Observing Log for Mike Durkin
2/23/2020 about 7:30PM-9:30PM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 35-45 degrees
Equipment: 16 inch Meade Lightbridge
I wanted to use the Dob today and maybe also pick some target from astronomy magazines.
I wanted to see Venus before it got too low, but it was too late. By the time I was set up it was behind
the house.
M1 - I was able to make it, and could detect a bit of the shape of it.
IC 418 - Planetary nebula. Looked almost stellar and no obvious color using the 6.7mm eyepiece.
Sirius - I tried to see the white dwarf, but the glare from Sirius A was too bright. I am also not
sure if I needed better optics as well since Sirius A did not look like a point. It was a bit interesting
to actially see the diffraction spikes.
M35 and NGC 2158 - M35 looked nice the the 40mm eyepiece, but I had to use the 6.7mm eyepiece in order
to start seeing the stars from NGC 2158.
λ Ori and Collinder 69 - A sparse bright cluster in Orion.
ρ Ori - a double star in Orion. The brighter star looked red and the fainter star looked blue. However
like with Sirius, I wonder if the optics weren't the best for this since the stars did look a little "soft"
NGC 2903 - Galaxy off the "nose" of Leo. I was ablw to see the galaxy, and using the 6.7mm eyepiece helped.
I did notice the core and may have been able to see the bar since there was a definite elongation in one
direction.
NGC 2392 - Eskimo or Snowball Nebula. Fairly bright and a blue-greeen color. I did not see an Eskimo
face, but there was a brighter core and the fainter outer section.
I also visually measured the magnitudes of R Ori and α Ori.
2/22/2020 about 7:00PM-10:00PM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 9/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 30-40 degrees
Equipment: Hutech modified DSLR camera
Imaged the area around Propus to get star clusters and nebulae. I also wanted to compares the
star colors using the zoom lens and the prime Canon lens. Even though the zoom lens does have
blue/purple halos, the prime lens seems to shift star colors away from red after I color balance
on the sky background.
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Location: Long Island, NY Camera: Hutech modified Canon T3i Lens: 700-300 zoom lens. Set to 130mm, f/6.3 ISO: 1600 Exposure: 244x25s seconds (101.67 minutes) Mount: AstroTrac TT320X AG on camera tripod Calibrated with dark and flat frames Processed in MaximDL and Photoshop with Astronomy Tools and GradientXterminator |
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