My Astronomy

 

 

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My Telescopes

My Main Telescope - C14 and Paramount ME

My new Paramount MyT and 8-inch Ritchey-Chretien Telescope

MyT Hand Controller

My Meade 12 inch SCT on a CGEM (Classic) Mount

My 4 inch Meade Refractor with Sky Watcher Guidescope and ZWO camera on a CGEM (Classic) Mount

Skywatcher Star Adventurer Mount with Canon 40D

 

My Solar setup using a DSLR and Mylar Filter on my ETX90

DSLR attached to ETX90. LiveView image of 2015 partial eclipse on Canon 40D

Astronomy Blog Index
About the Site

 I try to log my observing and related activities in a regular blog - sometimes there will be a delay but I usually catch up. An index of all my blogs is on the main menu at the top of the page with daily, weekly or monthly views. My Twitter feed is below. I am also interested in photograping wildlife when I can and there is a menu option above to look at some of my images. I try to keep the news feeds from relevant astronomical sources up to date and you will need to scroll down to find these.

The Celestron 14 is mounted on a Paramount ME that I have been using for about 10 years now - you can see that it is mounted on a tripod so is a portable set up. I still manage to transport it on my own and set it all up even though I have just turned 70! It will run for hours centering galaxies in the 12 minute field even when tripod mounted.

 

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« Tonight's sunset in Cabrera with the Moon, Venus and Jupiter | Main | Comet Garradd Chart »
Thursday
Feb232012

Excellent seeing in Cabrera

The sky was excellent here last night clear and dark. Venus, Jupiter and Mars like searchlights and many objects of interest including the identification of another Optical Transient detected by the Russian MASTER automated system. I imaged this and located a 17th magnitude object that MASTER had imaged as a 13th magnitude object. (See image below) I also imaged several of the already detected supernovae this month including SN2012ae. In adiition to this I obtained 141 images of galaxies for the Supernova Search - yet to be checked. I even did something really unusual and used a telescope visually! I had set up my CGEM mount during the day with the Meade 12" OTA and piggybacked my Sony Alpha camera( for which I have a selection of telephoto lenses) , and observed M42 through this f/10 scope. Quite a sight! I ran out of time with the piggyback plan struggling with linking the CGEM to my netbook that I use with "The Sky" software and also connecting the netbook USB input running "DSLR Shutter" to the Sony camera via Ross Wilkinson's interface that he set up for me. The interface is brilliant but the netbook was changing USB serial port numbers faster than I could keep up with! I realised that there are only so many things you can do at a time (particularly 2.30 am) - trying to work on the CGEM  (with the C14/ ME slewing away to different galaxies above my head in its location next to the swimming pool in the rented villa) and the CGEM outside the front door- with the two laptops in the sitting room of the "upside down" villa - but hope to use that setup tonight!!