Thursday, December 29, 2011

New Pic (finally)

Here I am taking shots of Orion again w/ nothing more than a tripod. :)

I don't care as long as I'm out there doing new things and tonight was my first attempt with a digital SLR (new Canon t3).

10 second sub got me this shot - then I went to photoshop to do levels and add labels. It's not much, but at least I didn't leave the cap on this time :)

I took this in my front yard with streetlights all around and using a tiny (4 inches tall) tripod I was holding to keep steady. So with these humble beginnings I still had fun.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

First Light with Stellarvue


Tonight I finally got a clear evening to try out my new mount / telescope setup. I struggled with alignment basically because the two star method wants to use stars nearer the horizon than I have access to. It's hard to do alignment when you can't see lots of stars in both directions.

Anyway - I had some success with doing a one star alignment and spent some time looking at some crowd pleasers. I started with Polaris (since I was doing polar alignment) and eventually looked at Orion (Betelgeuse and Orion's Nebula). Then once I had the alignment working tried Pleiades and it centered perfectly in my 40mm. Super tight alignment isn't possible the way I'm doing it, but I was reasonably happy with what I could see and the clarity of this scope is insane. Even though things aren't as bright, they are super sharp. Looking at the trapezium is fun because it resolves to huge spaces between the four stars rather than one blob.

I had to try the camera and wasn't all that surprised when I couldn't see anything at all. I'll work through the book once I get the new timer and hopefully start making progress.

In any case I'm glad to be out there again in the cold and my observing chair worked perfectly :)

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Starting over

I just recently sold my XT10 and my Atlas Mount. I liked both of them, but they were pretty big and heavy which kept me from getting them out very often. I'm now trying to get started in Astro-photography. I've ordered a Canon EOS Rebel T3 (12.2 megapixel) DSLR and hopefully this will be a good camera to try Deep Sky imaging with. I'll be attempting to learn the camera with the 70mm refractor I bought to let Harrison use. It's nothing special and pretty light weight, but I think it'll make a decent starter for imaging.

Anyway - hopefully I'll soon have some pics to share - stay tuned.