Observing Log for Mike Durkin
3/18/2018 9:00PM-10:00PM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 25-35 degrees
Equipment: Stellarvue 70mm refractor
Visually measured variable stars α Ori, BK Ori, X Mon and TT Mon.
3/17-18/2018 6:00PM-2:00AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8-10/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: about 30-40 degrees
Equipment: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC
Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
I wanted to do a pretty picture image today since the weather forecast said the skies were
going to be clear. I decided to image the galaxy NGC 2903, off the tip of Leo.
I started setting up my gear aroud 6-7PM. Then once it got a bit darker, I did a polar
alignment.
Then I had t get the autoguiding set up. As I was doing that, it was quite windy and I was
afraid that it would be too much for the mount. But the wind did eventually died down. I
also had a lot of trouble with PHD software and the Meade DSI camera. PHD kept crashing the
laptop. I think it might be because the USB cable was a bit loose and the connection
was lost sometimes. The next day I did apply a bit of masking tape around one of the
connectors to tighten the connection. I will have to see if that helps.
I finally started imaging around 10-11PM,, about an hour or so later than I wanted to start.
I was using the UHC clip in filter for the camera, so I had to bump up the ISO from 1600 to
6400, and my light frames were 4 minutes each. I hope that won't degrade the pictures much.
At one the neighbors came home and I noticed that my focus had shifted a bit, maybe due to
mirror flop? I had to break out the Bahtinov mask to do a quick refocus.
I finished up with the galaxy around 1 AM. By that time it was significantly in the west.
Before I finished I decided to try to take a single shot of "the face" in Markarian's chain.
It toook me about 30 minutes to get the right field of view. After that I took a single shot.
Turns out that the f/10 filed of view is a bit too tight for this target. If I try to do it
again, I will either have to use a focal reducer or the 70mm scope.
Then I broke down for the night.
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Image of spiral galaxy NGC 2903 Location: Long Island, NY Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC Camera: Hutech modified Canon T3i Exposure: 29x4 minutes (116 minutes) Filters: IDAS light pollution filter. ISO: 6400 Autoguiding: Mease DSI I and PHD Processing: MaximDL for calibration with dark and flat frames, then for stacking and aligning. Photoshop with Astronomy Tools used for additional processing. |
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M86, M84 and NGC 4388 Location: Long Island, NY Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC Camera: Hutech modified Canon T3i Exposure: 4 minutes Filters: IDAS light pollution filter. ISO: 6400 Autoguiding: Mease DSI I and PHD Processing: MaximDL for calibration with dark and flat frames, then for stacking and aligning. Photoshop with Astronomy Tools used for additional processing. |
3/10/2018 10:00PM-11:30PM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 2-8/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 30-40 degrees
Equipment: Stellarvue 70mm refractor
Started out mostly clear, and I was able to eventualy take a visual measurement of
Z UMa.
Then after talking with the neighbor for a few minutes, the sky became mostly clear.
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