Amazing night part 2: Moon/Saturn

Although seeing was not the best, I still managed some decent shots of the moon and a so-so shot of Saturn. These are with the imaging source DMK-21. Some of them seem a little over-sharpened. It is hard not to play Horatio from CSI with registax, "Enhance......enhance.....enhance"  Enjoy!

Amazing night part 1: Deep sky

Last night was one of those rare nights when everything worked perfectly together to create a very memorable night. Weather was nice, mediocre seeing limited magnification, but no wind, nice temps, and no dew! My goal for the night was to bag supernova SN2012cg in NGC 4424 in the constellation Virgo. I had tried earlier in the week when I read Rod Mollise's facebook post and saw his picture. He has a Mallincam Xtreme and bagged it with his C8 and a 14 second exposure. I thought since I had a c8 and my Mallincam has a 14 second limit, I should be able to get it. Wind, time, and bad alignment made sure that it didn't happen earlier in the week. I vowed to try again on saturday evening, and did so. Got lucky this time. With the success of imaging the supernova, I decided to try my hand at some other deep sky targets that I had never tried. Here are the results...

Swan Nebula:

m64:

m51:

m13:

Albiero:

Celestron ASGT CG-5 equatorial mount, got it working!

I had the good fortune of picking up a used Celestron CG-5 advanced/goto series mount from a fellow member of OKCAC. He said that everything worked, it just had a cosmetic issue, the declination motor housing was cracked and held together with tape. I pulled the trigger on it, as it was an amazing good deal at fraction of the price of new.

After unloading my truck, I setup the CG-5 mount in the living room. There were some other issues, but for the money it was a bargain. I was a little scared though, as I went to power up the mount, there was nothing. After doing some research online, it looked like the mount fell victim to the number one failure of these mounts: the power switch. I took out the power board and clipped a jumper to bypass the switch. It fired right up. I then soldered a permanent jumper bypass, so now I use the power switch on my power tank to turn the mount on and off. Couple of issues, I spent 72 bucks with celestron ordering parts. I ordered a new set of latitude adjustment screws, as the originals were missing. I ordered a new declination motor assembly housing and a new counterweight bar. After permanently soldering a jumper on the power board, I reassembled and fired it up. I did a test/fake alignment and it worked like a charm. Motors work smoothly on both axis and I test fitted my scope. I balanced the OTA per instructions and with the RA/DEC levers loose the scope moves freely and smoothly. I am very happy that I have this mount working like new. Here is a picture of the NS8SE scope on it's new home. Please excuse messy office.

Some photos from saturday's informal star party

OKCAC member Bill Wilburn posted some really amazing long exposure photos from the informal star party the other night at Lake Hefner. Reposted with permission. These are really amazing! Thanks for posting these!

Informal Outreach at Windsurfer Point

While at the OKCAC meeting on friday, several folks asked what my saturday evening plans were. I advised that I had none, and they invited me out to windsurfer point on Lake Hefner where several club members were holding an informal star party of sorts. I waffled on the idea several times due to wind and clouds, but was glad I decided to go. The wind was atrocious and the sky was particularly hazy, from New Mexico wildfires I am told. I said hello to my friends and started setup a little to late, as the sun was setting when I got there. I got my scope setup and had a heck of a time getting alignment, as my finder's batteries had died. I did the best I could with the 40mm and hazy, light polluted sky. Did a two star align on vega and spica. Finally got the scope to cooperate, but the wind had picked up even more. Saturn was spectacular, but almost impossible to view due to the wind gusts. I broke out the DMK21 camera for some imaging, but wasn't able to attach a barlow. When attached, the wind gusts would move the target completely out of frame. I was very surprised, but I did get some almost decent data to stack. Here it is for what it is worth.

I played around with various targets, at one point slewing to the Ring nebula, M57. The skies were so bad I could just barely see it, but it was there and pretty obvious. I was really shocked to see it under the hazy, light polluted sky of the OKC metro, but it was there. Tried M51, but no joy. Could barely make out m104 with averted vision. Mars was a bright red ball, but has traveled to far away for any surface detail, at least with my modest setup. I enjoyed seeing everyone last night, the fellowship is worth as much to me as the observation. On a side note, the club pres. made me an amazing deal on a Celestron CG-5 goto equatorial mount. It has a cosmetic issue, a cracked declination motor cover. I can always replace that later, but the deal I am getting is too good to pass up. I am going to pick it up this coming weds. and can't wait. Seriously feels like week before christmas.

Venus transit, OKCAC watch party at SMO

Well the big day finally came and I managed to get off work at noon. I got home, grabbed  a quick bite and loaded up the truck. I arrived at the Science Museum Oklahoma parking lot at approximately 1530 to setup. I saw Mike and Wayne and we chatted a bit while I set up my gear. I was not prepared for the large crowd that gathered, at one time reaching about 200 at once. It was quite an ordeal, and it was estimated that attendance through the event was in the neighborhood of 500+. It was an amazing time! Seeing the wonder on guests faces was totally worth it. At any rate, I was able to get some of the video sequences processed to post some shots. From first contact, the weather held about 45 minutes before a cloud anvil put an end to clear viewing. Some of these shots were overexposed  due to trying to beat the clouds. DMK21 performed beautifully.

Little Blue Wonder, AKA the Imaging Source DMK-21

Well my friends, I finally bit the bullet and purchased what many imagers consider to be a "real camera" for solar, lunar, and planetary work. I got the USB2 version of the popular DMK-21 camera from Imaging Source. I initially wanted (and still do) the DMK-41 with the larger chip. An unforeseen and really maddening event sidetracked me and forced me to trim my camera budget a little bit. Still kinda pissed about it, but it is as they say, crying over spilled milk.

Funny story actually, I purchased the camera from OPT, same place I bought my Lunt 60 solar scope. Their customer service is just plain amazing. I asked for a shipping quote to see if I could get the camera delivered by tuesday, in time for the transit. They quoted me 90 dollars, and I thanked them but told them that it was a bit over my budget. I got a call back from Craig about a half hour later and was advised that they could overnight it at just at 60 dollars. I said "Deal!". Great folks over there.

Back to the imager. I have been wanting a monochrome imager for several months now. It is almost essential in imaging the sun in hydrogen alpha light. You see, in a regular color camera, there is an RGB microlens installed over every pixel in what is known as a Bayer configuration. Red and blue make up 25 percent coverage each, with green making up the other 50 percent. Since the bandwidth of h-alpha light is so narrow (.7 angstrom on my scope) and it resides in the red spectrum, only 25 percent of the resolution on the imager is being utilized. With a monochrome imager, I am now able to truly image in full resolution. Due to the size of the chip, the image is constrained to 640x480. I was worried that this would be far too narrow for large surface area targets such as the moon and sun. As it turns out, it isn't so bad. If I am careful and observant, I think I can get a full disk shot of the sun in a 4 panel mosaic. If not, definitely a 6 panel shot. I guess I will be learning how to stitch mosaics together. With the Tucsen imager, I was able to get the full disk on chip, but just barely. To be honest, I don't mind stitching mosaic panels together because the quality is so much better anyway.

I also plan on doing lots of lunar and planetary work with this sweet camera. I will need to save my money for an LRGB filter set and a filter wheel so that I can get true color razor sharp shots. Until this I will be doing lots of practice in monochrome. The capture software that comes bundled with DMK-21 is amazing. Everything to control the parameters of the shot as well as capture can be added to a set of toolbars for quick and easy reference and use. It is pretty rock solid and a huge improvement over the AMCAP software I have been using. Frame rate is lightening fast, and I usually average 45fps on my system. I did a quick session today under the sun to gauge this cam's performance and I am very very pleased. Judge for yourself. Lunt 60 single-stack/b600/ tilt-tuned solar scope and DMK-21. Close shots use an astrotech 2x barlow. Captured today between 2100-2130UT.