Observing Log for Mike Durkin
4/27/2015 about 10:00PM-11:00PM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 45-55 degrees
Equipment: 10x50 binoculars
Quick look at some variable stars. UU Aur, SS Vir, and ST Uma. The quarter moon was a bit bright and interfered a bit.
4/25/2015 about 8:00PM-10:00PM
Theodore Roosevelt Nature Center, Jones Beach, NY
Transparency: 5/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 40-50 degrees
Equipment: 127mm Mak and 15x70 binoculars
AOS public observing session at Jones Beach. There was a layer of thin clouds throughout the whole
evening.
Started by showing Venus, which was about 60% illuminated.
Also showed the crowd the moon, which was near 50% illuminated. Supposedly during the evening
the Lunar X was going to be visible.
I also showed one couple Jupiter and it's 4 moons.
During the evening I also used by cellphone to take images of the moon and Jupiter through the
17mm eyeiece.
Also interesting during the night there was a partial halo around the moon due to the thin cloud
layer
4/11/2015 about 8:00PM-3:00AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 35-50 degrees
Equipment: Canon Tebel T3i
Decided to get back to taking a pretty picture of astrophotography, and finally tried a target
I've been interested in for a long time, M51.
After looking at the images, I was disappointed that the focus shifted during the imaging run.
I ended up excluding about half of the light frames due to the bad focus. Something must have
been a bit too loose wich allowed the camera to move.
|
|
Camera: Canon Rebel T3i Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC Focal length: 2000mm @f/10 Exposure: 19x4 minutes (76 minutes) Location: Locust Valley, NY Calibrated with dark and flat frames using MaximDL Processed with Photoshop The focus is a little bit off. There is also a faint streak from a satellite. |
<-- 2014 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2016 -->