Observing Log for Mike Durkin
7/24/2010 about 9:00PM-11:00PM
Transparancy: 6/10, Seeing: 4/5
Custer Institute, Southold, NY
Temperature: about 80-90 degrees
Equipment: 14 inch SCT
Spent the afternoon helping to set up the motor in the Sue Rose
Observatory.
Once people started showing up, Bill C. started showing people
the moon, including the Sea of Tranquility and the approximate site
of the Apollo landing.
After that I was showing some people Saturn and Albereo. Sauturn was a
little disappointing because it was low in the horizon and because
of cloud cover. Alberio did get a nice reaction from some of the
people.
At about 11 PM, the clouds forced us to close up.
7/17/2010 about 3:00PM-11:00PM
Heckscher State Park, Islip, NY
Transparency: 7/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 80-90 degrees
Equipment: Coronado Hydrogen Alpha telescope, Celestron 8 inch NexStar.
Music and Astronomy under the Stars at Heckscher State Park in Islip.
Started showing off the sun in the Hydrogen Alpha scope. There was one
really nice split prominence that was changing slightly during the
evening.
After that I used the 8 inch Celestron to show people things. I tried
to find Mercury, but no luck. We also showed Venus, the moon, and Saturn
to people.
7/5/2010 about 10:00PM-12:30AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 7/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 80 degrees
Equipment: Stellarvue 70mm refractor
I did some some variable star observing. I was surprised that things
didn't dew up during the night. I took magnitude measurements of the
following stars:
Z UMa
δ Sco
T UMa
RS UMa
α Her
S Her
X Oph
XY Lyr
&beta Lyr
7/3/2010 about 9:00PM-2:30AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 10/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 60 degrees
Equipment: Celestron Ultima C8 with PEC, and Hutech Modified Canon Rebel XT
I started by trying to see if I could find a decent configuration of the off-axis
guider. It took a lot of tweeking, but I finally did come up with something that
should be usable. Now I need to do something with the pickoff prism to make it
rigid and get rid of the wobble.
I then set up my camera with zoom lens to piggyback on the 8 inch SCT. So I
first imaged the Veil Nebula and then after that I imaged the area around
Sadr (γ Cygni)
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Camera: Hutech modified Canon Rebel XT Lens: 75-300mm zoom lens (set to 176mm), f/4.5 Exposure: 40x40 seconds, 20 dark frames subtracted. ISO: 1600 AIP4WIN, MaxDSLR, and Photoshop used for processing. I probably should have taken more light frames to try to bring out some of the fainter parts. |
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Camera: Hutech modified Canon Rebel XT Lens: 75-300mm zoom lens (set to 176mm), f/4.5 Exposure: 36x40 seconds, 20 dark frames subtracted. ISO: 1600 AIP4WIN, MaxDSLR, and Photoshop used for processing. |
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