With my scope back together after major surgery, I wanted to give it a thorough test. But the moon was high, and rain was expected early morning, so I settled on a bit of lunar imaging. This is also my first try at using a small CCTV camera lens on… Continue Reading... "Lunar imaging at two scales"
I had a few hours of clear, moonless sky last night before the moon rose around midnight. I decided to take a short tour of galaxies around Ursa Major, Virgo, Leo, and Coma Berenices. I used SharpCap to live stack ten to fifteen minutes on each target. A little post… Continue Reading... "A tour of the Virgo cluster"
I attempted to capture the ISS once a while ago, but I missed it completely. It was going to pass very low in the north tonight, so I decided to try to capture it. It went through my field of view in about a second, and I only captured 5… Continue Reading... "ISS"
With the nice spring weather, I’ve finally got around to installing an allsky camera that I’ve pieced together over the last month. The camera consists of a Raspberry Pi 4 and ZWO ASI120MC-S in a waterproof case. I am also using a PoE converter to power the Pi only through… Continue Reading... "Allsky Camera"
With the imaging rig fixed up and back in service, I spent a few nights taking data on the small galaxy cluster Holmberg 124. The first night had some terrible seeing, so I had to toss a lot of that data. Overall, the equipment ran well for me, and I… Continue Reading... "Holmberg 124"
I finally put back together my wide-field setup based on my SkyWatcher 72ED and Nikon D5300. I wanted to give it a quick test last night, since the sky was actually clear for once. It was running nice and smooth until after I fell asleep, when a cable snagged and… Continue Reading... "A quick wide-field of M101"
I’ve finally gotten around to trying the new version of NINA, my preferred deep sky imaging software. The current major version is still in beta, but I am loving it so far. The biggest advancement is what they call their “advanced sequencer.” And advanced it is! The new sequencer allows… Continue Reading... "NINA 2.0"
The brightest emission nebula in the sky, Messier 42, was a great target to test extended object spectroscopy with my new ALPY 600. I set the telescope to track the core, just off the Trapezium, and the science camera to take 12 exposures of 100 seconds each. Emission nebulae are… Continue Reading... "Emission Nebula Spectrum"
I tell ya, astronomy is just one of those quicksand hobbies that you just can’t escape! I have begun my journey in astronomical spectroscopy. I recently acquired a Shelyak ALPY 600 with guiding module. I was graced with a very clear night a few nights ago. The moon was almost… Continue Reading... "The Spectra of Notable Brumal Stars"
