Observing Log for Mike Durkin


12/29/2009 about 10:00PM-12:00AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing ?/5
Temperature: about 15-25 degrees
Canon DSLR

This may be the only clear night I get during the Christmas break. It was too cold to use the telescopes, but I wanted to try some things with my DSLR camera. It is supposed to have a linear response and I need to verify that. I took a group of images at different exposures of the area around Orion's belt and Rigel. I also took dark frames, even though I am not sure if I need them at this temperature and for exposures this short (5 seconds or less).
I also took a couple of wide field images of Lepus, although I did miss the Eastern edge.
All images during the night were taken using the 50mm lens.

the constellation Lepus
A wide field image of the constellation Lepus the Hare
Towards the end of the night, my camera was starting to act up. Even when I had the focus switch on the lens set to "MF" for manual focus, it was still trying to autofocus. This may have been due to the cold.
It was really cold this night, I'm not sure when my fingers felt so cold.


12/13/2009 about 9:00PM-11:00PM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 40-50 degrees
Canon DSLR

Tonight is supposed to be the peak of the Geminids. It was pouring rain most of the day, but it cleared up around 8-9PM. I went out with my camera and a wide angle lens to see if I could catch any images fo meteors. There were a bunch of planes flying though, so that was a little annoying since they frequently were in the filed of view of the camera. Visually I would say that I saw about 10-15 Geminid meteors, even though I was paying attention to the camera most of the time.

Gemini and Orion Geminid Meteor
A widefield image of Orion and Gemini. An image of a Gemeinid meteor.


12/11/2009 11:30PM-2:30AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 25-30 degrees
Equipment: Stellarvue 70mm ED

Even though it was clear out, it was very windy. I decided to do some variable stars.
Observed R Ari, ε Aur, Betelgeuse, &eta Gem, and U Gem.
I also saw a couple of meteors,which may have been part of the Gemenids, which are supposed to peak on the night of the 13th.


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