variety of telescopes and there is usually someone there that can assist you.

Members like to chat with those who are new to astronomy, so don't be shy if you arrive, we understand everyone is new at some point. We really aren't bothered with most questions and actually love to chat and talk with anyone about astronomy,

Hopefully the weather will be clear tomorrow. It's clear tonight, but supposedly the transparency is kind of poor. And it could change. . . I saw some clouds threatening earlier. It seems warm enough to observe and have some fun, but I've had a long stressful day. I have not had anyone from the club call to ask me if I'm observing, so I'm going to skip observing tonight. I had a little bit of fun late at around 12:30pm playing with the binocular telescope at my house. I also was out at the observatory earlier today, and checked it out a bit, but didn't observe anything at that time as it was cloudy and I wanted to just do a few things inside the observatory.

Here's a photo from my 3d camera. This was a quick shot at the end of a FAAC board meeting that is attended by some of the members and officers of the Ford Amateur Astronomy Club. This photo was split up into the left and right photos that the camera takes and then I used a software program to create Red/blue anaglyph photo for this post. This requires red/blue glasses to see the 3d effect. The red and blue tint may not perfectly match you particular set of glasses as the minor adjustments of the software may not exactly match all red blue shades. The red blue 3d glasses often vary in quality so this doesn't look nearly as good as it would with a better dedicated 3d player.

Here you can see some members chatting at A Coney Island. I surprised them a bit, with this quick photo. This really looks nice on the back of the Fujix w3 3d camera that I have. It has a special display on the back of the camera that will show you the true 3d image and the camera doesn't require red/blue glasses like the image posted below.



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Location:Stereo photo experiment red/blue glasses FAAC member 3d image shown