Observing Log for Mike Durkin
6/20-21/2026 about 8:00PM-12:30AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: 65-80 degrees
Equipment: Stellarvue 70mm refractor and Hutech modified Canon T3i
Finally got around to testing using the AM5 mount with the 70mm telescope and my DSLR.
I started my setting up the mount in the daylight. That did take a bit longer than I would
have liked. I'm hoping that being more familiar with the setup would help a lot with the
setup time, escpecially since I had to figure out which cables to use and also how to connect
the ASIAir with the AM5.
I did have the benefit of a crescent moon being up so that I could focus the main DSLR camera
and then work with the guida camera. I determined that when using this configuration of the
70mm scope, field flattener, and OAG, that using one of the medium spacers for the guide camera
helped to get both cameras focused together.
Then I spent about 20 minutes imaging M64, the Black Eye Galaxy. This is a small target for
this size scope, but I'm not too concerned since this is mainly testing out the configuration
and using the mount. AFter checking some of the light frames, about 4-5 of them were ruined by
clouds and maybe some airplabe lights, so this won't be a full 20 minutes.
After that, I tried imaging the globular cluster M5. This is also kind of small for the 70mm
scope.
For M64, I Used 30s subs, which might have been too long. For M5, I used 15s subs.
In hindsight the guiding was so-so and I think there could be some room for improvement, but
I don't think it was bad enought to ruin the images. Next time I need to play around with
dithering and maybe test out a meridian flip to make sure the cables aren't a problem.
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M64 - The Black Eye Galaxy Date/Time: 6/20-21/2026 about 8:00PM-12:30AM Location: Long Island, NY Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 4/5 Temperature: 65-80 degrees Exposure: 16 minutes Equipment: Stellarvue 70mm refractor, ZWO AM5 mount, and Hutech modified Canon T3i Processing using Siril, GIMP, and GraXpert. |
For M64, the image wasn't intended to be high quality since I was mostly testing thee equipment. Although I was happy to be able to see the dust in the galaxy that gives it the name "Black Eye Galaxy". Ideally, this would have been a longer exposure and I would have done some dithering to reduce some of the background noise. This image is showing a lot of coma in the edges even though I did use a 0.9x field flattener. I alsi could have sworn the thecamera was oriented with equitorial north as being, up, but it seems to have been rotated 90 degrees.
6/19-20/2026 about 9:30PM-1:00AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8/10, Seeing 4/5
Temperature: 65-75 degrees
Equipment: Hutech modified Canon T3i
DSLR photometry of T CrB, P Cyg, and V1687 Cyg. This is my first measurement of V1687 Cyg, which is
also a Wolf-Rayet star, si I"m not sure how that will be for a DSLR camera.
I also saw a bright meteor around 11:45 PM. It was slow moving and at the end it looked like it
flared and broke up into a lot of smaller pieces.
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