A commenter asked about my piggyback imaging setup, so I took a photo (with my phone) tonight that shows how I hook everything up. If you click to the flickr page (just click on the image) I have labels on most of the parts.
September 1, 2011
The Moon on 9/1/11
I’ve finally gotten out with the scope again. It’s been either too windy or too cloudy (no rain, though, all month) or I’ve been too busy to get out since early August. It’s pretty warm out here (high 80′s), but it’s a nice clear night. I’ll probably do some widefield shots.
July 30, 2011
M16, M17 and More on 7/30/11
Here’s another widefield shot I took this evening. In this case, I was able to also use flat field images to really create a much nicer picture. With the 200mm lens, I can just point it at my laptop (with the screen white) and it gives a nice flat field. With my 10″ telescope, I don’t have as good of a target. Perhaps I need to make a light box…
July 29, 2011
M8, M20 and More on 7/29/11
I piggybacked my Nikon D50 onto my scope and hooked up the f/4 200mm lens I picked up off of eBay (~$20). I then pointed it at the lagoon nebula (M8, seen near the middle of the image). The nebula (along with M20, the Trifid Nebula) are found near the teapot of Saggittarius. This is along the middle section of the Milky Way and you can see the dust lanes, clouds and uncountable stars found in this region.
I haven’t been blogging much over the past couple months because I’ve been swamped with work and there really haven’t been that many nice nights for imaging or viewing. It’s nice to start getting out again.
Nice night last night
I actually got some time under the stars last night – did a bit of imaging, but just enjoyed my time. After I have some time to process the images, I’ll be posting an image or two. While I was out, I kept thinking I was seeing a cloud out of the corner of my eye in the south – it was the center of the Milky Way above the Saggittarius Teapot. Very nice.
July 2, 2011
Sun (with sunspot 1243) on 7/2/11
A while back I sold my 150mm Maksutov and with it, the matching solar filter. This morning, I made another homemade solar filter using leftover filter material and I took a bunch of pictures of the sun and stacked them. There’s not a lot going on right now – just one small sunspot, but it’s nice to know that if things do get interesting, I can get out the filter and take some images.
June 26, 2011
M6 – Butterfly Cluster on 6/26/11
The Butterfly Cluster (M6) is aptly named – this open cluster really does have a kind of butterfly shape, particularly through the eyepiece. It also has a lot of nice color variety among its stars.
M5 on 6/25/11
It’s a bit humid out, but I’m out here imaging some Messier’s with the wider field of my D50. I’m sort of thinking about trying to do all 110 of them again, but this time with a wider field setup.
June 11, 2011
Moon on 6/12/11
Tonight’s moon is very bright (bright enough to read by) so there wasn’t much use trying to do any deep sky stuff. But the Moon itself was an inviting target and after stacking 50 frames, I feel like this image comes close to the detail you can see through the eyepiece – make sure you look at the full resolution version because there’s a lot more detail there.
June 6, 2011
The Moon on 6/6/11
I haven’t been out a ton lately – I’ve had a lot of late nights at work – but tonight was nice and I couldn’t resist. I got this pretty detailed shot of the Moon and I’m processing some other shots as well – we’ll see how those turn out.
