Observing Log for Mike Durkin 3/21/2021 about 8:00-9:30PM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 7-8/10, Seeing 3/5 Temperature: about 35-45 Equipment: Hutech modified Canon T3i DSLR photometry of Nova Cas 2021 and X Per. Both were kind of low and there may have been clouds in the images of X Per. 3/20/2021 about 8:00-12:00AM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 10/10, Seeing 3/5 Temperature: about 30-40 Equipment: Celestron Ultima 8 inch SCT More testing with the Synguider. This time with the off axis guider. I spent a lot of time trying to get the Synguider and DSLR camera in focus at the same time. In the end I was more or less able to. Both the camera and Synguider had the afocal camera adapter, but the Synguider also had the largest tube extender from the Celestron off axis guider. Then after that I tried to see if I could find a guidestar while I had M66. I spent about 10-20 minutes looking for one, but I had no luck. I believe that in order to use the Synguider, I may need to use a separate guidescope with better flexibility. After that I took a quick single image of M66. It was only 30 seconds because the star would trail a little too much for a longer exposure. 3/19/2021 about 10:00PM-1:00AM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 10/10, Seeing 3/5 Temperature: about 25-35 Equipment: Celestron Ultima 8 inch SCT Today I wanted to see if the Synguider could work on the Celestron. It worked about as well as I could have hoped. I did not use a pick off prism, so the image is probably much brighter that it would be otherwise. I was even able to get some stars that I considered fairly dim, so hopefully picking a guide star won't be extremely difficult. After that I wanted to look at some galaxies in Leo. The brightest galaxy of the evening was M96. Easy to see a diffuse "fuzz", but no other details. I also tried M95, but I may have only glimpsed it. I also observed M105 and NGC 3384, another "trio" of galaxies near M95. Another galaxy NGC 3389 is nearby, but I was not able to detect it. Then on the the main "Leo Trio". I could make out the core of M66, which seemed very small. I also tried M65 and may have glimpsed it, but at that point I was too tired, so wrapped it for a night. 3/7/2021 about 8:00-10:00PM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 9-10/10, Seeing 3/5 Temperature: about 25-35 Equipment: Hutech modified Canon T3i I am writing this 7 months after the events, so accuracy may be a bit off. DSLR photometry of X Per, RW Aur (fail), RT Cnc (testing for color, hope not too red). UPDATE: 2/12/2013. The color index I am getting for RT Cnc is 1.69, which is higher than I prefer (< 1.60). 3/6/2021 about 8:00-11:00PM Locust Valley, NY Transparency: 1-9/10, Seeing ?/5 Temperature: about 30-40 Equipment: Hutech modified Canon T3i Clouds were a bit of a nuisance all night. I attempted DSLR photometry on &epislon; Aur and RT Cnc. I was able to go get some images of ε Aur, but the sky almost completely covered the sky once I attempted RT Cnc. Other Log Entries <-- 2020 Jan  Feb  Mar   Apr  May  Jun  Jul  Aug   Sep  Oct  Nov  Dec  2022 -->