fealeybob14

Hello Randy

Minutes reviewed; thanks.  (BTW the last name is spelled Fealey).  Jay and I have done an initial cleaning of the AT80ED refractor.  I have a brief Power Point presentation on our efforts I will send it to you either here as an attachment or via your email.  Haven’t had it mounted for a star diffraction test but have viewed some ter…[Read more]

The December 30th early evening (6:30 pm) sky was great for observing the moon and Jupiter with the 4.5 inch Starblast telescope. I had purchased the Orion 2x Shorty Barlow and was eager to try it with the Orion 6.3 megapixel camera. Was happy to easily get a sharp focus at approximately 150 magnification. In the photos below the moon was a still…[Read more]

And a quick video of Mars occultation at 9:03 pm.

Here’s a image about 8 minutes before Mars disappeared. 10 in SCT and 6.3 Mpixel camera.

Lets observe Mars occultation by the moon tonight. Times are approximately 9:03 pm for disappearance and 10:09 for reappearance. Weather is forecast to be clear skies.

Venus, Mercury and delta Scorpii (Dschubba) line up east of the Sun and are joined by a CME from the sun’s west side.

Here is an interesting website that contains cool animations and graphics and data concerning the Moon’s occultation of Mars in December and the total solar eclipse of 2024 https://www.shadowandsubstance.com/

Lunar eclipse photos from early this morning. Fortunately, the sky was still clear and the moon well placed in the Western sky. Had a nice view thru my 7 power finder scope with multiple stars and possibly Uranus in the same field of view. Photos taken during early (Starblast) and late (guide) totality. Stills from Orion 6.3 M pixel camera…[Read more]

Venus, Mercury and a pair of mini sun-grazing comets in todays (11/6/2022) SOHO C3 video! https://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/data/Theater/

Both mini comets come in from the 5 o’clock position. Venus is brilliant on the left and Mercury, almost in superior conjunction, on the right.

Well Jim the wind didn’t die down and so I stayed home where I can partially block the wind with my observatory dome. Seeing conditions otherwise weren’t too bad. A bit obsessed with 40 Eridani I did go out and obtained another picture, this time with the ASI 186MC camera (shown below).

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]

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.

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

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.