Musings

This section will contain my musings from various imaging sessions occurring from March 1, 2013 forward. I currently maintain a hand written log (I am about to start Volume 4). But those notes are all entered after an imaging session. I hope they provide some insights (or at least some diverting reading).

 

December 2015 Musings and Updates

Lots of changes are afoot. I will discuss the biggest change at the end of these notes as a part of my musings on time and distance but plenty to talk about before that. Equipment changes top the list. I am in the process of subbing out both of my main CCDs, replacing the STF8300 with a new STT8300 system and the Apogee F16M with a new SBIG STXL 6303. Both are significant upgrades though the latter case may not be obvious at first. Moving from the STF to the STT brings deeper cooling (an extra 20C below ambient) and a built-in autoguider in the filterwheel. That means no more messing with autoguiding FOVs that are inconsistent with my main imaging system, substantially improving image quality. With the move from the F16M to the 6303, I also get deeper cooling as well as built-in autoguiding. But two other upgrades were the real selling point. First, the 6303 has a significantly higher quantum efficiency and can be paired with SBIG's AO-X adaptive optics unit, taking my guiding to a whole new level. Sad to say, I have also been a bit disappointed in the image quality coming out of the F16M from the beginning and look forward to the clean SBIG images I have come to expect from my two SBIG 8300s. The STT system is already paired with my Tak e130D and the 6303 will be a perfect fit for the CDK12.5

One other near term equipment change has been to add an Robofocus electronic focuser to my Tak. I am still working on my technique (and my most recent images, sadly, show less than perfect focus) but going forward that should improve dramatically. In the meantime, as you can see from the new images, I am enjoying toying around with some old favorites while I work on my skills.

One area I am happy to report progress on is my ability to successfully use all the power of the SkyX and its embedded T-Point and Camera Add-on tools. I talked about the switch over to CAO in my July 2015 notes and since CAO and I have gotten very comfortable together. More importantly, with some help from the friendly folks in the Software Bisque support forum, I have worked out all of my issues with automated calibration runs. Last time out I was able to do a 105 target run in just over 30 minutes giving me near perfect pointing and, when combined with the new Accurate Polar Alignment routine, the best polar alignment I have ever achieved in the field. That paid off in guiding where, with the help of ProTrack, my guiding was consistently better than 0.5 pixels on both axes. Too bad my focus was off, sigh. But next time. . . .

Now for something a little different, some random musing on Time and Distance:

MUSING ON TIME & DISTANCE

It is winter in Houston and though the heat has abated, humidity is still a pain.  None the less, I was able to get in several quality imaging sessions in December.  I was also able to get in a great session back in July, but before that it was October of last year since I captured any decent images.  That dry spell was getting old.

Then again, so am I.  And maybe that’s why time has been on my mind lately.  It certainly helps that we are part of a hobby that measures  observable change (at least in a deep sky context) in years, at best (for movement of double stars, for example) and, more typically, in eons.  For example, the solar system has made it around the Milky Way some 22 times in 4.5 BILLION YEARS!  As I have mentioned in another post, even watching something as mundane as the progression of the sky during a night of observing is wonderfully slow (unless, of course, you need to get in just a few more sub-frames in your image run before the target slips too close to the horizon). 

When I first seriously got into this hobby, I did not have any kind of handle on the types of mind numbing numbers we deal with on a regular basis.  For example, I worried about the impact of the Universe’s expansion on my ability to observe some of my favorite targets as I got older, say in 25 years.  As an example (and bear with me as I take this slow since I’m not a numbers guy), I tried to do the calculations of the impact of expansion on M104, which is estimated to be around 30 million light years away.  At that distance, NASA estimates that it is receding from us at over 1000 km/s (1024 km/s to be a bit more precise).  Ok, that is whopping fast; not speed of light fast, but no small potatoes, either.  Given that the sun is just about 150 million km from us, that means that something moving at a comparable speed would get to the sun in 150,000 seconds, or a little over 40 hours (light makes it in a little over 8 minutes, now that’s fast).  As a comparison, the Voyager probes, the fastest any manmade objects have ever travelled, are currently clipping along at a relatively leisurely pace of 17 km per second, or 1/60th the recession speed of M104.        

So, given all that, how much did I need to worry?  Well, let’s see.  M104 is receding about 32 billion km a year, no small shakes.  But a light year is right around 9.4 trillion km.   That means it will take just under 300 (actually 296.875) years for M104 to recede just 1 light year!   And in 25 years it recedes a mere 0.084 of a light year.  As pleased as I am with my equipment, I do not see me noticing the change from 30 million light years to 30.000000084 million light years over those 25 years.

It’s a big universe out there, even the little part we can observe.

But that brings me to my second point, and that is that there is a lot I want to observe and image in the (if I am lucky) 30 odd years of imaging I have left to me.  And doing that in places like Texas (or soon, my likely retirement location, Indiana) where the weather cooperates only fitfully, cuts into the amount I can get done in that time immeasurably.  As an example, if I take just the last year, it was July 20 before I was able to capture one decent frame (there was a session in April that was lost to an equipment issue).  So I had no sessions until April when I had equipment failure, then nothing until I got in 2 nights in July.  I had no luck in August and had only one session in September and one in October.  Nothing in November but, miracle of miracles, 5 whole nights in December.  That is a total, over the course of 365 days and 180 usable nights (eliminating the nights between the quarter moons), of 10 nights of imaging.  That is almost laughable, especially since, at least for my f/8 CDK12.5, I want to shoot one target over 2 or 3 nights.  I know that number is understated since I lost some night to work, but still. 

Also, my wife has suffered from being a regular work widow over the past 30 years, and I do not want to make her an astronomy widow when I retire (nor do I enjoy the morning after an all-night session).  So I am making a radical change in my plans for the future.  Originally I wanted to build myself an observatory in Indiana.  But that came with issues of its own, including the astronomy widow problem and finding anything approaching reasonably dark skies in Northern Indiana, not to mention the fact that Indiana’s skies are no clearer than Houston’s (though with mercifully less humidity most of the time).  Then I stumbled upon the option of setting up remotely at an observatory park in New Mexico which has some of the clearest and darkest skies in America.  It will require mastering some new skills, such as managing my equipment remotely, but given that the site experiences between 250 and 260 clear nights a year, and even if I cut that in half for nights with too much moon to even do narrowband imaging, I am looking at up to 130 sessions per year, or more than 10 times the capture time I could otherwise expect.    

And I can still go out under the stars in Indiana when the spirit moves me, breaking out my old 12.5 inch homemade dob or my TeleVue NP101 for a nice couple of hours of visual astronomy.  I am getting everything ready to set up my equipment at the NM site early this summer so I can spend some quality, low humidity time with the glories of the Milky Way.  Be sure to check back from time to time to see what this new adventure produces.         

Clear skies, my friends.


July 2015 Musings


It is the end of July and I have finally had a chance to get under the stars for the first time since last October.  Actually, that is not exactly true.  I did get out on March 27 on a night that was actually clear and relatively moonless.  I had a nice list of targets for the night, using my Takahashi Astrograph and my SBIG STF8300, including the Rosette Nebula, Markarian’s Chain, and some other choice locations in the early spring sky.  Unfortunately, my 8300 decided to be ornery.  I spent a frustrating night unable to collect any significant photons, even when pointed at such bright targets as the Trapezium.  I finally gave up around 1am and trudged on home (at least I got to sleep in my own bed, but still).  Turns out the 8300 had gone into mind freeze and, no matter the settings and the length of exposure, would flick the shutter open and immediately close it again.  As always, SBIG provided superb customer service and has it back working like a charm.  But, the dry spell was getting old.

So imagine my pleasure when I was able to get two excellent nights under the sky on the weekend of July 17-19.  Over the course of the two nights, even with the heat and humidity that is summer in south east Texas, it actually was quite pleasant.  And, more importantly, both cloud and moon free.  Actually that is not quite true, since on Saturday evening we were treated to the beautiful site of the thin moon crescent kissing Venus, with Jupiter a near-by onlooker (sort of like that photographer on Times Square photographing THE KISS, on V-E day).  Took a couple of I-Phone shots, then turned to the real imaging. 

I have talked in the past about my frustrations with MaximDL and so this was a transition session as well.  I chose to use this session to switch full bore to the SkyX Camera Add-on (CAO) image capture software.  Had been thinking about it for a while now since you need to be using CAO anyway to fully utilize T-Point’s power and, once you have it up and running, why go to a second software suite.  Best news is that the change-over went without a hitch (so rare for me) and had the added benefit of finally getting the T-Point automated calibration run to work as intended.  On the latter point, I have never had any success getting the automated system to work, but a couple of things changed my luck.  First, had read up on some informal suggestions on the web and started with a rough polar alignment using the alt-az adjustment knobs to bring the sync star into alignment.  That got me close.  But even then I failed using   the regular Image Link.  But in looking over the settings, I saw an undocumented feature, namely that you can check a box and the system will use SkyX’s All Sky Image Link technology.  That did the trick and minutes later (instead of my normal hour with manual calibration).  I had great polar alignment.  Other great result was that the CAO autoguiding routine worked perfectly, though a bit of learning there as well, unrelated to the software.  On the second night, though my autoguiding was solid, the scale difference between the SBIG Sti stand-alone system and the imaging resolution left me with less than perfect stars.  I was using my SBIG STF8300 and the Takahashi e130D which has a resolution of 2.59 arcsec/pixel. 

However, the resolution for the Sti system is 15.2 arcsec/pixel, 6x larger, leaving lots of room for bloated stars even if the autoguiding looks dead-on.  I will be fixing in the future by either using the STF OAG8300 system or my new STT8300 with its built-in guider, in both cases leaving the autoguider with the exact same resolution as the imaging system.
So on to the imaging itself.  First night was shortened by the normal delays in getting everything set up and running and by the onset of clouds late (around 3:30am).  Still, I was able to get in a solid group of 60 subframes, 20 each of RGB’s with an iteration time of 120 seconds of M8 and its surroundings.  Really a lovely target with lots of detail in the nebulosity, and the added bonus of evident dark lanes and dense star fields.  The processing is not my best work, but not far off, especially since it was based on a new processing sequence I will talk about later.  Only real concern is that the stars were more bloated than I would like so a reshoot in the future is a must.  Second night I had no clouds and the full imaging window and took advantage of it, getting a total of 108 subframes, or 36 each in HA, OIII and SII of NGC7000, the North America Nebula.  So far I have only processed the HA band, but it is a beauty, though again flawed by the stars, which in this case are slightly oblong.  Will fully process but likely will reshoot this as well, possibly as early as this weekend, if its clear, since it will be the full moon, making NB the only option , and since I want to build a quality mosaic of the whole North America Pelican region.   Oh, and I should mention that after using CAO, I had none of the headaches I have constantly had with MaximDL images coming into PI. 

None of that damnable FITS incompatibility mess.  That alone makes the switch well worth it.
I spoke above of my new processing routines.  The biggest fix was the discovery of a great background smoothing routine in the PI Forum that has given superb results, single handedly saving my work on M74, M51, NGC281, and NGC7380.  It will be a core part of my toolkit going forward.  Second, I have started to change when in the sequence I deal with LRGB combinations and the introduction of narrowband channels.  I have been frustrated for a while now with the loss of color and the introduction of excess noise in the target area when I sharpen my images after doing the LRGB combine.  As a result, I have started to take all sharpening steps on the SynLum image only before combining with the RGB set and it it producing better, cleaner images that retain a better color balance and saturation.  I also had real success with the M74 Ha channel (another set that had been giving me nothing but trouble) by delaying the mixture of the Ha into the image until after stretching and the LRGB combination.  I saved the NBRGB script until the very end and got a great result.  I will be testing that approach with the full NB set of NGC700 to see how that works versus the old method.  

I did want mention one other exercise I have started to document coming out of the July 17-19 session, namely my naked eye and Binocular efforts.  I have started to catalogue my captures in both categories.  So fore naked eye, my set includes:

M45 – Pleiades
M42/42
M6
M24
M31
M15
M44
Double Cluster
Omega Centauri
NGC7000

My sightings with my Canon IS 18x50’s include all of the above with the exception of NGC7000, as well as:

M4
M22
M13
M7
M8
M17

Oh, and one last thing.  I have finally gotten off my duff and joined Astrobin so you can see all of my best images there in large format as well as great images from a host of people way more talented than me.  Just look me up under either JimMorse or Jim Morse.  See you there! 

Until next time.

 

February 26, 2015


The weather and timing have conspired to keep me from any opportunities to image since October of last year.  Since I am still a wage slave (at least for a few more years), my imaging is restricted to weekends and, since October, weekend weather has been awful.  And it regularly taunts me with perfect weather, like today, in midweek.  So I am getting a little buggy to get back out, especially since I got a new toy for Christmas, a Paramount MYT to go with my existing Paramount MX.  Now I am fully rigged to run two systems at once, the MYT carrying my ε130D/STF8300 combination for widefield imaging (2.40 x 1.80 FOV) and my MX, carrying my CDK12.5/F16M system for close up work (FOV is just under 10 square).  Getting two rigs up and running will be a bit of a chore until I retire and build my observatory, but the results are well worth the effort, assuming the skies ever clear.  I have kept busy doing some processing of images captured earlier, but that can only take me so far and the itch for new venues to image is strong and growing as we head into spring. 

I have actually been working on a third system as well.  This one will be based on a second STF8300 that I will marry to my Canon lenses for wider field shots than I can get with the ε130D.  I can then also use the extra 8300 on the CDK for a nice narrow FOV for smaller targets such as small galaxies, planetary nebulae and the like.  Thinking about trying out the IOptron EZ25 as my third mount.  Small, inexpensive, and IOptron has a wonderful polar alignment system that I wish others would emulate.


But the hiatus in imaging has also put me to thinking about what I love about this hobby, notwithstanding the ever present frustrations.  For me it covers a wide range of topics, from the mundane to the magical and lots in between and I will try to do each of them some measure of justice though this is sure to wander all over the place before I’m done. 
Remember, throughout this discussion, that I was a liberal arts major in college who went on to become a lawyer.  Much of what I will discuss was and is being self-taught, which just adds to the fun.


First off, I admit it, I’m a guy and like every guy, I love toys.  And boy does this hobby have toys, combining the best of LEGOS and erector sets, gears and drive trains, cameras and filters and oculars of untold variety, just to name a few.  Gizmos are available to buy or build in every shape and form, costing just a few dollars or tens of thousands, depending on how far you and your budget are willing to go.  And it’s a niche hobby so, unlike many mainstream toys, the ones we play with require lots of hands on tinkering to get the most out of them.  You can take this as far as you are willing to go as well.  As I mention elsewhere, back around 2004 I got the itch to build my own dob.  It took me the better part of two years to design and complete and, unfortunately, since my turn into astrophotography, it rarely gets time out under the stars these days.  But it was tons of fun and supremely satisfying to build something that complex myself and to take in the sights with a 12.5 inch dob that just worked and gave excellent results.  And I could have gone much further still, since I bought some parts as well as the mirror and could instead have hand built them all and hand ground the mirror.  But I did want to use the scope in my lifetime so there have to be some limits. But it doesn’t stop there.  I was having an issue with my Canon lenses.  The focusing mechanism on the lenses which is just fine for daylight imaging, especially with the autofocus, is worthless in the dark.  The focus is simply too coarse to get a really good result and you can see that on the images I have posted using lenses.  So I was thinking about building a tool that would allow me to get a more precise focus and then to hold that focus through an imaging session.  But in checking the web, I found that someone had already figured out the same thing, using a system I was contemplating myself, namely two rings that attach to the lens both on the focus ring and on a stationary section.  You then turn the focus knob to get much more precise movements.  I had to have the product shipped from Germany since no one has it in the US that I could find, but it works perfectly (and is a much more refined product, made out of pressed aluminum, that I could never have made myself).  Let me know if you are interested in the same thing yourself and I will shoot you the contact info for the distributor.


Then comes the research.  And that topic again covers an enormous gamut.  There is the research into the hobby itself, the tools of the trade, the targets once out under the stars, what those targets are, who discovered them, etc., etc., the physics behind all of those processes, the list goes on and on as does the places to do that research.  We have any number of well written and researched reference books and guides, fine monthly magazines like Astronomy and Sky & Telescope, and the miracle that is the world wide web.  Any of you reading this who are under say 35 years old just have no idea how much the world has changed in the arena of computers and information technology in my lifetime.  You grew up with Apple computers readily available in homes and schools.  When I was a kid, computers were a topic for science fiction, not something you thought you would ever touch, let alone own yourself.  I still remember fondly my first computer, a lowly Atari 400 with a whopping 16KB of RAM (smaller than most thumbnail jpegs these days) that I bought when I was almost 30!  I now own at least 4 PCs that would run rings around the house sized behemoths that fought the Cold War in the 60’s and 70’s.  That kind of thing blows my mind when I take the time to think about it.     


But that brings me to the next part I love, namely the computers.  It is part of what enticed me into astrophotography.  Polar aligned computer driven mounts, tied to computer driven auto-guiders, all to allow my computer driven CCD cameras to accurately capture the night sky with images that, prior to Hubble, were rarely available to even the professionals.  (Did I mention how much things have changed in my lifetime?).  And the programs that make all of this possible, my God, especially since, as mentioned, this is a niche hobby!  Please take a moment and raise a glass to all of those incredible computer programmers out there who share this love.  From “simple” auto-guider routines like PHD to the likes of the SkyX, MaximDL and PixInsight which make all aspects of this adventure a joy (hell I love just reading the manuals to understand how these things all work).  And I have yet to test out all the equipment and software that will be necessary to get my observatory up and running, especially as I intend to automate it so on cold winter nights I can image while sleeping snuggly in my bed at home (though I plan to be sitting there watching those sub-frames roll in most nights). 


And here is another area where you can tinker even if you can’t program an entire package.  Many programs, such as PixInsight, allow you to write scripts that automate various functions or create new ways of doing things.  I have just started to dip my toe into studying javascript for beginners (with a book aimed at 10 to 12 yr olds) in the hopes that someday I can write and offer up my own scripts.  But don’t hold your breath, please!     

            
Which brings me to the collegial nature of this hobby.  I considered myself an idealistic young man (ok, ok, maybe the better word was foolishly naive) and chose my career, at least in part, because of what I thought was a nobility to the profession.  I always pictured battling in court with a worthy opponent, then, after hours, having a drink with that same guy cause he was a friend, if also often the enemy.  Imagine my surprise when I related that vision to my first boss, a crusty old attorney, who told me to get my head out of the clouds, my job was to beat down the opposition, humiliate them, hate them.  So much for sentiment.  I am happy to say that after moving in-house some 28 years ago, largely because of attitudes like that in the firms I was with, I found the relationships with lawyers in other companies much closer to my ideal, but my innocence was gone.  


I guess that is why I am continually surprised by how good natured people in this hobby are.  I can honestly say, excuse my being crass, that I have never met an asshole.  Instead, people will bend over backwards to help in any way they can, and that includes fellow amateurs in the field to vendors and suppliers that just want to make sure you get the most out of the products you buy from them.  If you stop and think about it, that is truly amazing.  I think this goes back to the notion that this is a niche hobby and, as I like to say, we are all in this together.  We also don’t have as much at stake as the professionals, be they astronomers or any other profession.  That may make working together, instead of trying to get the upper hand, far more likely, but it is still amazing just how friendly this group is.  


I love being part of a select group that knows stuff very few people in the world know.  I love the fact that even in the city, I know that’s Venus in the west and Jupiter high overhead, even if you can’t see another star due to the light pollution.  I love being able to help newbies in the field find stuff without having to consult a sky chart.  I love explaining to colleagues exactly what those pictures on my office wall and work computer screen are and trying to explain the magic of the universe to them, from the big bang theory to pondering with them questions like “if the universe is really expanding, what is it expanding into?”  And I absolutely love telling people that I have never met an amateur astronomer, the best sky watchers in the world, who has ever seen a UFO.  Oh sure, we all see things we can’t initially identify, but to a person, everyone I have met simply does not jump to conclusions, but takes the time to ferret out the answer. 


And I love the night sky from a nice dark location, another thing only a chosen few take the effort to experience anymore.  I wrote a whole session note on eyeball astronomy so I won’t belabor that point again, but that ties us to a line of observers from Tycho Brahe backwards in time who only knew the night sky through what they could see with their eyes.  It’s sad, in a way, that our wonder is spoiled in a way theirs’ never was by what we have seen from Hubble and our own backyard telescopes.  But watching the sky wheel overhead is magical in ways that few things in life can compete with, and none of those competing things have anything to do with work or money.

And I will end with the shear unfathomability of it all.  And that’s without considering all the unanswered questions about dark matter and dark energy.  Who can conceive of how far away even the nearest stars truly are, let alone the distance to edge of the observable universe.  And then there is all that does or may lie beyond that horizon.  I am not a very religious man, but I am always amazed by people who undersell their own versions of God, imagining him to be so small that He only created the world a few thousand years ago, and that He couldn’t have created something that has been billions of years in the making and has expanded to encompass not only all we can see but all we can imagine.  But not being a religious man does not mean I can’t hope and dream.  And if my version of heaven does turn out to be true, I hope to see you someday in the far future as we buzz Omega Centauri, or the star forming gas clouds of Orion, on our way to visit the newest galaxies being created deep in the void.

 

October 17-19, 2014


This section is about my visual astronomy dabbling while my telescope/mount/CCD system does imaging of its own, largely unattended, once I have everything set up properly, the target found and centered, the CCD focused, and it and the autoguider churning away.  After watching the first few subframes in the making to ensure everything is working as designed (never a given with my fumble fingers) I usually then spend some quality time in my portable recliner; just me, the sky and my little built-in 6mm binocular imaging system (and my glasses, of course, since I am near-sighted).  With an aperture of only 5 or 6mm (and getting smaller all the time as I age), it is truly amazing what you can see with just your eyes on a night of good seeing under reasonably dark skies.


I image and watch the sky these days from the Houston Astronomical Society’s dark sky site about 75 miles west of downtown Houston and, for being so close to a huge city, it’s really quite good.  There is a light dome to the east, as you would expect (not just from Houston but also from nearby Columbus), but it fades around 30 degrees up and overhead and to the south and west, the sky is excellent.  It is easy to see structure in the Milky Way (the Great Rift is evident and on nights of excellent seeing, you can even make out the Pipe and Prancing Horse dark regions) and I can always pick out M31 with my naked eye whenever it’s more than 30 degrees up. 


So this past weekend, while I was testing out my new Takahashi ε130D Astrograph (a beautiful and beautifully crafted machine I will talk more about elsewhere), I did several hours of naked eye observing.  For a long while, I laid the recliner all the way back until I was nearly horizontal, and just took in the sky at and near the zenith.  Directly overhead at the start of the session was noble Deneb, the tail of that enormous goose in in the sky, Cygnus.  Since it is so perfectly situated this time of year, I concentrated on trying to see the North American nebula complex and, while I had the briefest of hints with averted vision, I could not rate it as a find.  I am sure a nebula filter, just held up to my eye, would help, but that is an experiment for another time.  It’s not that it’s small; it covers a 4 x 4 degree swath of sky which could hold a dozen moons.  But that is part of the problem since it is hard to make out exactly what you are looking for.  The Pleiades, which rose later and are a joy all themselves, however you view them, are a little smaller, give a sense of scale.  All to no avail, though.  But I will keep trying to train my eyes.


What I began to notice, however, since I was looking at the same general area of the sky for at least 30 minutes, was that I could actually perceive the extremely slow motion wheel of the stars around Polaris.  I was transfixed and widened my gaze to take in as much area as I could between Polaris on one side of the box and Cygnus on the other and just relaxed my mind to try to take that image in.  It would float in and out of perception, but at times I could feel as much as see the wheel turning.  It is like trying to watch an hour hand move, but on the best damned clock in the universe.  Absolutely fascinating.  I highly recommend taking 30 minutes out of whatever you are doing if you ever find yourself under clear, dark skies.  Find a comfortable spot, lay back, and just watch the area between a high, prominent constellation and Polaris and see if you can capture that mighty wheel.  Hell of a site, I can tell you.  Anyway, that’s how I spent Friday night in my free time.


Saturday night I devoted to a new project, a naked eye Messier search.  As with most people that have been doing this hobby for a while, I am pretty good at finding the really good ones with no electronic help.  I love having newbies at the site, out for the first time or two with a shiny new scope.  Depending on the time of year, I can help them manually find a number of sites.  In the summer, M6, M7, M8, and M20 are all easy to pick out in the southern Milky Way.  As I said above, M31 is a naked eye object, so getting it in an eyepiece is a cinch, assuming they have a 1x finder like a red dot finder or a Telrad.   


Let me digress here with a few words of advice.  If you are just starting out and want to find anything, don’t even put the 5x finder scope on your telescope.  Some guys are wizards with the things, but they are anything but intuitive.  They make everything upside down or backwards or both depending on the set up, and even then, you don’t know what you are looking at since the field of view still is too small to use if you are just getting started.  I have been doing astronomy seriously for over 15 years now and have never bothered with a finder scope.  Why go through all that trouble when you can get something that shows you the whole sky and lets you zero into anywhere you want to point your scope.  If you then want to use that confusing finder scope to refine your search, fine, but start off with a 1x finder like the Telrad.  If you do, you will have just eased your way about 10,000%. 


Anyway, even without a Telrad, I can usually site down the scope to put a couple of choice targets in the eyepiece.  Easiest, as I said, is M31, but surprisingly easy is M51 as well (as with everything in the sky, it all in the angles; that one is just easier than most).  M33 and M101 are also easy to find the location of, but much harder to see since they have such damnably low surface brightness.  Plus they are both huge so you need a nice wide field of view to separate them from the background.  M81 and M82 require a bit more work but are also part of my repertoire. 


Another favorite, this time of year, is Albireo.  Never doubt the power of a nicely colored double star to draw out some oohs and aahs.  I also get a big kick out of globulars, though many seem underwhelmed, and I always find that reaction kinda disappointing.  In this group, M4, M22, M13 and M15 are easy finds and all are beautiful in any scope 6 inches or larger, though you can see and enjoy them in a good quality 4 inch refractor as well.  And if you are sufficiently far south (Houston suits just fine), Spring brings Omega Centauri, the granddaddy of them all (at least in the Milky Way). 


So back to my new project.  Actually, I have two going, one naked eye and the other searching out Messiers with my binoculars.  But Saturday was naked eye only (fair amount of dew and I was being lazy after being up most of the night before; so sue me).  As I said, M31 is easy and so I clocked that one early on.  Once they rose, the Pleiades (M45) and the Great Orion Nebula (M42) are also a piece of cake.  From there it gets a lot tougher, at least until M44 in Cancer comes into view.  I should note that, as you likely know already, Messier did not include the Perseus Double Cluster, which is a shame, both because it is beautiful to behold and because it is another easy naked eye target.  Omega Centauri also falls into this category, looking like a fuzzy star (hence its name, which is actually a star designation). 
I settled on three tougher targets for the night, M33, the lovely local group spiral galaxy in Triangulum, M15, a nice globular in Pegasus, and M13, the great Hercules Globular.  I have been trying for M33 for a while now, without success.  I guess I just need darker skies, because even when it’s at the zenith and I am looking right at it (actually, looking at it with averted vision which is a must for anything that faint), I still can’t ferret it out.  But I will keep trying every chance I get and one of these days . . .


My only “official” find for the night was M15.  That is a little surprising, since M13 is supposed to be the brighter of the two, but M13 was starting to set by the time I got around to it and M15 was high in the sky.  For finding purposes, I need to spot the target, and only then look at exactly where it sits in relation to the other stars around it.  Ok to know the general area (obviously) but if I have too precise a fix first, the mind will play tricks.  So with M15, I know it is a little north of the star Enif, which makes up the nose of Pegasus (it’s important to realize Pegasus flies upside down from our vantage point).  I was able to spy a little fuzzy patch just above and to the right of Enif and made that sighting several times, looking away for a while, then honing back in until I found the same patch in the same place each time.  Only then did I check my reference material (in this case The SkyX, which was already up and running, controlling my mount) and confirmed I had nailed it. 

After that, I spent a bit more time checking out my images (I shot the Pleiades on Friday and M33 and the Great Orion Nebula area on Saturday) and then curled up in a sleeping bag on the mattress in my trailer and caught a few hours of sleep.

 

August 15, 2014

So Where the Heck Have I Been Hiding
(the story of my “lost year”)

I am not so silly as to think that anybody checks on this site with any regularity, but if you have stopped by for a peak in the last year you will have noticed something missing . . .ME.  If memory serves (and at 57 years old there is no guarantee there, I can tell you), my last update was back in April 2013.  So it’s actually been more than a year. So what’s the story?  Well . . . I’m not dead, nor have I suffered any other medical afflictions.  More importantly (well, maybe not MORE importantly, but you get what I mean), I haven’t given up astrophotography.  In the past year I was still making regular treks up to Jebel Shams in Oman, just like before.  But it has been a year of transition, as well as learning, fixing, testing, and most importantly, trying to improve my skills.  So let’s run down, in no particular order, some of the things that have kept me occupied for the last 18 months. 

What a great idea, I’m glad I thought of it.  And the best part is that this rig, made up of my SBIG 8300 CCD and filterwheel, with a Canon lens adapter, allows me to explore a much larger field of view than I can get through the CDK12.5.  Mind you, the F16M has a huge chip so even with the CDK’s 2541mm focal length, I still get almost a square degree of sky.  But that leaves out a whole host of targets that stretch from a couple of degrees wide to tens of degrees for the constellations.  And, since the lenses have focal ratios around f2, as compared to the f8 of the CDK, I can achieve great results with 2 to 5 minute iterations instead of 10.  That means I can get as many as 30 each of RGBs in as little as three hours, allowing me to capture two or three targets a night, to go with my deep effort with the F16M/CDK combination.  The image of Orion, above, is an early example. I have made up a list of targets for this new system and have only begun to scratch the surface of the possibilities. Now these images will be undersampled, but PixInsight just added a new drizzle routine which is tailor made for undersampled images.   

Of course, that leaves the issue of what do I mount this system on.  Initially, I am testing out IOptron’s SkyTracker which has a really nifty setup that does not require autoguiding.  I used it for Orion. Unfortunately, it can only hold so much weight so I am restricted to short focal length lenses in the 35mm range.  So I started looking at a second mount and after lots of exploration, settled on a Losmandy G11.  I will use a side by side mounting plate, one holding the CCD/Lens system and the other holding the SBIG STi guiding system. 

By the way, let me give a shout out for that SBIG STi guider system.  The STi is a great guider and the guiding system gives you a compact fully self-contained autoguider with a great FOV, at least if the image scale is comparable.  I am not able to convert from running my STi through an off axis guider on the F16M/CDK but the STi guider is perfect for my side by side efforts with the STF8300 and my Canon lenses. 

So I continue to explore and change and update my thinking and technique.  All part of why I love the hobby.

And that’s what’s been keeping me busy (and, as I said, I do have a day job that my employer expects me to perform as well – such a nuisance).  But, notwithstanding that, I hope to be more diligent going forward in keeping the website up to date.

Thanks for understanding.

Jim

 

March 7 - 9, 2013

March 8, 5:30pm - Sitting at my favorite spot on Jebel Shams. Gorgeous two days so far and hopefully another great night (at least the sky conditions). Struggled a bit last night with my autoguider given the substantially smaller FOV since it is now using the CDK's 2541mm focal length rather than the NP101is' 540mm. That is creating problems for MaximDL's calibration routine since it can't seem to recognize the star. I will try a couple of things tonight to try and troubleshoot the problem, but since the scope hasn't moved I should be able to image tonight without having to recalibrate if the routine is still wonky. The 8300-CDK combination is also playing a bit of havoc with the TPoint's automatic calibration routine but I am used to doing my TPoint runs with a crosshair eyepiece so that was no big issue, just another bit of lost time. Add to that the fact that during the night my touchpad stopped working and the night could have gone better. But a reboot of the computer fixed the touchpad and I finally got one star near M104 calibrated so I ended up with 2.5 hours of luminosity (a total of fifteen 10 minute exposures) and 35 minutes each in RGB (seven 5 minutes 2x2 binned exposures in each color) for a little over 4 hours of images. I had to do a pier flip about half way through (which I try to avoid if possible) so some extra work will be needed for this set. But that's just part of the fun. The combination of the small CCD in the 8300 combined with the CDK's size mean that the pixels are only 0.43 arcsecs across so I should have plenty of resolution.

Given that the scope has excellent polar alignment and the TPoint model is already loaded, I hope to get right to imaging as soon as it gets dark enough. Should have close to 10 hours to work with so tonight I start off with M1 for around 4 hours, then will grab some RGB images of NGC4038 to complete a set of Lums I took a couple of weeks ago. Hope to end the night with around 4 hours of M51, then shoot my flats, pack up the equipment and drive back to Dubai (may try to sneak in a nap during the course of the night as well since I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night). Also looking forward to the sun setting as I hope to get my first glimpse of the Panstarrs comet. Reports have it around magnitude 0.5 and it should be high enough that I can pick it out with my binoculars. Read on to see if I had any success.

March 8, 6:30pm - Too much haze on the horizon. It was a no show. Will keep checking during the week at sunset.

March 8, 9pm - Forgot that turning off the system this morning wiped out last night's calibration, but luckily the autoguider routine went much smoother tonight. Took me a few tries but once I allowed for a longer exposure, it worked just fine. Lesson for the future. And, best of all, only need to calibrate once per session. System is currently churning its way through the M1 set. Enjoying a beautiful clear and calm night, just enough breeze to make sure the dew stays low. Sky is lit up with stars. Just did a quick jaunt through a dozen Messiers with my binoculars (all clusters and nebulae; never been any good at pulling out galaxies without a telescope). Did a quick survey of stars inside the Orion asterism. Not counting the four corner stars that mark the survey boundry and the three belt stars, there are hundreds with binoculars, but even naked eye I lost count at 50. Amazing for these old eyes.

March 9, 12:30am - The globular clusters are coming out for a visit while I complete my RGB set for NGC 4038. Just spent some time with two old friends. M13 is just rising in the northeast while Omega Centuari is rising majestically in the south. Both are easy to find and prime sites in my binoculars, though, while M13 is a pretty little thing, Omega Centuari seems to fill up the whole 3.8 degree FOV (using my Canon 18x50's). Also perused the star clusters peppering the area around the Southern Cross and Carina. That part of the sky is just filled with them, including a couple of real gems, the Southern Pleiades and the jewel box.

March 9, 2:15pm - Back from Oman, had lunch, a short nap and have now fully unpacked the equipment 9even squeezed in a shower (and boy did I need it). Stiff, but otherwise unbowed. Did get in some excellent images of M51, but about 4am the wind came up, the autoguiding went a bit akilter and the last several exposures show some serious ovalling and are therefore likely not usable. Will see what I can do with the rest but likely will need a second sequence to really make it shine. Been good talking to you, now for some processing.

Copyright © 2017 James K. Morse