I got this shot before my telescope fell. I used eyepiece projection to get the high magnification. Europa is the moon to the left and Gannymede should be visible, but was washed out by the brightness of the planet. I could be wrong, but I believe the Great Red Spot is starting to disappear on the bottom right of the planet. I have yet to get an image of the spot (unless, of course, this is it). I’d like to get one where it’s right in the middle and unmistakable.
Well, apparently the scope still works after its fall. I also noticed that it sheared off one of the adjustment screws on the finder scope (that must be why it’s misaligned), but that should be easy to replace. Overally, I got off pretty easy. It could have been a lot worse. The image above is a few 15s images stacked. My alignment wasn’t very good tonight and I really just wanted to make sure everything still worked. I also got a couple more images for my Messier Hunt. I really want to finish that this month and that shouldn’t be hard because the areas of the sky that I need are up at a reasonably time now.
Tonight, while slewing to Jupiter, after observing for an hour or two, my scope suddenly fell off the mount. I don’t know if I had it insufficiently locked or if I just failed to tighten the secondary screw, but it fell right off the mount onto the driveway. It hit first on the bottom (mirror) side, slightly denting the aluminum housing, but not the tube. It then bounced off of the eyepiece (my 26mm Meade Super Plossl), which was undamaged and then finally hit the focuser tube of my cheap 70mm scope, breaking that. During the time it bounced on the concrete, which seemed like forever and I couldn’t get there in time, I kept waiting to hear the sound of breaking glass, but I never did. When I examined the scope, other than the dent and the broken cheapo ($25) scope, everything’s pretty okay. The eyepiece is fine and I went ahead and reattached everything to test it out. It appears fine. I think the shaking unaligned the finder scope just a bit, but that’s easily fixed. The focuser seems to be working properly and the telescope seems to be working as it should.
Right now, I’m imaging, to kind of test it out and everything seems to be going fine. The feeling of dread that I had deep down in my chest was awful, but it all turned out about as well as it could. While I’ll need to fix the cheapo scope (or replace it), that’s really the extent of the damage. I’m really, really glad my cameras weren’t attached at the time or they would have borne what the eyepiece did. While I love that eyepiece, it’s one that would be easy and inexpensive to replace, unlike the cameras…
Well, the sky really isn’t clear enough for good viewing tonight, so I’m headed to bed, but before I head that way, I came across this article on MSNBC, which I was amazed by. One of the neat things about astronomy, is that you can generally run time forward and backward with a tremendous amount of accuracy (using software) to see what the sky looks like at a particular time and place. A couple of researchers at Rockefeller University in New York used software to date the return of Odysseus from the Trojan war to around noon on April 16, 1178 B.C.. This is not only because of the widely suspected reference to an eclispe which occurred in the Ionian islands at that time, but because there are a bunch of other astronomical clues as well, involving the Pleiades, Bootes, Ursa Major, Mercury, Venus and even more. While people had speculated that Homer was referring to an eclipse (and some science geeks in the early 1900’s thought it might be that eclipse that they were referring to), these folks ignored the eclipse clues and just used the other clues that they had. According to the article, “The scientists then searched for potential dates that satisfied all these astronomical references close to the fall of Troy, which has over the centuries been estimated to have occurred between roughly 1250 to 1115 B.C.” Read the article to find out their amazing results.
This has definitely been the longest time I’ve gone without posting here since I started the site. This has been due to a combination of travel, cloudy weather, lots of work, more cloudy weather… I’ve really been so busy that I just haven’t had time to observer. I was able to get back to the June meeting of the Barnard Astronomical Society though and really enjoyed getting together with those folks. It’s really a fun group and it’s particularly nice for me to meet other people as obsessed as I am. 
I’m also not anticipating a lot before the end of the month - I’ve got Boy Scout camp for my two oldest boys and since I’m a scout leader, I’ll be at the camp Wednesday through Sunday. I’ll be taking my scopes with me to work on astronomy with the kids, but I’m fairly certain they don’t have wireless access there so I won’t be able to post until after I get back.
I have only been able to get out the scope a couple times in the past week or two and then just for visual observation. Last night, the skies were very clear and was awash in stars so I set up the scope and hooked up the camera. Over the past year, as I’ve been out in my driveway stargazing, I’ve seen a lot of people go by. I’ve also seen more than a few dogs. In particular, there is a certain dog that goes out carousing about 2 hours after sunset essentially every night. He looks like he’s part German shepherd and just trots down the middle of the street and then comes back an hour or two later. It’s a bit strange, but I’ve gotten used to it.
Last night was different. I was already a little on edge because a bear had been spotted in our neighborhood the other night. I tried to kind of keep a lookout, but figured a bear probably wouldn’t be bothering me in my driveway so I wasn’t too worried. Then, about 11, while I was imaging M104, I heard a mad scramble coming up the road. It was 2 very large dogs. They were growling and sort of having a running fight. Then one of them saw me and started toward me. I had my flashlight and shone it on the dog while I jumped up and grabbed my chair. I’m sure I looked ridiculous - sort of like a lion tamer, chair in hand, except instead of a whip, I had a flashlight. The dog probably weighed about 80 pounds, so was a bit intimidating. It actually got a little tangled in my mess of wires and cables attached to the scope and messed up the imaging (thus no picture). The dog then ran into my garage while I yelled at it and finally chased it out. It then sort of sulked around me as I put stuff away, chair at the ready. It’s actually pretty hard to put away all my stuff with just one hand, keeping an eye on the dog and holding a plastic chair in the other hand.
I actually like dogs, but big, dark, unfamiliar, angry, fighting dogs that come visit me at night when it’s very dark make me a bit uncomfortable. While sometimes on online astronomy forums they talk about security while observing at remote sites, I’ve never really thought about that for myself. I observe in my own driveway so I’m not really worried about people robbing me in a remote location. I had never really thought about security from animals. I’m not sure what I’ll do in the future - maybe have some sort of stick while observing so I can push dogs away. Anybody have any ideas?
Well, the Great Red Spot didn’t make an appearance - it was actually due about an hour after this time lapse was taken (You can barely see it starting to show on the upper right edge of the planet, if you look very carefully). Below are the frames that make up this movie:
This is the first time I’ve used the flickr video feature. Let me know if it doesn’t work for you.
I’m up early this morning to catch a bunch of Messier Objects (particularly in Sagittarius), but primarily to capture Jupiter. I had yet to see Jupiter in my LXD75 and the wait was totally worth it. Wow. I’m still out here capturing some Messiers, but I just realized the Great Red Spot (GRS) just rotated into view. I’ll probably need to go back to Jupiter soon.
Incidentally, the moon to the far left is Io, the upper moon on the right is Ganymede and the lower moon on the right is Europa. Callisto, while visible in the eyepiece, was too far off to the left to show up in this image. And another note - this image is a composite of one that had the details of Jupiter and another image where Jupiter was completely overexposed, but that showed the moons.
I did a bit more Saturn eyepiece projection photography last night and this is the result. I think I’m pushing the limits of my equipment at this magnification and it’s not radically better than the slightly lower magnification one I took the other night. That said, this is definitely the best way for me to capture planet images with my equipment.
I also took a number of wide-field tracking shots with the D50 attached to the weight bar of my telescope of the constellation Leo which Saturn is in right now.
Finally, today, my lilies started blooming, so here’s a shot of something completely unrelated to astrophotography:
I’ve been struggling with my images of Saturn lately. I’ve had trouble getting a good magnified view using my Barlows - in particular with chromatic aberration. Tonight I tried a different take: eyepiece projection. Using my 15mm eyepiece and my eyepiece projection equipment, I attached my DSI-II to it and projected the image (which makes it larger) onto the CCD. What a difference! I can’t wait to try viewing with an even higher magnification eyepiece. The planet and its rings are well defined and there’s even a subtle hint of the Cassini division in the rings!
Something strange also happened tonight. While I was outside, after 12, maybe 12:30, there was a long, low rumbling from the west. It lasted for maybe 5 minutes. It was a very surreal experience; I couldn’t figure out what was causing the sound and frankly it made me nervous. I thought it might be thunder, but it went on way too long and there were no visible clouds. A jet? I didn’t see one. If that’s what it was, it was either unlit or flying behind Lookout Mountain. A meteor? I didn’t see anything. I felt the ground to see if it was an earthquake, but there didn’t seem to be any vibration and I think that would have shown up in the images I was taking - if you shake the tripod at all, the image will show that. I don’t know what it was and wonder if anyone else heard this.
It’s pretty late, so I’ll just post one more image that I captured tonight. M101 - the Pinwheel Galaxy.
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