Observing Log for Mike Durkin
4/30/2010 about 10:00PM-2:30AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 60 degrees
Equipment: Hutech Canon Rebel XT, 10x50 binoculars, Stellarvue 70mm
Took variable star measurements of ε Aur, R Vir, ZZ Boo, RV Boo.
I used my DSLR to take some images of Z UMa to process for photometry.
And before I finished, I used my cellphone to take an image of the moon through the eyepiece. Interesting features were Mare Crisium and Crater Petavius. The light just caught part of the central peal in the creater for a nice effect.
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| An image of the moon I took with my cellphone through my Stellarvue 70mm and an 7.4mm eyepiece. |
4/23/2010 about 11:00PM-4:00AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 40-50 degrees
Equipment: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC, Canon Rebel XT
I played around with the polar alignment software first. Was able to get
pretty close, but I still need to get the whole process down.
Then I tried setting up the off-axis guider. I had quite a few problems
with it. First it was difficult to screw in all the way since part
of the camera body was blocking. Then the pick off prism isn't all the
way into the light path. I think I need to just buy a new one.
So I decided to take a coupole of pictures of M13, unguided.
After that, I noticed Scorpius was visible to the southwest so I imaged
M4, even thought there was some light pollution.
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Image of M13. Also in the image are galaxies NGC 6207 and IC 4617 Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC and 6.3 focal reducer Camera: Hutech modified Canon Rebel DSLR Location: Long Island, NY Exposure: 20x30 second images stacked. 20 dark frames subtracted. ISO: 1600 Processed with MaxDSLR and Photoshop. No guiding was used. I think my focus may has slipped a little before I took this image. I used a Bahtinov mask, to initially achieve focus, but after that I had to point the telescope to near the zenith, which may have caused the mirror to shift slightly. |
Image of M4 Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC and 6.3 focal reducer Camera: Hutech modified Canon Rebel DSLR Location: Long Island, NY Exposure: 21x30 second images stacked. 20 dark frames subtracted. ISO: 1600 Processed with MaxDSLR and Photoshop. No guiding was used. |
4/18/2010 about 10:00-10:30PM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 7/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 50 degrees
Equipment: Hutech modified Canon Rebel XT
I used my DSLR to measure the magnitude of Z Ursae Majoris
4/18/2010 about 4:30PM-5:00PM
Oyster Bay, NY
Transparency: 6/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 50-60 degrees
Equipment: Coronado Hydrogen Alpha PST
Despite some clouds, there was enough clear sky to observe the sun. The main feature observered were a couple of filaments in the south-west portion of the disk.
There was also a single bright prominence on the northern edge. There was also an interesting double prominence on the north-eastern part of the disk.
There were also some smaller prominences around the disk of the dun in general. I mainly used the 7.4mm(54x) and 5mm(80x) eyepieces.
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