Activity

I was lazy and stayed at my home observatory last nite.  Good skies for sure, so I hope Josef and Duane enjoyed observing at Root River.  I have a new mount and scope and was educating myself on how to operate them.  The mount is the HEQ5 Pro and the scope is the Quattro 150P, all Sky Watcher hardware.  Spent $2000+ of my savings, but hey I’m not…[Read more]

That is one big sun spot! I think we’re now past the active part of the sun’s cycle and it’s supposed to be gradually calming down. That seems to be taking a while.

I just went outside, put on my eclipse sunglasses and looked with the naked eye at the big sunspot. Here is SDO image https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/assets/img/browse/2024/08/07/20240807_170000_512_HMIIC.jpg:

Weather forecast for tonight Tue 8/6 looks promising. I plan to go to the Root River park to make sure the light is switched off.

Thanks for posting. Looking up it was pretty good. I could see all the stars in the Little Dipper and a lot more within that I normally can’t see. But that was looking most upward. Looking at the northern horizon was hazy (see pic).

Looking east and west, all but the brightest stars disappeared.

Great sky while looking upward, but the lower you…[Read more]

Excellent members event at Eagle Bluff last night and early this am.
A zenith dark sky recording is shown below

Looks like you are prepared for the spectacle Duane!  Looking at magnitude data of T CrB from AAVSO today, shows an unusual fluctuation in brightness https://apps.aavso.org/webobs/results/?star=000-BBW-825&num_results=200

Not sure of the meaning of this, but wouldn’t it be great if tonight was the night and we were observing at Eagle Bluff!

The Blaze Star is probably going to saturate on my camera… I’m going to keep working it out and see if I can figure out how to get the whole light curve. I don’t think my camera can get the whole 8 magnitudes in the same exposure setting. It will be interesting. I’m glad it hasn’t blown yet.

Answer to Question.

Watson outreach summary:  Good turnout perhaps 6-7 members and 12-15 visitors.  Sky was clear but hey it’s the middle of Rochester, so the moon, bright stars, globulars and bright nebula were seen.  Possible new member Bob (a good name) with an awesome 5 inch refractor and hefty mount was there and Josef and Jeff got us all a view of Mercury.  Joh…[Read more]

Love it! We should start a new thread to share images. Seeing what everybody is doing is wonderful—and inspiring! Keep ’em comin’!

And while in the neighborhood an image of the Lagoon Nebula is welcome. The one below taken as the Trifid one above except 100 frames were stacked.

Glad you nicely captured the Rho Oph area Rob. Looking forward to your work too Duane. While recording with the dark sky meter on 7/9, I had my AT80ED refractor and ZWO ASI 183MC camera and got a pic of the Trifid nebula (M20). Photo below was a live stack of 165 5 sec frames. No filters or guiding; but did dark frame subtraction of camera…[Read more]

Nice pics. How many subs and how long? What’d you use to process?

Keep’em coming. I’m jumping into the game astrophoto game soon and it’s great to see what others are doing.

Until I save up and get a scope and astro-camera, I’m planning on putting my Canon R50 (not an ideal astro-camera but it will do) on my EQ6-R Pro and see what it can do.…[Read more]

Given a clear sky tonight I plan to be at Root River Park to take dark sky readings with and without the Unihedron housing window in place.  This is necessary to confirm the estimated 0.15 offset to the reading due to the housing glass window.