Activity

The Pleiades (M 45) have just come into view on the SOHO C3 camera.

There is just now Kp 7.67 – storm, higher probability to see aurora, see https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/update-g4-storm-observed-sunday-april-23-2023

Thanks Josef. I had quite a bit of edge of fov brightness in the above and I did get separate images of each galaxy. I combined the latter two images in the picture of M81 and M82 below.

Great picture of the M81 and M82 with 80 mm (3.14 inch) aperture with total 16 minutes exposure. Thanks!

An April 12 image of M81 and M82 taken with the AT80ED and ASI 183MC camera. (Minor touch ups of the FITS file, saved as a PNG file and converted to a JPEG in Photoshop Elements). No darkfield taken. About 200 5 second images stacked.

An early morning (April 2nd) photo of globular cluster M3. Scope AT80ED camera ASI 183 MC. Fits file edited with ASI Fits Viewer.

I’m working with the Orion StarSeekerIV mount (Randy provided) and it’s built in WiFi and the Windows version of the SynScan Pro app. Using the Stellarium telescope plug in module it is possible to aim (slew) the AT80ED scope by clicking on the interactive sky map. One has to first define the ‘telescope’ configuration. I did this using the ASC…[Read more]

Luka B. and Mike C. have provided me with great ways to use the AT80ED refractor with my Canon Rebel T5 camera. I had been unable to reach the focal point except with an eyepiece projection technique. This worked but there was a lot of distortion (curving peripheral field) in the images. Luka suggested using a Barlow lens to diverge the light…[Read more]

Yes, the forecasts are saying it will start to cloud up by 9:00, so looks like no Messier Marathon.

Bob, yes, that was the northern lights.  They were pretty good.  They mentioned it on the 10:00 news last night and all they today they have been showing photos that people took last night.

Whoops had a double negative in above post (two ‘nots’ in third line above).  Erase the second ‘not’.  BTW, is there a way to edit our posts (as we had in the legacy forum)?

Was out at 11 pm and the northern skies were bright with what I could not really distinguish between northern lights and thin clouds with falling precip illuminated by Rochester city lights.  Colors were subdued and some areas seem to obscure background stars and so I was not leaning towards the phenomon not being northern lights.  Today my n…[Read more]

Unfortunately it looks like clouds are moving in after 9:00 tonight.

I see Northern light even from my backyard, no color though. It could be stronger about midnight see https://services.swpc.noaa.gov/images/aurora-forecast-northern-hemisphere.jpg

It looks like it just might be nice on Friday.  Is Eagle Bluff available?  Anyone interested in a Messier Marathon?  There will be a bit of moon out there.  It’ll probably hide some of the early western objects.

See attached PDF for February 8th, 2022 meeting minutes.

Thank you Jim! Must admit I am taken with the quality of this refractor. I’ve also “revived my old Canon T5 Rebel camera and the eyepiece projection components that had been gathering dust. The spring (looking ahead of course) night sky is great for seeing the most first magnitude stars. Wanting to test that AT80ED telescope further I have…[Read more]

great image, thanks for posting it! as soon as you were talking about the telescope
at the meeting i wondered how Orion nebula would look with it 😉

Whoops. I have downsized the image below.

Another clear evening and just had to go out with the AT80ED to observe and photograph. Below is a 32 second view of M42 using the recovered refractor and Orion 6.3 MegaPixel camera.