I'm back. With 2 Galaxies!

Not much imaging done in a while. Let me rephrase that. Not much productive imaging done in a while. I have made several attempts to image the Pleiades and several other open clusters from my backyard. Unfortunately, the light pollution keeps my length of my sub frames so short and not having a permanent observatory means that I have to tear down my gear my every night after imaging. I need to get a Light Pollution Suppression Filter. Anyway...

M81 and M82. Two galaxies in Ursa Major that are gravitaionally interacting. It does not look like they are close, but in a cosmological sense, they are neighbors. In fact about 100 million years ago, they passed close enough to trigger massive star birth in eachother. There are much better images of them out there that shows the results of this interaction.

Hopefully I will be updating sooner than I have in the past.

The Sword of Orion...again.

The Orion Nebula is one of the most observed and photographed of all night sky objects. For me Orion represents a milestone. Since the very first day that I became obsessed with astronomy Orion has been challenging me. While the world is not suffering from a shortage of beautiful images of the Orion Nebula, it can never have too many.This is my best image to date and is the culmination of two years of work and toil, research, making mistakes and many many late nights. While I still have many areas that need improvement, I am pleased. I have proved to myself that I can do this. Now to the next step. Making it better.

Image Details:

Canon 300D

10 x 180 Secs ISO 800

10 x 60 Secs ISO 800

8" Newtonian ReflectorBaader

MPCCAtlas EQ-G

PHD Guiding w/Meade DSI Pro

DSLR Focus

DSLR Shutter

Deep Sky Stacker

Photoshop CS

Autumn is here..

After many months of relative inactivity, cooler weather signaled the arrival of Autumn. Months of cloudy skies were replaced pristine clear skies. While not as clear as they could have been, they were certainly cloudless and dark from the new site I found in North Port. Anyway I finally managed to get out and image again. This time I managed to bag a target that has been very elusive to me. Trying to image M33 from my backyard was next to impossible. It was simply too light polluted, and the target was just too faint.

I powered my rig (laptop, camera, USB hub and telescope mount) with a 350 watt inverter attached to my car battery. This required me to keep my Jeep running most of the night. While I did not enjoy the noise or the exhaust, it did allow me to image hassle free. Thank God it wasn't very wet out. I would have been screwed if dew had developed. I still have not gotten a dew solution.

Image details:

Canon 300D (Modified)

8" Newt. Reflector

Baader MPCC

Phd Guiding

DSLR Focus

DSLR Shutter

PSCS2

13 x 300 Secs

ISO 800

Dark Frame

No Bias or Flats

Mira has a tail.

I'm in a hurry so I will just post a link to a VERY interesting story about my daughter's namesake.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/9179047.html

WOOHOO!!!!!

Ok. I can barely contain my excitement. The weather finally cleared up enough for me to get First Light on my newly modified Canon 300D. Like I said earlier, I was worried that I had messed it up somehow. Well it turns out that wasn't the case.

It was hot and very humid when I was setting up my scope and camera. I had to keep taking breaks to go inside the house to cool off in the AC and dry my face off lest I drip sweat on some electronic component. After more than an hour and a half I finally started tripping the shutter. Once I was confident that my auto guider was running reliably, I went inside. When there was about 15 minutes left I went back outside to check my gear. To my horror I saw that my auto guider had "performed an illegal operation" and was shut down. After doing the math I realized I had lost 30 minutes of exposures due to the image drifting out of my frame. I tried to capture an additional 20 subs but the clouds rolled in so I gave up. I ended up processing on 40 minutes worth of exposures. Not enough from my light polluted skies to make a really nice image, but certainly enough to showcase the difference in my camera after making the Ha modification.

This image was taken not long ago before the mod was conducted.

This was taken AFTER the mod.

As you can see there is a sigificant improvement in Ha sensitivity. Both images are roughly the same exposure time. Anyway, as the weather improves I will continue to image more and more Ha objects.
Yes. I have a big grin. I am very happy.

Ha is here!

I finally sat down on Saturday afternoon with my Canon and my new ACF Filter and started the modification. After about 4 hours of non-continuous work, my camera powered on and appeared normal. It even took pictures. Auto focus did not function properly but I use this astro-photography so who cares, eh? Without going into details, there was reason for me to believe that this camera would never function again after my clumsy surgery. Anyway it seemed to work. So today I decided to test it in a dark environment and see how well it saw faint red light. I set up my tripod with my camera in the second bathroom (the only room I could get dark enough in the afternoon) and parked a small faint red LED in view of the camera. Needless to say, the test results were good. But I remembered I had a red laser I used for collimating my reflectors. So I had a bit of fun.

The REAL test of the camera will come when the weather clears. M8 is still a potential target...

ACF goodness

My ACF Filter finally arrived. Happy happy joy joy. Now if only I had the time and energy to devote an entire afternoon to modifying my camera. I am reluctant to make the change yet because I want to get a before as well as an after shot. The problem again is the weather and CLOUDS!! What's new? *sigh*