Observing Reports
July 2006
15th – 16th July 2006
After a few months of now night time viewing I finally managed to get some done.
The sky was very clear and I could see Altair riding high in the East at 11pm .
The scope was already setup and cooling to the outside temperature and tonight was mainly to try drift alignment. I think I should use the 200mm reflector instead of the 80mm for this as I shall be able to view more stars with the webcam.
Mainly using the webcam and guidedog for this as I don’t have and illuminated eyepiece.
I think I have finally cracked polar alignment as the Big Dipper and Cassiopeia were in the right position when I completed the setting circle task.
I don’t think I had enough power with the Orion 80mm as the star did not seem to move off the line very quickly. You are to view a star at 200x power and I’m sure I wasn’t. Shall need to practice this a lot to really nail the alignment.
Tried a few test images of the star Vega and they turned out quite well. PEC training for the mount shall need to be carried out of at least guiding.
I have bought the guide face adaptor and it seems to work but yet to test it in the field. Looking forward to this, just wish my laptop had a parallel port. I shall use the desktop PC to guide and probably just take manual long exposures to test the focus and guiding first before moving on to a dedicated exposure program.
The moon was out and I tried some wide angle shots of the milky way but they dint come out that well….although there does seem to be a lot more detail in the images when the levels are raised. Nothing good enough to show.
Looking forward to my next night out.
21st – 22nd July 2006
It was another clear starry night in July and the midgies were out in force but I still got all the equipment setup along with my desktop PC to try guiding out for the first time.
I found it difficult to find a guide star since my webcam is not modified for long exposure. I’ll need to arrange for the upgrade.
Polar aligned the scope and loaded Guidedog for my first tests. This is really difficult! And all I could capture was zigzag trails. It was late and I really need more practice at this. It’s going to be a steep learning curve but I’m really keen on learning how to do this.
There was a lot of moisture in the air and the scope was dripping, along with the keyboard. It would be good to have an observatory for the scope and equipment but that’ll need to wait.
It was a good night out, I managed to get some visual view done and too a look at the Dumbell Nebula, Ring Nebula, M29 and M13.
I still love the view of M13 with my new scope. I can always see so many stars in the globular. M27 looked really good with the distinct shape easily on view.
I wanted to try some widefield shots since the moon was away. I locked down the exposure cable and sat on my decking waiting for 10 mins. I fell asleep for 30 mins!!!
Looked at the picture and it was over exposed that I couldn’t even alter the levels to bring out an image.
I thought it best to turn in as it was 2am .