Observing Log for Mike Durkin 7/24/2015 about 10:00PM-1:00AM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 8-9/10, Seeing 4/5 Temperature: about 70-80 degrees Equipment: Canon Rebel T3i Finally get to do some DSLR photometry! DSLR photometry of R Lyr, P Cyg, AC Her and CH Cyg. I wanted to do δ Sco, but there were some clouds lingering in the southwest that was blocking it. Also made a visual measurement of α Her. 7/19/2015 about 9:00PM-11:00PM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 3/10, Seeing ??/5 Temperature: about 80-95 degrees Equipment: Celestron Ultima 8 No real observing, just trying to test out the Linus laptop as an autoguider. Sky conditions were awful, but most of the time Arcturus was just bright enough to punch through the clouds, so I was using that as the guide star. The good news is that Kstars/Ekos is able to communicate with the camera and telescope mount with the GPUSB adapter. The bad news is that the guide corrections seem to be overly aggressive. After about 30 seconds of what seems to be normal behavior, the DEC corrections would just thrash back and forth for about 3-5 seconds in each direction. Hopefully this is just a case of where I have to find the right parameters for guiding. 7/11/2015 about 9:00PM-12:00AM midnight Theodore Roosevelt Nature Center, Jones Beach, NY Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 4/5 Temperature: about 55-65 degrees Equipment: Meade 16 inch Lightbridge Trying to make more use of my 16 inch telescope. Observed Saturn, M4, M8, M20 (barely visible), M24, M17. I also probably observed NGC 6611, the star cluster in the middle of the Eagle Nebula, but I was not able to make out any nebulocity. My collimation was a bit off, especially in the beginning, so I need to get better with that. I also wanted to take a shot a Pluto, but I wasn't feeling well. I had a headache almost the whole time and felt very ill, especially at then end and on the drive back home. Other Log Entries <-- 2014 Jan  Feb   Mar  Apr  May  Jun  Jul   Aug  Sep  Oct  Nov  Dec   2016 -->