Photo Frenzy – August 16, 2009

Location: at home in Tomball, TX
Cloud cover: 0%
Transparency: above average (4/5)
Seeing: est. avg (3 or 4 out of 5)
Darkness: no moon, city glow
Wind: almost none (see below)
Temperature: 80º-85º
Humidity: 70%-85%
Dew Point: 72º-75º
Time: 9:00 pm – 1:00 am CDT
OTA: 8″ SC

Began with visual observation of Jupiter. Best view I have ever seen. Two main belts easily seen, two thin faint belts also visible in steadier seeing. All four Galilean moons visible: one left and three right.

Took photos of many targets using the D50. Most images had elongated stars varied in length and direction. In a couple of photos the stars are almost doughnut-shaped with dark centers. A few photos had no elongation, even at long exposures. Magnification shows elongated shapes are often irregularly shaped. My best explanation for the elongation is wind, although I felt no wind all night with only rare light gusts. Shutter is on 5 second timer. Perhaps I will try a longer timer next time.

Photos of M103 and M31 suffered from elongation. Photos of η Cas and Albireo (shown below) came out well. M76 was barely discernible even with a 30 second exposure at ISO 1600. Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC6543) small, vivid teal, somewhat hazy — maybe from initial dew buildup that I didn’t recognize until much later.

Also took several photos of Jupiter and its moons, none of which were very good because of (as yet undiscovered) dew on the corrector. Several photos of Neptune and Uranus showed good color but no detail.

Albireo (β Cyg - double star). Click image for large (1500x1000) size.

Asteroids and Multiple Stars – February 07, 2008

Location: Tomball, TX
Cloud cover: none
Transparency: clear
Seeing: poor (2/5)
Darkness: city sky glow, no moon
Limiting Magnitude: n/a
Wind: mild/none
Humidity: 55% early up to 75% later
Temperature: upper-40’s
Start Time: 7:30 pm CST
End Time: 10:30 pm CST
OTA: 8″ SC

Didn’t learn star names in Cassiopeia, but looked them up on the laptop. Found a site that called Alpha Cas by the name Shedir, but NexStar didn’t list that name. Delta Cas was listed as Ruchbah, which was easily found. I aligned with Ruchbah, Sirius, and Capella, and the goto performed quite well all night.

Took significantly longer to find Ceres tonight than last night, even though tonight I had the laptop with SNP. There were several relatively bright stars nearby, widely dispersed with no obvious pattern. Another problem is conflicting orbital data; one set matched last night’s observations, while the other set matched tonight’s. Ugh. Anyway, Ceres sat at the 90 angle of a bright triangle. Also tried finding last night’s location, but some of the faint stars in that pattern were not visible.

Eunomia didn’t take too long to find. It sat between a boat-like squashed trapezoid of four stars and a narrow wedge of five dimmer stars.

Used NexStar’s tour function; it suggested Eta Cassiopeia and M103. The double star Eta Cas was very nice; the primary seemed white while red companion showed better color in the 25mm ep than the 10mm.

Internet photo of Eta Casseopeia

The open cluster M103 was not as bright as I expected. The narrow field easily fit in the 25mm view.

The field of view estimates in SNP seem a bit wide. The 32mm’s actual field was about the same size as SNP’s estimate of the 25mm field. Need to revisit that some time.