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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