Observing Log for Mike Durkin
7/27-28/2024 about about 9:30PM-2:00AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: about 60-75 degrees
Equipment: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC, ASIAir
Finally trying to do a "pretty picture" image. I decided to do a piece of the Veil Nebula which is also sometimes
called the Network Nebula (NGC 6995).
After getting all the pieces in place, I tried to do a polar alignment using the ASIAir, however it was having
trouble doing a plate solve. I probably spent about an hour trying to get that to work, but eventually I gave
up on that and decided to just go with the rough polar alignment I did using the finderscope and an iPhone app
showing where to place Polaris. And of course after that, plate solving started kind of working, but it was too
late to go back and polar align. One other odd thing about the plate solve is that the map view didn't center on
the coordinated, so I had to use my Sky Safari app to match up the field of view.
A couple of other positives. The light cone seemed pretty well centers on the camera's chip, which was a problem
on a previous session. Also the adapter for the guide camera to the off axis guider worked very well by placing
the camera far enough away to get sharp stars, so I could use slightly faint star to guide with.
At this tie I haven't processed the image files, but I am a bit worried I may have picked a part of the nebula that
was too faint. I do have about 100 minutes of light frames, so hopefully there will be something there to see.
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Location: Long Island, NY Camera: Hutech modified Canon T3i Telescope: Celestron Ultima 8 with PEC. Image details: 50x1200s (100 minutes), with dark, flat, and dark-flat frames. Acquired using an ASIAir to control tracking and exposures. Processed with Pixinsight and GIMP. |
After processing comments: I initially had a lot of trouble dealing with the flat frames, then never seemed to properly flatten the images. I did eventually take some dark-flat images about a week after I took the light frames and after that, the flat frames seemed to work as intended.
I went through the Pixinsight steps again from a iset of Youtube videos for beginners. After processing I have mixed feelings about the results. I was hoping the part of the nebula I centered on would show up more clearly with 100 minutes of exposure time, but I only got some faint wisps of the area I wanted. If I cented on the brigher parts of the Veil nebula, I probably would have had a much more satisfying result.
7/13/2024 about about 10:30-11:30PM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: 70-80 degrees
Equipment: Stellarvue 70mm refractor
Testing out using the small scope with just the ball head.
Tried observing:
M4: might have barely detected, but not sure.
M107: another globular cluster. I wasn't able to see it.
M13: easier to see, although no individual stars resolved.
M81: was able to faintly detect the core as a slighly fuzzy patch.
M82: not able to detect.
So I was able to use the ball head to move the small scope around, it wasn't as convenient
as I would have liked.
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