Observing Log for Mike Durkin
11/25/2023 about 11:00PM-12:00AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 5-8/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: 20-30 degrees
Equipment: Hutech modified Canon T3i
DSLR measurement of AB Aur. Going to try to use the proper comp and check stars as specified
by AAVSO Alert Notice 842. Although I'm a bit doubtful that the check and comp stars will have
enough signal to noise ratio. The fact that it was basically a full moon as well might make the
S/N ration worse. I took about 50 light frames and there was a little bit of clouds that
were in some of the images.
11/11-12/2023 about 11:30PM-1:30 AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 10/10, Seeing 3-4/5
Temperature: 35-45 degrees
Equipment: Stellarvue 70mm refractor
Visual measurements of variable stars X Aur, U Aur, S Cep, and α Ori.
Also during the night I saw one faint meteor, probably a sporadic. I saw it in the
north north west part of the sky and it came from the east. Maybe the trail was
a degree.
I also chanced upon viewing M37, which looked nice in the small telescope, but
really dided a little more apeture to bing out more stars.
I also tried to view cluster NCG 188, I might have picked up just the faintest
hint of it, but I am doubtful.
11/3-4/2023 about 10:30PM-1:00 AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 3-4/5
Temperature: 40-55 degrees
Equipment: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC
After taking some videos last week of Jupiter, I decided to try again
but this time with RGB filters so I can combine into a color image since
the ASI 174 mini is monochrome. I took about 4 series of RGB videos to
combine later.
Supposedly the Great Red Spot was supposed to be visible, but I wasn't
able to clearly see it in the eyepiece. Perhaps after processing the videos
I can tell for sure.
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Location: Long Island, NY Camera: ASI174MM Mini with 5x barlow lens Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC. Filters: Meade RGB planetary filters Additional info: images obtained using ASIAir Plus. 3x30s images stacked using AutoStakkert 3.1.4. Wavelet processing using Registax. RGB images combined and additional processing using GIMP. The moons are Europa and Io. Either my focus was off a little or the seeing was a bit worse for this images since it isn't as sharp as I would like. |
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Location: Long Island, NY Camera: ASI174MM Mini with 5x barlow lens Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC. Filters: Meade RGB planetary filters Additional info: images obtained using ASIAir Plus. 3x30s stacked using AutoStakkert 3.1.4. Wavelet processing using Registax. RGB images combined and additional processing using GIMP. The moons are Europa and Io. The best series of the night. |
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Location: Long Island, NY Camera: ASI174MM Mini with 5x barlow lens Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC. Filters: Meade RGB planetary filters Additional info: images obtained using ASIAir Plus. Stacked using AutoStakkert 3.1.4. Wavelet processing using Registax. RGB images combined and additional processing using GIMP. The moons are Europa and Io. My focus or the seeing for these RGB frames was not that good. |
EDIT: After processing I noticed that the images through the blue filter was never really clear. I think this is a common issue where the blue filter is almost always off by a little bit. I just watched a Youtube video with Christopher Go, and I believe he said that this also happens to him, but rather than trying to adjust the focus in the middle of a series, he just deals with it
Then I took a couple of still images of the Trapezium region in the Orion Nebula. Although I didn't see the extended part of the nebula, the Trapezium region showed up very easily even with short exposures.
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Location: Long Island, NY Camera: ASI174MM Mini Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC. Exposure: 5s Additional info: images obtained using ASIAir Plus and processed with Photoshop. |
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