Supermoon and Saturn

Last night was the culmination of a 1.5 year journey towards taking a picture of Saturn. The press was all atwitter about it being "Supermoon" night, so I felt obligated to try and get some shots of the moon as well. I did a composite of 13 different shots (300 stills each so 3900 total images) and aligned them this morning.


I'm pretty proud of the final shot and you can tell it's the real deal due to a chunk missing in the lower left corner :)


I thought it'd be neat to take a closeup of where we first set foot on the Moon.


Here is my first shot at Saturn - made up of 1500 stills stacked with Registax and tweaked with Photoshop.


Second attempt - the camera is set to Overexpose, but all other settings were defaults (then tweaking w/ photoshop again)

My equipment is the following:

• Orion XT 10 Classic Newtonian Refractor (10")
  
• Orion Atlas EQ-G (German Equatorial Mount)
  
• Orion Starshoot Solar Imager IV (camera) - basically a powerful webcam that's built to use in a focuser (instead of the eyepiece). The closest visual approximation I have is an EP around 6mm.
  
• Notebook computer running EQ-MOD
  
• Gamepad to control the scope from the eyepiece (atop a step ladder... man that mount is tall)
  

First light w/ new camera

So tonight I made two jumps in my learning curve for the new mount. :)

1. Use the PC to align and control the mount - Not only did I get the PC controlling it, but I plugged in the gamepad and used it to do the alignment and syncing. It took some getting used to, but I successfully got it aligned and it worked well.

2. Camera - as you can see from the pics, I've got a new camera. It's for planetary, but the moon looked pretty good as well :)

This shot is of Pythagoras and Babbage (both cool math/computer names) - mine is the top one and the bottom is my moon guide showing that those were the names.

Atlas EQ-G First Light

Tonight was the most successful GOTO session I've ever had. Many things contributed to it, but I'd like to list the pitfalls I've experienced in the past.

• Power problems - Batteries suck. Less than stellar (painful pun) power sucks from non-standard outlets. Tonight I had an extension cord plugged into a bona fide Orion power supply and this thing didn't miss a beat. With the ETX 90 I'd tried before it would randomly reboot, etc and it looks like it had to do w/ the crappy power I was feeding it.
  
• Alignment pain and suffering - people who are in the hobby don't remember how hard it is to find Deneb. Yes, I know it's pretty danged easy, but to the newbie it might as well be in a different language. Newbies get GOTO scopes so they can find things easily, but the first problem they run into is finding the right stars to do a decent alignment. This mount is by far the best one I've ever used in this regard. I did a 3 star alignment and skipped to the visible ones (Sirius, Deneb, Capella) and it worked the first time!!! Not only did it align well, but with decent power I went 3.5 hours on one alignment. I've never experienced the joy of finding things effortlessly since I've been star-hopping (sometimes successfully) even by using my telrad.
  
• Lack of good eyepieces for alignment - I recently acquired a Meade 9mm illuminated reticle eyepiece specifically made for drift alignment. When you align w/ that one (133x magnification) you are seriously pointing at something. None of this 20mm out of the box pain for me :)
  

Anyway - I'm sure next time I'll fight something and fuss about it, but for now I'm happy with my investment. Sure it's heavy and you have to take a class to get it all put together and balanced, but once it's together and pointed it's a monster.

M81 and M82 in one EP - I've tried to starhop to these plenty of times and tonight was the first time I've seen them on my own. It almost felt like cheating to punch them in and just let the scope do the work. They were beautifully framed in my 40mm and I spent quite a while showing them to my wife and son. The best part was... after I'd seen them I looked at other things and when they came outside to check it out I just hit the button and showed them so they could go back inside (too cold) and go to bed. Convenience is not something to laugh at ;) when showing your significant other.

Anyway - M44 in Cancer (beehive cluster) was particularly nice in the 40mm as well. It's such a joy to sit and look w/o constantly moving the scope. I didn't realize how much I didn't like that part, but I'm probably hooked now :)

Sirius was brilliant as a blue diamond with huge diffraction spikes

M41 was nice (near it)

M46 and 47 weren't very bright due to light pollution and I couldn't see M101 at all, so I guess dark sky rules all.

All in all it was a very successful night and I am completely pleased with my 80lb behemoth of a mount. Now if only I had a nicer storage building or extra room so I wouldn't have to step over and around constantly...

Club star party

Back from Eustace, TX. Beat down from first members only star party. Had a good time and learned some things too. : )

There were three scopes present (and three members coincidentally).

Me - Orion 10 inch Dobsonian

Paul - Celestron C8

Don - Celestron 9.25 (the only Goto)

We had a good time visiting with Don's friends and neighbors that were there and once it got dark had a variety of targets to enjoy and show off.

Fingernail moon - almost invisible, but at the horizon you could see a sliver of the moon.
Jupiter
Pleiades Cluster
Hyades Cluster
M1 (Crab Nebula) in Taurus
Orions Nebula M42
Sirius (the dog star) - bright blue diamond in the sky. I could see diffraction spikes that really made it look fine.
Andromeda Galaxy
Clusters M67 and M44 in Cancer
Algieba in Leo - yellow and green double star (very pretty)
M81 and M82 in the same field of view
Saturn and Titan