Observing Log for Mike Durkin
11/14/2018 9:00PM-1:30AM
Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley, California
Transparency: 10/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: 35-50 degrees
Equipment: Hutech modified T3i and 17-35mm zoom lens
OK, finally got the clear night in Death Valley and I am ready to image.
First worked on M45.
|
|
|
Location: Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley, California Camera: Hutech modified Canon T3i Lens: EF200mm f/2.8L II USM at f/2.8 ISO: 1600 Exposure: 95x45 seconds (71.25 minutes) Mount: Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Calibrated with dark frames, no flat frames Processed in MaximDL and Photoshop with Astronomy Tools |
I was very happy with the faint nebulosity I was able to bring out. However I am not so happy with the color of the stars. Stars that should be yellow, orange or red, tended to have a bit of a blue cast to them.
Then I did a Milky Way section around Rosette Nebula
|
|
Location: Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley, California Camera: Hutech modified Canon T3i Lens: 17-35mm, set at 24mm and f/4.5 Exposure: about 14 minutes Mount: Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer |
During my imaging I saw an animal crossing the parking lot near by but I would not make out what it was. I asked a hotel employee who drove by in a golf cart wht it was and he told me it was a kit fox, harmless as long as food isn't involved. I guess just like racoons.
The light from the hotel did interfere a little bit with the Milky Way shots, hopefully not too bad
The zoom lens had significant distortion in the corners and the alignment didn't work great for all the shots I think in part due to this distortion, so I had to scale back to only about 7 images total.
11/14/2018 7:00PM-8:00PM
Harmony Borax Works, Death Valley, California
Transparency: 10/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: 40-55 degrees
Equipment: naked eye and small zoom binoculars
The park had a public outreach session with a local astronomer, maybe an amateur, describing
objects in the sky. He discussed Vega, Polaris, the Double cluster, Mars, the Moon, M31
and the Pleiades. Conditions were dark enough that I was able to just see the Andromeda Galaxy
(M31) naked eye.
Although I was happy to go to the public session, the astronomer didn't really talk about
things that were new to me.
11/13/2018 10:30PM-12:30AM
Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley, California
Transparency: 3/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: 40-55 degrees
Equipment: Hutech modified T3i and 17-35mm zoom lens
I was kind of bummed that I was too tired to do anything the night before when it was clear.
So even though the sky was very cloudy, there were some holes that woyld show up and I decided
to try a time lapse video by combining multiple frames.
|
|
Time Lapse video of Orion, Canis Major and Canis Minor. Location: Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley, California Camera: Hutch modified Canon T3i Lens: 17-35mm zoom lens. Used at 17mm and f/4.0 Exposure: 71x30 seconds. ISO: 6400 Processing: combines in Movie Maker Pro and using a HDR filter on each frame. The bright orange light in the background is most likely the town of Beatty, Nevada. |
And here is a single image before I started imaging before most of the clouds started moving in.
|
|
Single image of Orion, Lepus, part of Gemini, Sirius and Procyon. Location: Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley, California Camera: Hutch modified Canon T3i Lens: 17-35mm zoom lens. Used at 17mm and f/4.0 Exposure: 30 seconds. ISO: 6400 |
11/10/2018 6:00PM-9:00PM
Spring Mountain Ranch State Park near Las Vegas
Treansparency: 8/10 Seeing: 2-3/5
Temperature: 35-50
Equipment: Hutech modified T3i and EF200mm f/2.8L II USMi, Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer
A public observing session in Las Vegas, first time I have ever done that. THe sky conditions
were a little disappointing. Las Vegas gives off a LOT of light pollution, Ithink it is even
weorse than Manhattan. The eastern sky was almost totally white and the rest of the sky
was comparable to what I see in Nassau county.
I started with imaging the Elephant trunk nebula in Cepheus.
|
|
Location: Spring Mountain Ranch State Park Camera: Hutech modified Canon T3i Lens: EF200mm f/2.8L II USM, set to f/3.5 Exposure: about 200x20 seconds (66.7 minutes) Mount: Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer |
After processing, it seems that I can never quite get a wide angle of this nebula to look good. There was stillsomeodd color gradients and I did have to stretch a log to get the nebula to show up, although then some of the stars look abit extra bloated.
During the evening I also got a chance to look though a couple of the telescopes that the local astronomy club had set up. One was set up on Alberio and another was on Mars. The turbulance in the Mars telescope looked a bit severe. I don't know if that was due to bad seeing of it the telescope didn't cool down yet.
Before I left, I tried some wide angle landscape images:
|
|
|
|
I seem to have also been the last person of the general public to leave. When I got back to the parking lot, security has making radio requests about my car rental. I may have stayed a bit later than I should have.
11/3/2018 10:00PM-1:30AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8-10/10, Seeing ?/5
Temperature: ??
Equipment: Hutech modified T3i and EF200mm f/2.8L II USMi, Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer
Another chance to test out the new Canon Lens. This time I imaged the Andromeda galaxy.
|
|
Camera: Hutech modified Canon T3i Lens: Canon EF 200mm f/2.8l II USM, used at f/3.5 Exposure: 201x30 seconds (100.5 minutes) ISO: 800 Mount: Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Processing: MaximDL for calibration with dark and flat frames, then for stacking and aligning. Photoshop with Astronomy Tools used for additional processing. I did have a bit of a problem with the color balance. After equalizing the background, the galaxy was mostly a magenta color. I did cheat a little bit and do some editing in Photoshop to shift the colors of the galaxy until it was a color that I preferred. |
<-- 2017 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec 2019 -->