Finally! Got to do Some Video Observing in the POD

Hi All:

Well last night (12/28) I finally got a chance to get out into the POD and do a little video observing as the weather and my schedule finally coincided!  It turned out, my Edge C11HD wasn't showing Jupiter to be quite as nice, round and sharp as I expected.  I decided to do a little tweak of the collimation.  Good thing too - it actually was off a bit.  After the tweak, everything was looking better and I didn't get near as much movement of stars in the field of view as I racked the electronic focuser in and out.  So I decided to get a quick peek at the Andromeda Galaxy (M31).  I first got the focus fine tuned and then slewed the scope around to M31, tweaked the position just a bit and set the Mallincam up for Deep Space mode with 7 sec integration - VOILA! There it was in all its beauty.  I realized I had to do some tweaking of the contrast, brightness, saturation and gamma of my HD video monitor and my computer's screen in order to really make out the dust lanes clearly.  Anyway, this is what it looks like on my computer screen:

I was using WebcamMax (registered) to display and capture the video and to stream it thru Night Skies Network, Mallincam Control to remotely change camera settings and Stellarium to point the scope at different targets.  I rang my wife Marye at this point (she was in the house, nice and warm while I was in the POD shivering ;-) and had her pull up Night Skies Network; she was able to watch the same thing I was seeing and could even do so on the big screen media-pc TV if she wanted to.  After stuying Andromeda for a while, I thought I'd get a peek at the Great Orion Nebula / M42 - always a thrilling sight!  So I pointed to Orion with my mouse, hit Ctrl-1 and wwhhrrrrrrrrrrr - the mount moved the scope to point at the nebula.  Here's what I saw on my observatory PC's screen:

Considering the wind was blowing quite a bit with gusts up to 20mph or more, everything looked quite good!  Now if you're an old hand at this, you'll be wondering how I got away with using an f/3.3 Meade focal reducer with an Edge series SCT (with internally corrected optics.) Well it is true that for optimum results, you need a special reducer only (not reducer / corrector like the Meade I'm using.)  However, since no company, Celestron included, has physically put one on the market yet (although one company is 'really close' (right - like just around the corner, eh?), I decided to try it.  With a CCD chip as small as the Mallincam uses, it actually works quite well.  You can see some out of shape stars at the outer edges, but its really quite reasonable.  Next round, I'm going to have to try the Hyperstar III, which turns the relatively slow f/10 optics into a widefield light eating monster at f/2! I can hardly wait!

Well if you'd like to see a few more of the actual screen capture images, you can take a peek in my web photo album at http://picasaweb.google.com/donnwms/AstroPhotos4FB# (the last few photos at end.)  Keep in mind, these are totally raw unstacked / single screen captures with no processing.  If I put these in Photoshop or GIMP, I'll be able to adjust things so the center portions are not so bright / overexposed and the outer portions show more fine detail.  You can also see a couple short 30 second video clips captured straight from the camera, live, on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/donnw22.  More to come so check back some time.  

Peace and blessings,

Donn

Lunar Eclipse Dec 21st, 2010 - Clouds!

Hi All:

Well I was up until 1:30am or so preparing my Canon T1i DSLR and my Brandon 80mm Apochromatic refractor for some lunar eclipse photos.  Went to sleep for about an hour and a half in spite of the excitement.  I was able to drift off to sleep in confidence, knowing my gear was ready and the Clear Dark Sky Clock reported the sky would be clear - great!  3am - I pop out of bed at the first chime of my cell phone alarm, throw on a coat and hat and have the tripod mounted camera / refractor assembly on the deck in under 3 minutes - and what do I see?  CLOUDS!  Arghhh!  I watch with futile hope, thinking those pockets of clear sky cloud gaps where I can occasionally see a couple stars would expose the eclipsed moon in it's beautiful orange-brown state.   But nooooo - the sky only teased me with a very occasional porthole of a partial clearing.  A quick snap was all I could get.  Maybe 2 or 3 on one or two tries when the gap would permit.

Well in spite of the conditions, I did manage to snap around 20 or so shots at various stages after totality.  I transferred them to my laptop and took a peek with iPhoto.  Hmmm - pretty bleak for the shots.  Very little info was there, but whatever amount there was, I tweaked within iPhoto and actualy wound up with16 decent  images - not magazine quality mind you, but good enough to post on the web ;-)  Here's one just for grins..

    
It really is quite amazing what you can do with the simplest image editing software to coax out detail that would otherwise be invisible.  This shot and the others (which I posted in the lower online album shown at the right edge of this page) were at best, covered by some degree of clouds  for the whole hour and a half during which I stayed up - waiting for even a tiny break.  If you want to see all 16 shots, you can go to http://picasaweb.google.com/donnwms/LunarEclipse122110#.   Well maybe next time the weather will be a little more cooperative.  Hopefully you had better luck at your spot on the globe ;-)  In any case, Merry Christmas!

Peace & blessings,
Donn (aka The Astro Monk)

Visit to the Hood College Williams Observatory

I had the opportunity to visit the Williams Observatory at Hood College, Frederick, MD - home of a beautiful 8" Clarke refractor!  The astronomy professor there has graciously offered to open the observatory from 8:30pm to 9:30pm every clear Wednesday night thru December 8th, with the exception of Nov 24th.  You can find more info here:
http://www.hood.edu/adminservices/news.cfm?featureID=2462.

I took a couple quick snaps that I'm posting here for your viewing pleasure. (If you appreciate old / vintage refractors, you'll love this one!)

Clarke 8" Refractor - Gorgeous!

Me at the Business End (with Unitron Unihex EP Set ;-)

Myself and Steve Berte, (both members of TriStateAstronomers) had the opportunity to actually view thru this historic instrument.  We saw Jupiter, the Moon (of course!) and the Ring Nebula.  Views were quite impressive, as was manually moving the beast and the heavy dome.  I was surprised to see a bit of false color in this F/14 scope, but in all likelyhood, it may have been from the Unitron Unihex, which was a bit loose and may have even had a slightly tilted prism.  Regardless, the views were great and it was a thrill finally getting my hands (and eyes) on a legendary Clarke refractor.  Great fun!  Make sure you check it out!

Peace & blessings to all...

Updated POD Photos and Next Step in AstroPhotography Adventures

Well, I promised a shot or two of the new side-by-side arrangement for the Digital Monastery Observatory, so here they are:

Edge C11HD w/ Explore Scientific ED102 APO

Front View Showing ADM Side-by-Side Bar

This really turns out to be a much nicer arrangement.  I thought it may be much more difficult to balance (which is critically important for optimal tracking during astrophotography) but it was actually quite easy to achieve a decent balance.  I really like the arrangement too as I have the ED102 APO for intermediate F/7 widefield or intermediate planetary and the C11 for F/10 high magnification planetary (straight use) or with the Starizona Hyperstar III auxiliary lens for ultra widefield F/2 imaging.

Now that I pretty well have my hardware set up (all except for my electronic focuser for the C11, which I hope to install this week), I've turned to seriously look at the software for imaging and observing.  I've been using SkyToolsPro3 for a few months as a core planning tool.  Whether observing or photographing, it is an amazingly capable program and I will continue to use it as a core element.  After much reviewing and studying and trying out some of the less expensive packages, I've come to accept that MaxIm DL 5 is THE package to use for years to come.  There won't be any outgrowing this one.  I 'bit the bullet' and picked up the Pro Suite, which includes MaxPoint software that learns and models your rig and yields improved pointing accuracy.   I've installed it and am hoping to get a chance this week to go thru the online tutorials and fire it up for some initial imaging runs.  The thing I need most now, is a good dozen or so opportunities to get out there under clear skies and jump headfirst into the hands on learning curve. Lord, I pray for clear skies and time and grace to be out there in the POD for a number of fruitful  imaging sessions!

Peace and blessings to you all...

More Tweaking with PEMPro

Well last week I spent another few hours out in the POD doing an upgrade to the imaging setup and re-doing the polar alignment and periodic error correction of the mount.  From the previous run with PEMPro, I could see a large improvement, but I felt it could be better.  After polar alignment, my first pass with PEMPro showed an uncorrected periodic error on the order of +/- 25 arcsec.  After calculating and loading the correction curve, with PEC turned on, I was seeing about 10 arcsec pk-pk tracking error.  Respectable, but not as good as I wanted.  Previously I had the EdgeC11HD installed with a dovetail on top so I could slide on an 80mm APO for guiding and widefield imaging.  However, because of the design of the POD, having the guidescope on top of the big C11 resulted in too many times where the dome half would totally block the guidescope.  So I decided to do a side-by-side arrangement of the two scopes.  This would help with the blocked scope issue but what about the PEC?

After thinking things thru, I realized that in initially trying to dampen out mount vibrations with very large metal washers and high durometer silicon washers/bushings, I actually introduced a small but significant degree of flex in the whole mount that would change depending on the position of the scope.  Out came the bushings, the mount base was re-levelled and the mounting nuts were tightly snugged down to the pier bolts.  The mount was noticeably more rigid now (and I really don't have to worry about vibration anyway, as I have a wooden pier, rather than metal or concrete - both of which make great lightning conductors!)

I picked up a side-by-side mount from ADM and installed the C11 on one side and my slightly larger APO refractor - an Explore Scientific ED102 - on the other side.  Next I carefully balanced the two scopes in reference to their mounting center and the two mount axis.  Once darkness fell, I fired up everything and did a quick 2+4 alignment (2 alignment stars plus 4 calibration stars.) Next I re-did the polar alignment adjustment using PEMPro and got it down to less than 1 arcsec of error.  I ran thru the PEC measurement and calibration and when done, had a total pk-pk periodic error of just under 3 arcsec!  Hoorah!  Patience and nit picking paid off!  Most $5k to $10K mounts don't do that well out of the box - and mine cost way less than half that.  Thank you Lord!

I'll post a picture or two of the new scope / mount arrangement this weekend.  Needless to say, I am quite happy with the mount tracking accuracy.  Next I have to install MaxIm DL 5Pro Suite with MaxPoint so I can refine the go-to pointing accuracy (although it is already much better now that the PEC has been further refined.)  The saga continues...

Peace & blessings!  Donn

Learning the Fine Art of PEMPro

Hi All...

Well after two sessions in the POD trying to fine tune the polar alignment of the telescope's mount, I think I'm finally learning how to speak PEMPro :-)  PEMPro is a piece of software that enables an amateur astronomer to improve the performance of the mount with some assistance from the computer.  For those that haven't shopped for a telescope and mount recently, telescopes can be had for some very reasonable prices with very good performance. Mounts? Forget it!  They're extremely expensive to get one that has good enough accuracy to use for serious astrophotography.  So what to do if you can't drop the price of a Kia (automobile) on a telescope mount?  You by a less expensive one, tweak it to eliminate any gross errors and then use software like PEMPro to measure and correct for the remaining tracking errors.  I must admit, it was quite aggravating to sit under clear dark skies in my POD last week and not be able to LOOK at anything besides the little zigzag track of a solo star on the screen as I learned my way thru the software. Last night I had to do the same thing, but alas - now my mount is accurately polar aligned. Next session I'll be able to get a good characterization of the residual mount errors and null them out.  Then I will finally be able to start some serious astrophotography - Yea!

After all that time in the POD without any actual viewing time, I had to pull out my little 60mm Zeiss Telementor II vintage refractor and point it at a couple double stars and Jupiter.  This little scope so amazes me!  It is an example of German engineering at its finest!  The views thru it (with original Zeiss eyepieces) are incredibly sharp and very contrasty.  I always see as much thru that little scope as thru most 80 to 100 mm scopes.  That's why Zeiss scopes have consistently appreciated in value.  Good idea for us too -- whatever we do, do it without compromise and absolute best we can and in return, we will appreciate in value to others...

Matzoh Balls: The Answer to the Expanding Universe

OK, so astrophysicists have been hard at work studying and trying to understand our universe.  In my lifetime, the popular scientific understanding of our universe has changed dramatically multiple times.  Now we know (theoretically) that the universe is not just continuing to expand from it's moment of creation but is actually expanding at an ever increasing rate.  "Dark Matter" has been theorized to handle issues of calculations involving the expanding universe and the amount of matter in it.  Amounts of baryonic matter (matter made up of protons, neutrons & electrons - you know -- 'normal' matter) don't add up properly in the various equations. There has to be more matter, so invisible dark matter must be present.  And things just don't seem to add up regarding the increasing rate of expansion of the universe - it would require more energy than is known to exist. Thus "Dark Energy" is theorized into the modern astrophysical landscape.

Well I'm certainly not an astrophysicist, but the other day I had an epiphany after eating matzoh balls.  I made a big batch of traditional matzoh ball soup (aka, "Jewish Penicillin") that would have made any Jewish grandmother proud.  Naturally I had to have a bowl right away and did so, including a couple of those potentially dangerous matzoh balls (often referred to as "matzoh bombs" by those in the know ;-)  Well if you've ever eaten this stuff, you know the rate of expansion of a matzoh ball in your stomach and the resulting mass is way more than that wee box of cracker crumbs can account for!  No, they don't double in size, they grow by at least an order of magnitude - totally beyond logic and reason.  The result is a matzoh stupor.

The point is, if astrophysicists would start studying the mysteries of matzoh ball soup, which they can experimentally replicate and document, they could well unlock the mystery of the expanding universe.  Is the universe that different from a matzoh ball?  I think not! Oy vey!

Shalom & blessings :-)