Observing Log for Mike Durkin
7/30/2011 about 9:00PM-3:00AM
Stone Tavern Farm, Roxbury, NY
Transparency: 10/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 60 degrees
Equipment: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC, Hutech modified Canon Rebel XT
AOS Starfest 2011
After two days of lousy weather, Saturday night finally cleared up. It took me a while to get all my gear set up, with the off axis guider, polar aligned, and taking some twilight flats. There was also a 20 minute power outage.
First I imaged the Eagle Nebula. The tracking seemed to have problems after about 30 minutes, maybe due to off axis guider problems?
Then I imaged a galaxy NGC6946, I did capture the galaxy, but it really needed more total exposure time.
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M16 - Eagle Nebula Camera: Hutech Modified Canon Rebel XT Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC Exposure: 5x7 minutes (35 minutes total), flats frames and dark frames. Location: Stone Tavern Farm, Roxbury, NY |
Spiral Galaxy NGC 6946 Camera: Hutech Modified Canon Rebel XT Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC Exposure: 5x7 minutes (35 minutes total), flats frames and dark frames. Location: Stone Tavern Farm, Roxbury, NY |
7/17/2011 about 9:00PM-11:00PM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 80 degrees
Equipment: Stellarvue 70mm
Observed variable stars VW UMa, VY UMa, and ST UMa.
While scanning, I tried to see M81 or M82, but even though I was in the area, I was not able to make out clearly. I might have barely been able to make out M81, but I was not certain.
7/16/2011 about 3:00PM-11:00PM
Heckscher State Park, NY
Transparency: 6/10, Seeing 5/5
Temperature: about 80 degrees
Equipment: 8 inch SCT, various others.
Music Under The Stars at Heckscher State Park. Started with showing the sun in Hydrogen α. There were a couple of nice prominences.
As the evening continues clouds were more common. Showed some people Saturn along with Titan. As Saturn started to set, I showed Alberio.
7/15/2011 about 9:00PM-12:00AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 70-80 degrees
Equipment: Hutech modified DSLR, AstroTrac
Took some DSLR photometry measurements of δ Sco and Z UMa. I was pretty happy with the results for δ Sco, but even though all the test magnitudes for Z UMa were close to published values, the extinction and transform coefficients were unusual.
7/10/2011 about 9:00PM-11:30PM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 70-80 degrees
Equipment: Stellarvue 70mm, Imaging Source DMK31AU03
Observed variable stars: α Her, g Her, W Boo, R Lyr
I also decided to try taking a couple of videos of the moon with my
planetary camera:
Image of the moon, monochrome. Telescope: Stellarvue 70mm with 2x barlow lens Camera: Imaging source DMK 31AU03 about 400 images from a video file stacked using Registax 6. |
Image of the moon, monochrome. Telescope: Stellarvue 70mm with 2x barlow lens Camera: Imaging source DMK 31AU03 about 400 images from a video file stacked using Registax 6. |
 Image of the moon, monochrome. Telescope: Stellarvue 70mm with 2x barlow lens Camera: Imaging source DMK 31AU03 about 400 images from a video file stacked using Registax 6. |
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7/9/2011 about 9:00PM-12:00AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 70-80 degrees
Equipment: Hutech modified Canon Rebel XT, AstroTrac
I took some DSLR images of Antares and δ Sco for photometry measurements.
7/1/2011 about 11:00PM-2:00AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 60-70 degrees
Equipment: Hutech modified Canon Rebel XT, zoom lens, AstroTrac
Orinigally I wanted to try to get the eclipsing binary AI Dra. After taking images for about 90 minutes, I noticed that the star was staying at a constant magnitude. Turns out that I was a day late for the eclipse. However I did have enough frames to stack in order to get a measurement for WZ Dra. It took 40 frames to get the SNR down to about 85, which is a little low, but at least good enough to make a mediocre measurement.
After that, I didn't want to break down, so I looked for what was available for a zoom lens. I noticed Cygnus in the sky and decided to give another try at the North America Nebula (NGC7000). The result:
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Camera: Hutech Modified Canon Rebel XT Lens: 75-300 Zoom (set to 200mm) Exposure: 30x1 minute Processing: no dark frames or flat frames. MaxDSLR and Photshop. |
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