Activity

yes, cross our fingers for Saturday Jeff!

The December Sky and Telescope mag motivated me to get out early this morning and see if I could observe and photograph “The First White Dwarf” star in 40 Eridani; the latter is a triple star with the B component a white dwarf.
In the attached photo I used the 10 in SCT and Orion 6.3 M pixel camera with a 8 second exposure. The bright component A…[Read more]

I called yesterday Eagle Bluff general number and left message (at I believe option 6) to switch off parking lights. No answer so far 🙁

Jim, Saturday may be better.  Looking at the Clear Sky Chart and hourly forecasts, they are showing Saturday as clearer than Friday.

saturday would be better for me but let me know if you decide to go tonight.
jim

Is Eagle Bluff available this weekend?  Anyone thinking of going out observing?  It looks like it may be the last good day until next year… maybe.  Friday looks pretty good.  Saturday may be starting to cloud up a bit more, but looks to be warmer.

Processing recent images of Jupiter and Saturn using a sequence of free programs including PIPP, AutoStakkert3, Registax 6. There are good tutorials online such as this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQYbtzsnQ3E

SOHO C3 image from today (10-10-2022) shows our active sun (Solar Cycle 25), Venus and stars of Virgo (Spica and Porrima (gamma Virginis).

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]