Paul Cézanne's Astronomy Observing Reports

I’ve been an astronomer for something like 3 years now. I honestly can’t remember when I started, except that it was a February. Soon after I started the talk on my club’s email list (yes, I joined a club immediatly, you should too, really, you should.) was of something called a Messier Marathon. Now I [...]

I read in Astronomy magazine that Ceres was close to us, an easy target. I think they said it was magnitude 7. But part of the challenge of observing Ceres is that it looks just like any other star. So you must observe it multiple times, taking careful notes, sketches, or photographs each time to [...]

No, I’m not writing about the David Bowie hit, but rather about my telescope’s focuser, but more importantly, about customer support and the person behind the focuser.
The focuser on my Burgess 1278 5″ refractor is pretty awful. I don’t mean that it is not silky smooth or it can’t life a camera or stars don’t [...]

I had a good night collect subs for another M42 attempt (not processed yet) and the forecast was clear for the next night so I left the scope up using its Hibernate mode so I wouldn’t have to realign it. I considered waking up at 5AM to try and get some waning crescent photos. Well, [...]

It turns out that once you stop shooting your astrophotography images that your task has only begun! You now get to process the images and it turns out this can be a lot of work and there is a lot to learn.
The first thing I tried was to just take one of the 2 minute [...]

So I decided to shoot the Orion Nebula. Although it is a popular, and beautiful target, it wasn’t one that I initally wanted to shoot. The center is so bright that it makes it difficult to get a good image that both shows details in the nebulosity without blowing out the stars. You solve this [...]

I’ve processed the 14 I took of the ISS passing near Orion on March 15, 2009 as covered in this blog entry. The result is visually more interesting since you both see more stars and you see all of the tracks superimposed.

But there is more than just pretty pixels!

Jeannette and I drove to Marconi Beach this evening to try and watch the space shuttle launch. It is amazing that it goes from Florida to off the Massachusetts coast in about 8 or 9 minutes. Intellectually I know it goes that fast but having just driven that distance spread out over three days, I’m [...]

In the previous posting in this blog, I recounted the tale of how I tried but failed to see the moon occult Epsilon Geminii. Basically, I failed to see it because the clouds moved in right around the time it was supposed to happen.
But how close was it?