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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« Day 183 Sunday 28th September 2014. Using NGC 7790 images to find Transform values for my photometry setup | Main | Day 181 Friday 26th September 2014 Exoplanet Transit using a remote telescope in New Mexico. »
Saturday
Sep272014

Comet Siding Spring, Photometry references and NGC 7790 images for determining Transforms.

It is wet in Spain so I used T30 (at Siding Spring) in Australia today to image Comet Siding Spring.

On Tuesday last I imaged NGC 7790 which is one of the recommended star clusters for identifying the transformation coefficents for photometry specific to a telescope and photometric system. I have a number of references for photometry and variable stars being a member of the BAA Variable Star Section , the AAVSO and have the following books as references:

1. A Practical Guide to Lightcurve Photometry and Analysis by Brian D. Warner - you need to be careful there are two Brian Warners - both involved in photometry! (Neither is Marilyn Manson who is actually another Brian Warner) Published by Springer 2006

Brian has made a You Tube video explaining what he does.

 

2. David Levy's Guide to Variable Stars.  David Levy 2005 Published by Cambridge University Press

I attended a talk by David some years ago which was very well received - this video is about him.

3. Understanding Variable Stars John R. Percy 2007 Cambridge University Press

Last year he won the AAVSO Education Prize.

4.  Observing Variable Stars, Novae and Supernovae. Gerald North 2004 Cambridge University Press.

I came across this ebook by Gerald - I have the real thing in my astronomy library somewhere!

Back to NGC 7790. Here are the B and V images I obtained with my C14+SBIG

 

 

To be continued...