Another Favorite Astro Website

Hi All:

Yes, I know - it's been many moons since I've posted here.  Life has a way of taking up a lot of time.  I came across this astrophotography website today and just had to share it.  It hosts photos of the heavens and of gear - two of my favorite things.  Give it a peek and I'm sure you'll find something of interest:

       http://www.astrophotogallery.org/

Oh yes - I did finally get a clear sky and some time in the DMO pod last night.  I spent some time looking at a couple favorite objects, including M31 and then decided to re-do my mount's periodic error correction curve. To do that, I fired up a CCD-Soft software package called PEMPro II. Basically you point to a moderately bright star to the south, just west of the meridian and the software tracks and records the error in your mount's mechanics. It analyzes the error, creates a correction curve and then uploads it to your mount (a Celestron CGE in my case).  The mount then offsets its tracking with this cyclical correction data to null out the error inherent in it.  The result is more accurate tracking.  To go thru the process requires collecting about an hour's worth of tracking data from one star. So not exactly exciting if you catch my drift (no pun intended ;-)  Anyway, got that wrapped up and then explored a few objects around Cassiopia and Cephus. All in all, a productive night in the pod!  Hopefully I'll get some new photos up soon as I do have some data stashed that needs a bit of stacking and processing to make some nice astrophotos. Cheers!

Peace & blessings,
Donn / The Astro Monk...

Finally an Update on the Observatory

Hi All.  Is it only me or do whole weeks and months seem to disappear into the ethers?  Well it's not that I haven't been doing anything but just finally decided 'I've got to put an update on the blog'!

After spending some time getting my 102mm APO (refractor telescope)  mounted beside my main 11" SCT (Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope) and working things out for the past few months, I've come to realize that this is one of those cases where 'less is more'.  It was great having a nice big refractor mounted beside my SCT which always seems to have a camera mounted on it. With the side-by-side arrangement I could use the refractor for visual observing (ie - eyeballing what the camera was looking at.)  This was the idea any way.  In reality, it worked fine for visual observing, but the mounting arrangement and extra weight actually impacted the mount's tracking and pointing accuracy.  The total load was still below the stated maximum for the CGE mount, but I had broken the rough rule of thumb that for astrophotography,  always run your mount at no more than half it's rated capacity.  Oh well, it was a fun experiment, but I'm back to just the SCT now.

One of the things I have found to be an inconvenience, is having to switch from one camera to another, depending on the type of imaging I want to do.  As well, I'm building a spectroscope to add on to allow me to do some real science with my setup. So how to avoid rewiring and 're-plumbing' every time I want to go from planetary, to astrovideography to deep space astrophotography?  Enter the "Sidewinder"...

"So that's what that thing is on the back end of the scope? ... What's a Sidewinder you ask?"  You're looking at what is generically referred to as an "optical manifold".  It will allow me to mount up to three cameras or devices (such as my spectroscope when built) and switch between them by simply sliding the knob/tube at left back into the housing and rotating it to bounce the light off an internal first surface mirror to the desired device.  There's even a special port to add an off axis guider camera on the far right (not visible in the photo.)  The sidewinder is an highly precision-built accessory that is made by Paul VanSlyke of VSI Engineering (http://www.observatory.org/).  Paul makes a whole array of well thought out accessories to such precision that many professional observatories use his gear.  Not seen in the photo, but an important part of the system, is a a rotary optical joint called a "Zerotator" that allows the whole manifold assembly with the attached cameras to be rotated (for framing the object being measured or photographed.

"Gee, this all sound kinda complex!"  Well, yes, in a way -- but in the end it will simplify the overall operation of the observatory.  And if you were curious how I do control the mount, scope, cameras and other bits, here's a photo of the main "operations bay" of the POD observatory:

I've got the obligatory red (so it doesn't affect my night vision) observatory lighting cranked up pretty high so you can see the keyboard and surrounding bits.  I still keep a paper observing log (on the right wall) to note my observations and hardware changes and issues.  But the heart of the operations is a quad-core PC I built that runs 64bit Windows 7 Pro.  The USB microphone at left is what I use to broadcast my voice when I'm broadcasting my astro-video observations on Night Skies Network (http://www.nightskiesnetwork.com/).  >> OK, insert big plug here! If you haven't been on the Night Skies Network website yet - or recently - you need to do it!  Now you don't even have to sign up to receive the live broadcasts of astronomical video observations; you can click in as a guest. (You just won't be able to type in the chat window and ask questions / make comments.)  Most nights, you can find at least a couple folks broadcasting their observations.  Sometimes you can catch solar or lunar observations during the daytime.  I'm listed there as "AstroMonk".  I'll be doing more broadcasting on it in the coming months, so maybe you'll catch me some time.

This main observatory PC controls the mount and the cameras and the electronic focuser on the telescope.  I'm running a couple different main software packages: MaximDL5Pro for image acquisition; SkyTools3Pro for planning observations and targets to be photographed; and a number of other programs to control specific cameras, record video, drive the focuser, etc.  All together, it's got quite a large learning curve - but then again, I enjoy learning! (I'd be a full-time professional student for decades if I could get a wealthy patron to sponsor me ;-)  

Well its getting late now, so I'll wrap this up.  Do make sure you check out Night Skies Network; you can learn so much about astronomy just by watching the various broadcasts. (Parents -- its an incredible learning tool for kids of all ages -- watch it with them and enjoy the awesome beauty of God's creative handiwork known as the universe!  Ciao for now.

Peace & blessings, Donn... aka The Astro Monk!