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Last night I almost made it completely through the Virgo Cluster with my Canon 15×50IS binoculars. I posted my experiences in the Cloudy Nights binoculars forum where I asked, “Just how difficult is M91 anyway?” More than one person reported making the find, but all assured me that it was a hard one, probably the hardest in that area.
So tonight I setp the telescope, an 8″ Celestron SCT to see what 8 times the aperture would do.
But first, I had a bit of a digression. Tom Leach, a member of the Cape Cod Astronomical Society, notified all the club members that Comet C/2008 T2 Cardinal had passed through M38 and would pass through M36 on Friday. He gave an URL, www.astroleague.org/files/images/societies/M-10000-4.jpg, of this photo:
Continue reading The Virgo Cluster Without Binoculars
The Virgo Cluster is spoken with dread for those doing a Messier Marathon. It isn’t that people are afraid they won’t get the galaxies, for the most part, that’s easy they say. The problem you face is getting too many galaxies. You see, the Virgo Cluster contains between 1,300 and 2,000 galaxies. With our modest intstruments we can’t see them all, but any decent sized telescope will show plenty of them under dark skies. My problem, of course, was a different one. I wasn’t using a decent sized instrument. I was using my Canon 15×50IS binoculars.
Continue reading The Virgo Cluster
I came across this posting on the iOptron yahoo groups list. I was writing up the reply when I figured I could get a blog posting out of it for those not on that list. (And you should join, it is a good list.) But anyway, a list member asked:
I’m new to these mounts. I’ve been playing with the mount indoors while we’ve had marine layer and rain. Can somebody tell me if it’s possible to do an alignment without the aid of a planetarium program or circles? Seems to me that the mount gives you a choice of alignment objects but you need to klnow where they are located in the sky? Is this correct? Is there any easier way to do this?
No, but don’t worry! You don’t have to learn the sky, just a tiny tiny part of it. And every few months to learn another tiny tiny part of it. A year later, you know enough of the sky
So sit back and relax, it is easy. Here’s how.
Continue reading How Do I Align My New iOptron MiniTower?
Most astrophotographers don’t take pictures of the Full Moon, quite frankly because the partial moons have such interesting shadows along the terminator. But after I shot the moon rising over the Pilgrim Monument I set up the telescope to both observe Saturn and shoot the Full Moon once it got higher in the sky.
Continue reading Full Moon Full Frame
I’ll say I got lucky on this one. I noticed what compass point the moon would rise it, saw where I wolud need to be on the road in the dunes to see the moonrise and the Pilgrim Monument (yes, the Pilgrims land in Provincetown before moving onto Plymouth!) and then I headed out since the horizon was clear.
The dunes are hilly and there are hills between the road and the monument, but I was able to find just one gap in the trees. I thought I’d be way off and the moonrise wouldn’t be anywhere near the monument. I was wrong and I got the shot.
Continue reading Moonrise over Provincetown
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 didn’t even know what a Messier was (is is one of 110 fairly bright and interesting objects in the sky, discovered by the astronomer Charles Messier in the late 1700’s when he was looking for comets. It was essentially a list of places not to look at, so it is quite ironic today that it is the list of things that we look at first!
A Messier Marathon is when you try to get all the Messier objects in one night! Some clubs have rules about what equipment you are allowed to use, I don’t cotton to that. Use whatever you want to, computer controlled Goto scopes are fine in my book.
My current club doesn’t put one on (memo to myself, try and get one started next year) so I made the almost 5 hour drive north to my old club to both look at the sky, but more importantly, meet up with all my old friends.
Continue reading Messier Marathon – Spring 2009
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 see its motion relative to the background stars. I decide to photograph it. If your browser can show an animated GIF, you should see 2 hours of Ceres:
Continue reading 2 Hours of Ceres
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 snap to focus. I mean seriously awful, as in when enough little hands touch the focuser knobs at a public observing session that the compression ring gives out and drops the diagonal and eyepiece towards the floor. (Yes, I caught it.) And this didn’t just happen once, it would also happen when I used the focuser. It had to go.
Continue reading Serious Moonlight
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, I didn’t get up at 5 but at 8:30 I went outside with my daugher to see what we could see and also to take some photos of the whatever I could see!
Continue reading Daytime Moon, Jupiter and Vega
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