-
First light for my C8 SCT!
It’s been overcast for weeks, but I had a few hours of clear skies to finally try out my new scope and camera. A NexStar 8 (8″ SCT from 1999) and a ZWO ASI178MC. The long focal length and tiny sensor are best for planetary, but the seeing was rough. I tested it out on […]
-
Two surprise ISS sightings!
We were out waiting around a fire for a Christmas tree lighting and parade when I spotted the ISS passing overhead. It passed somewhere near Mars. Later that night it went by again! I didn’t note the time but it probably was about the 90 minutes difference you would expect given the orbit. I think […]
-
The moon again
Got a quick peek in as the clouds started rolling in. This is with my new phone which has way too many cameras and gets very confused by having a telescope in front of it. I’ll have to experiment with other camera apps. The animation above shows that conditions were not great… You can also […]
-
Hazy Sky
Decided to try for a better shot of the Pleiades again tonight, but transparency was awful. There was a slight haze over the whole sky and Orion’s belt was barely visible. I took a few afocal shots with my 9mm eyepiece since it pairs well with my cellphone camera, but the field of view was […]
-
Pleiades with a point-and-shoot camera
I decided to see what my camera with a 12x lens (60mm f/l) could do with the Pleaides. Here’s the result. I was hoping that the zoom was low enough for a 15 second exposure to work out, but as you can see there are trails. But not bad for a two-minute observing session.
-
Pleiades
I finally had another clear night, and observed the Pleiades for the first time. Seeing was good for Jupiter as well, with all four moons out. Mars was tricky, I think I may have noticed a darker area and for a moment maybe the northern ice cap, but I’m not confident. The Pleiades cluster was […]
-
My current setup
So far I’m working with a pretty bare-bones setup. My primary telescope is a Orion Observer, a 70mm f/10 refractor. My wife found it for free online a few years ago. Piggy-backed on it (with bungie cords) is a Gsyker 70mm f/5.7 that I got on Amazon for $80. It came with the focuser and […]
-
The moon through a Lego webcam
I’ve been wanting to try prime-focus imaging, but don’t have the equipment. But I did have a Lego webcam from 2000 sitting around. So I took out the sensor and put it in the tube from a bad Barlow lens and tried it out. I was pretty impressed with the results! I had to use […]
-
Io Shadow Transit
I observed Io’s shadow transiting Jupiter for the first time today! It was barely resolvable on my 70mm refractor, but it was there!
-
Jupiter with my cell phone
This is the best cell phone picture I’ve taken of Jupiter yet. I love that you can see the different colors of the moons. I could clearly make out cloud bands on Jupiter, but they ended up overexposed no matter how I tweaked the camera settings.
