Observing Log for Mike Durkin
1/31/2010 about 11:00PM-11:30PM
College Point, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing ?/5
Temperature: ???
Equipment: Hutech modified Canon Rebel XT with 50mm lens
Took about 50 images of the area around ε Aurigae, to do some photometry calculations.
I defocused the lens by quite a bit to spread out the light from the stars. I used a tissue
in front of the lens to create the flat frames. From what I can see so far, that seems to
be good enough for the flats. There was also a significant amount of light pollution.
This ended up being my first photometric measurement of &epsilon Aur.
1/23/2010 about 9:00PM-1:00AM
Custer Institute, Southold, NY
Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 25-30 degrees
Equipment: 14 inch Celestron
Took a trip out to Custer to see about using a webcam on Mars with the club's 14 inch scope. Initially, the seeing did not look very good, so I decided to wait a bit.
Then I tried using my DSLR for some pictures of ε Aur. However I noticed that as the camera was taking pictures, the focus was changing a little bit. I think in order to do this consistently, I'll need to tape down the focusing ring on the lens.
After a while when Mars was higher, I did hook up the webcam and take a few movies. This time the seeing looked much better.
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Taken at the Susan Rose Observatory at Custer Institute. Telescope: Celestron 14 inch SCT (about 3900mm focal length) Camera: Toucam Pro Exposure: 1/500 second Processing: each frame about 400 images stacked and aligned with Registax. Photoshop used to increase the size of each frame by about 75% and make the animated GIF |
1/10/2010 about 9PM-1AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing ?/5
Temperature: about 20-25 degrees
Equipment: Stellarvue 70MM ED, Celestron 8 Ultima PEC
Today I wanted to see if I could guide using the Stellarvue as a guidscope and the Celestron as the imaging scope.
I decided to try the area around the Flame Nebula in Orion. After looking at some of the resulting pictures, I can see a lot of glare from internal reflections of the bright star Alnitak.
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Here's a single image of the flame nebula. You can see the odd pattern caused by internal reflections from Alnitak. Camera: Hutch modified Canon Rebel XT Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC and 6.3 focal reducer. Exposure: 1x240 seconds ISO: 400 |
I also noticed that the stars were somewhat oval shaped. I need to determin if the problem was flexure, field rotation, or bad guiding.
1/9/2010 about 8PM-1AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 9/10, Seeing ?/5
Temperature: about 20-25 degrees
Equipment: Stellarvuw 70MM ED, Celestron 8 Ultima PEC
Getting everything set up took a lot long then I was expecting. I also had some issues with the PHD-mount cable.
Had to stop since it was getting late and the portable battery was running out.
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Telescope: Stellarvue 70mm ED Camera: Hutech modified Canon XT Location: Locust Valley, NY ISO: 400 Exposure: 10x180 seconds with dark frames subtracted. Guiding: Shoestring adapter, PHD, and DSI Pro through a C8. Processed with MaxDSLR and Photoshop. |
1/9/2010 about 12:00AM-12:30AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing ?/5
Temperature: about 20-25 degrees
Equipment: 10x50 binoculars
Did some simple variable star observing.
ε Aur, α Ori, and η Gem.
I had to wrap up after those beause clouds came in.
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