Excellent seeing in Cabrera
Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 8:07AM 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!!
