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A somewhat blurry Saturn taken last night (9-30) with a new ASI camera (183MC) and my 10 inch SCT. Seeing conditions were fair to poor.

A somewhat blurry Saturn taken last night (9-30) with a new ASI camera (183MC) and my 10 inch SCT. Seeing conditions were fair to poor.

Public observing night at Elgin I spent a lot of time observing carbon star V Aql. I set my own user object with J2000 coordinates, but I was puzzled, why 10″ SCT with goto Autostar II is always off.  Day later I found that Autostar most likely is using coordinates RA/Decl for current time with current precession. One can find such coordinates a…[Read more]

Bob, this is great picture of Jupiter! You should use club 10″ SCT more often.

After the public observing tonight at Elgin I took another look at Jupiter and lo and behold there was a moon shadow and the GRS. I think one can see the moon casting the shadow as well in the stacked image below. (taken with 10 inch SCT, 6.3 megapixel camera).

I’ll have to remember to do a dark frame next time!

Took my 10 x 50 binocs to Keller Sunday night 9/25. Nice clear and dark sky especially towards the zenith. Milky Way was easily seen from N to SE. Binocular highlights included M22 M13 M3 M5 M8 Double Cluster M31 and M11. The last (Wild Duck cluster in Scutum) had the appearance of globular with a bright star in front of it in binocs. Seen…[Read more]

Sky should be clear tonight but it’s quite windy.  I’ll probably go to Keller and see how things are.  If winds die down later tonight could be good observing.

Bob

Great picture, Bob! Yes, the color is much closer to the visual experience. I put update2 at https://rochesterskies.org/carbon-star-v-aql/. I don’t understand “on the 9-6 picture was used“. 6 pictures was stacked? Or 9?

Here’s another image of the carbon star V Aquilae taken on 9-19 at 1 am (or so). The same camera and guide scope as on the 9-6 picture was used. The exposure time was 4 seconds and I used a different program Sharp Cap Pro. The star colors are closer to the visual appearance in the telescope.

I called Eagle Bluff today. The parking lot will be available for our use on both September 23 and 24. I will be back in touch with them later next week as the weather situation develops and post on this thread again. Sounded like they would appreciate having an idea as to when members would be coming. They will have a couple of groups there; I…[Read more]

Addendum:  In my post of Sept. 6th, I listed the magnitude of a star as ’89’ in the photo when in fact it should have been ’80’ as in Josef’s map.

Yeah, I was going to go to the last meeting but it didn’t work out. I’ll wait till I can bring it to an event. Thank you.

no, i just have the tools and not so good at collimating. next public event we have you could bring your telescope and someone could help you, particularly if Randy our prez is there.

Jim, I’ve been just using the collimation cap that came with my scope, it appears to my untrained eye that it’s pretty darn close. It would be nice to check it with a laser. Im in Red Wing , but would be willing to travel to get some training on the use of the laser. Is that something you would be interested in helping me with.

Colin

wow, just got back in town and see we lost Dean Johnson! very sad news indeed. missed the meeting but if
anyone brought up doing a StarBQ in his honor i’m in.
jim

the Orion Lasermate deluxe works well or the Howie Glatter if you want to spend the big bucks. i have both if you just need to borrow them? jim

Saturday night Aug 4th at the RAC outreach event we observed a ‘carbon star’ in Aquila. Below is the map Josef has provided on our home page along with a photo taken Sunday Aug 5th from my backyard of carbon star V Aquilae. The cropped photo aligns with the stars V Aquilae and 40 on the map and was taken with the Orion Mini 6.3 color camera and…[Read more]