Martins Bay

Martins Bay
Originally uploaded by Astronomr

This is one of six shots posted - not counting the 1200mm exclusive under this post :D

That cloud is small and Magellanic!

Whether the weather ...

All signs point well.  With that nonsensical sentence, I declare that I be observing tonight.  The forecast is for clear skies, last night was awesome - although my attempts at Antares were not :(

Going to go make a spectrograph today, or at least screw around in the garage with a prism :D

So, I am hoping for results from tonight, crossing fingers and everything.  Watch this space and I will see what i can get.  Oh yeah, star party at my house tonight :D

Oh. Wow.

I set up for a timelapse of the moon and Venus tonight, 1 shot every 15s ... movie coming .. however ... look what I got :)

Yup, that's lightning over Snells :)

Then pulled out the SLR for some long exposure ... :)

Addendum:  here's the final timelapse, sorry about the black frames at the end - my bad, but as vimeo lmiits you to 1 HD/month, not much I can do :)

Storm on Snells

Last on March 11?

Oh Shit

I have been bad!  The telescope hasn't even been out  been looking for work is my only excuse I'm afraid.

Anyways, here's some shots I snapped tonight.  Enjoy!

Back on the Rails (somewhat)

Ok.  Tonight I went down to the domain, armed with Jacqui's 20D, some fairly well remembered instruction, some mints and faithful AstroTorch.  Determined I was to get me some dSLR pics, and well, I did :)  You can see them over at Jacqui's and my Flickr Page or of course on the Picasa Web Albums .. here.

Phew!  I can see how people can lose themselves in this camera thing, sometimes to the expense of their photographs!  My mind was spinning after my last post. Well to be honest I was weeping like a spoiled 3-year old who can't have anymore lollies.

First off, I need a job, then, when I have a job, I need a new scope, with nice motorised mount and a good dSLR mount and .. oh crap, oh well.  I guess I will just have to keep to the spirit of this blog and do it myself.

Coming soon!  Jason attempts astromount III - this time with the length to fit the 25mm! And one of these!

Meanwhile, as you chuckle at the thought of me messing about with tools, here's some VERY pretty pictures for you to look at.

First off, NASA has this and a bit of this, oh and a whole heap of these. Then the charming, witty and terribly attractive Dr Plait has this to feast upon! Or for the full mind-intercourse .. click here. So back to NASA, or more precisely HiRISE is offering you the chance to pick the next photograph of Mars, which by the way is at closest approach on Friday if anyone's interested! Oh you will need to open an account with HiRISE if you go there.

Okies, well that about wraps it up for this post - I am happy that I got some results from the 20D .. this is a good thing, so all I need now is some time, and motivation for the IXUS mount and Scotch Mount!

Tiny Lions

Last night was Leonid season, with the peak apparently happening around 10 this morning.  Went out about 3:30 in the am and of course all I saw was clouds, and the occasional star, in between the clouds. "Where are these tiny lions?" I asked myself.  Then ranted for about an hour to my flatmate about clouds.

Am getting very very sick of clouds, have not had a clear night for quite a while now.  I am, in fact, considering either moving to a desert - where there isn't enough moisture to form clouds, or constructing some kind of evil genius doomsday device to rip a hole in the sky.

In other news - am getting fairly familiar with the Canon hack, so this is good, not that I have anywhere to use it. And I have started the search for a stepping motor - more electronics fun - but if anyone has an old stepping/servo motor that they no longer want, need or would be prepared to trade ... let me know?  Prefer one I don't have to assemble :)

In final news - Happy Birthday to my partner in cheap optics and weird telescope hacks, Bill!

Phew!

OK .. here's the skinny.  Been offline for a few days, as y'all can probably tell.  But here's what's happened:

Fridays results were, quite frankly, shit.  Due to the CCD being around 2.5mm on a side, the object of the shot (in this case, was Jupiter) stayed on the fov for about 3 seconds, so I had issues even focussing the scope, let alone shooting anything good.  Also, due to my wee bucket needing collumation I was getting focal and exposure issues from the sides of the image to the center.  So not a good night Friday all in all.

However .. some other things have happened .. first off, my good friend Eddie has long-loaned me a Dell laptop - Eddie! I love you man, in that bromance way :)  Then on Monday my new camera arrived and it's a lovely little beast - have to give thanks to Fab and Sarsha for buying my Lumix so I could afford the Canon.  So the other night I got the CHDK kit loaded and had to go have a wee lie down.

Granted the 80IS is not an SLR .. but it now has most of the functionality of one - seriously, with the hack you can use the damn thing as an e-book reader if that's what you want to do.  It gives you control over everything!  And I mean everything - focus, aperture, exposure, timelapse, RAW format saving (both average and sum), remote firing and a whole lot of other things besides!  So I'm now learning how to use the hack basically and am pretty sure that my astro shots will improve somewhat :)

So then today, my 2x Barlow lens arrives! :) So now my focal length is effectively 2400mm :)

Now all I need is for the skies to clear - seriously, we've had one good night in the last 3 weeks!  First clear one I get, the cam+hack is getting a workout!

CCD is clean and now seeing into the IR

All is prepared, the CCD is as clean as I can get it, and now without IR filter on it.  Only trouble is, clouds moving up from the west :(

Forecast for tomorrow night looks good tho.

Fingers are Crossed

The sky is blue, the sun is converting hydrogen to heavier elements and I'm scouring the weather forecasts to see if it remains this way.  If it does, AstroCamII gets field tested tonight! Moon, then Jupiter, then if all is looking good, Mars.

Oh and I bought a new camera ... Canon IXUS I80S ... hopefully should be here next week.

In TA

and of course, it's raining *sigh*

Oh what a weekend!

Bill, you're a wonder, thank you so much for the loan of the laptop.  Got no results to show you however - basically the camera I got is too "bells and whistles" to give me the shots I want.  No matter what I do to the settings, the autofocus and autoexposure stays on, so after about 15 seconds, the planet fades out of focus ... incredibly frustrating, let me tell ya!

I got some footage last nght and was just setting up for tonight when, and I swear this is true, the sky clouded  over and began raining inside 15 minutes ... it's still raining now

So not good results for the Quest, however I have not given up!  I will try again with this webcam, Also with another, older one that I have ... and by the steel flesh of Ormagöden I will succeed!!

Clouds are capricious things

Looked outside just now, and after raining all day, it's cleared up .. I'm too sore and tired to do anything about it however, and still waiting on the use of a laptop and/or an assistant ...

Tooth out today, felling much better but still very sore ... see you all tomorrow

Clouds

I hates them

Bits and Bobs

Too cloudy again toinght.  This is a pity as I have come up with a couple of possible solutions to my focusing problems - one involves a LOT of red cellophane, the other is more oldschool ... will let you all know more as I try them.

I would just like to put in a wee plug for Sellarium - lives here http://www.stellarium.org/ - awesome freeware planetarium software for your pc or mac.... very cool way of finding things in the sky before you go outside and freeze!  Big thanks again to Andrew at the AAS for putting me onto it.

I will also be trying to do some more frame stacking work next time I shoot stuff - I'm planning to use the moon, as it's bright and easy to film.  I will be using RegiStax to do it - good reason to learn the program and my early tests came out ok.  Pity my camera only does 640x480, but it will be good enough for a test.

Tonight is a wreck

Typical Snells Beach weather. The sky was clear for twilight, then since full dark have had full, if a little patchy cloud coverage. Never clear long enough to set everything up, bundle up and get out there. This, I guess, is the astronomer's lot, can't control the clouds really. At this point I'm ready to go play Tomb Raider Underworld for an hour or so and see if it gets any better out there.

In the mean time I did get a few shots of the moon as it was rising over my house ... here's one for your enjoyment :)