Tried autoguiding for the first time last night. We first polar aligned the scope (not as well as I’d like but I didn’t need to get it perfect for what I wanted to try). I then used the Meade LPI camera connected to GuideDog software from barkoSoftware to keep the scope centered on a star. I mounted the Canon 300D on top of the scope and snapped some shots (of whatever dark patch of sky I could find). It was really a bad night for pictures (3/4 full moon, clouds, haze, you name it) but for the first time in all our attempts, the picture came out relatively sharp.

On a clearer night and with more precise preparation, I think this should could come out a lot better — I’m hoping to try to capture a nebula or something like that next time. I posted the shot here that turned out best.

Went out 2 nights ago but there was a lot of haze — it was the clearest night we’ve had in 2 weeks.  I had recently gotten the Meade LPI camera, a cheapo camera for planetary imaging.  I was using it primarily to calibrate the drive gears on the scope.  I will also use it to do periodic error correction (PEC) which corrects for inherent gearing problems with all scopes but I need to do that when the scope is on the wedge (another night).  We did try taking some shots of Jupiter but the haze was bad.  We capped the night by just doing some observing of the moon and tracking down craters with a moon atlas.

Just got back from our trip to Sedona / Flagstaff / Canyon / Phoenix.  Had a wonderful vacation with the family.  Took some astroshots just for fun.  One shot was from a lookout where we could almost make out the Milky Way — moon was about 1/3 full.  Also took a star trail shot outside our hotel room which shows how dark the skies are.  The elevation and dry air help a lot as well.  Also have some shots from our trip to Lowell Observatory which includes the telescope used to discover Pluto.  The last shot was through their solar scope and you can barely see some solar flares at 12:00.  Warning: To avoid blindness, don’t ever look through a telescope, binoculars, etc. at the Sun!  This picture was taken through a special scope with some serious filtering (basically filters out 99% of incoming light).

We got to see Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 which is the first comet I remember ever seeing. Magnitude was about 8.0 and it should get brighter as it nears the Sun over the next few weeks. This comet has already broken up into 7 major pieces and may not survive as it nears the sun as the ice breaks up even further.

There was an occultation of the moon and pleaides tonight.  What made this particularly interesting was that the moon was less than a 1/4 full so the unlit portion of the moon covered various stars in the Pleaides throughout the evening.

Came back from a trip to DC and it was the first clear night in a while so we took the scope out. I was also wanted to try the EZ Focus kit as well as see if I needed to collimate the scope (correct the alignment between the secondary mirror and primary mirror). Seeing conditions weren’t great so I didn’t collimate but did get shots of Saturn and M3 (a globular cluster of stars).

During our trip back home, we stopped at the NASA Goddard Space Center and got to see a replica of Hubble’s secondary mirror (shown here) — the secondary mirror is larger then my primary mirror I think.

Quick post — installed the Peterson Engineering EZ Focus Kit.  This kit makes the coarse focuser knob work a lot finer (to the point of not needing to use the microfocuser as much).  The mirror lock stopped turning easily so I spent an hour talking to Pete Peterson and we troubleshot the mirror lock issue.  Seems to be working okay now but waiting for a clear night to really test it.  Also made a Hartmann Mask out of poster board.  This uses diffraction to assist in focusing.  Check out my links for websites on these items.

Really clear night tonight but very windy, so we tried going out nonetheless.  Good news: was able to slew decently to a few star clusters and get some really nice views with the widefield Siebert 36mm eyepiece and also took a horribly underexposed shot of Bode’s galaxy (was fun regardless).  Bad news: Frostbite and the contraption to block the streetlamp fell due to the wind and part of it cracked… back to the drawing board (I should have gone to engineering school or I should have picked up another hobby).

Got the Siebert eyepieces today and I wanted to try the streetlamp blocking idea so I went outside as soon as it was dark and it was a very clear night.  We placed the pole that we built against the streetlamp with the curtain we had cut and it blocked the light pretty decently.  Need to make some adjustments.  I just had enough time to try one of the eyepieces (the 15mm along with the 2x barlow) before some clouds did roll in.  Slewed to Saturn and the image looked pretty good but the seeing was bad so hard to really tell how good the eyepieces really are.  Just have to try again another night…

My wife and I put the finishing touches on an ugly contraption we made out of PVC tubing.  The intent was to devise something that we could slide up the post of the street lamp outside our house and, using dark fabric, block the light from the street lamp — at least from being directed at our house and yard.  After a lot of primer and cement glue, I think this thing might work.  We need to add the fabric for a real test run and I’ll try to add a picture at some point because this thing looks ridiculous.  It may have been cheaper to buy another house in a darker part of the state.