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[wwpierre]

The Pacific Northwest isn't the best place to be an astronomer, but observing opportunities this winter have been especially scarce. When the sky cleared this afternoon, I was looking forward to some quality astronomating. When I set up my CG5GT this evening, the bubble was already level, and when I looked through the polar scope, there was Polaris, just off a bit to the side, long before it was naked eye visible. Nice, but not that remarkable, considering I was setting up in the usual setup spot.

I clipped my new C8 SCT, (recently won on eBay) on the mount and began the alignment procedure. Before it was complete, a fellow came along the waterfront trail, which goes through my front yard. He was accompanied by a little dog, which in the deepening gloom looked like a miniature collie. The dog began to bark at me and I informed it that it wasn't scaring me one bit. The master asked what I was doing, and stayed around while I completed the alignment and then showed him M42, mars, and Bode's nebula. He wasn't sure what a galaxy was, (which I found scary) but he was able to recognize the very faint Cigar Galaxy (M82) as something that was actually there in his view. M81, which I showed him next, was easier to see.

By the time he left, it was as dark as it was gonna get, and I noticed that the newly installed security light in the log sort across the channel hadn't been turned on. My request to the foreman had been granted. This thing is like, ten million candlepower[glow=red,2,300]

B R I G H T !!!!!

[/glow] and shines directly toward my house. I mean, so bright that if someone were stealing fuel from the parked trucks, or vandalizing them, you wouldn't be able to see the perp in the glare.

Anyway, I went over to the log sort yard a few days ago and impressed on the foreman what a negative impact this light had on my quality of life, and that I was expecting some folks up from Vancouver on the weekend to look at the stars, and could he please shade it or something, ...........and he did something!

Monday I'll take a case of beer over there and offer to modify the light so it will shine on their parked trucks without shining in my eyes.

I looked at a bunch more stuff, and then went inside to warm up and wait for the moon to rise through the trees on top of the Chief. This is one of my favourite things to do. Perhaps I will try and photograph it tonight. It is pretty spectacular. The Stwamous Chief rises 20 degrees into my S/E sky, and shades me from the Greater Vancouver light dome.

After watching the moon-rise I turned the scope on Saturn, and with my 30mm Siebert and the 3X TeleVue barlow, (200X) I was able to see the Cassini Division, one of my astronomating goals, for the first time. It kept fading in and out. I wasn't sure I would ever see it from here.

All in all, a satisfying session.

[patrickm]

Nice write up! How nice that neighborliness still exists in the modern world.

Sounds like a very good night out indeed.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

It's almost as if I were there.

I rarely ever show DSO's to the general public, as it's a "Ho-hum" event, but rather stay on the brighter objects for impact.

But I would like to see pics of your adventures!

[wwpierre]

Apr 7, 2012 20:14:49 GMT -6 Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe said:

It's almost as if I were there.

But I would like to see pics of your adventures!

Thanks, Joe.

I thought I would photograph the moon-rise last night. I set the SCT up for it, and tweaked the focus with the Bahtisov mask. While I waited for Saturn and the Moon to rise I tried my hand at deep sky photography, taking ten 3 minute exposures of M94, and another 10 of an NGC galaxy in the same area whose number I can't remember.

The next time setting on my camera is "bulb" so I thought I would try it to see how it works. I have a wireless shutter, so I set the camera to "bulb" and clicked it. The screen lit up and a count-up began. I let it go for 8 minutes and clicked it again. The results were disappointing, (see below). I obviously have a tracking problem. It looks like it tracked for 4 minutes with some drift caused by setup error, then it jumped, (why?? periodic error?) then tracked for another 4 minutes.

I went inside to wait for Saturn, hoping to photograph it through the trees as it rose, but dozed off and just missed it. I took a couple of shots but ended up with an oblong blob, probably because of the heat rising from the granite of the Chief.

I popped the chip out of the camera and had a look at the results. The disappointment in the photos, and the fact it was late, I was tired, and the Moon-rise was still almost an hour away convinced me to pack it in.

I unclipped the scope and set it on it's dovetail on a stool just inside the door of the back deck. Then I went out and unplugged the mount and gathered up the extension cord. The last thing was the mount. I usually remove the counterweight, but lately I have been sliding the weight up the shaft as far as it will go, and, resting the shelf on my shoulder, carrying the mount and tripod into the covered deck.

As I went through the door, I heard a crash behind me. The following tripod leg had knocked the SCT off the stool.

Is there some sort of double-entry accounting attached to Karma? Was my less than satisfying session and minor disaster last night required to offset the success of the night before?

It's not so bad.... seems much of the force was absorbed by the cheapest components of the OTA. The glass of the Telrad, (easily replaceable in-house) and the relatively cheap mirror diagonal, of which I have a goodly supply.

I haven't checked if the collimation of the scope has been affected, but There is a silver lining here as well; the collimation was just a tad off before anyway, and needed to be tweaked. Now I have a good excuse.

EDIT Tried to post the 8 minute astrophoto. What am I missing?

[wwpierre]

Trying again to post pic.

....aah, you need to agree to the rules after picking the photo.

Attachments:

[wwpierre]

I delivered the following letter to the head office of the logging company today, together with 5 or 6 pages of information from the International Dark Sky Association.

Attachments:

[atomant]

Bon chance!

[scottmason]

I'm new to astrophotography, but from my research I've read that without autoguiding to push your scope back into place when it drifts, you won't get the best photo results possible when exposures get really long.
If you don't have an auto guiding scope/system, maybe it's worth looking into. It allows much longer exposures. I've seen the results of people taking up to 40 min exposures with it, no trails.