URL: http://timsastroblog.blogspot.com/
RSS Feed: http://timsastroblog.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default
Copyright: Tim's Astronomy Blog

Today I took a day off work to have some extra time to finish up the suspended ceiling over the long holiday weekend. Turns out that I really didn't need all that time. In less than 4 hours this morning I had all the grid installed and all the panels placed except for the perimeter panels that need trimmed. The Armstrong ceiling system is very easy to install as long as you take careful measurements and plan everything ahead. Once you have the first few pieces of grid squared up, the remaining...

This weekend I made some great progress on the basement and am happy to report that the home theater ceiling is done. My plan for a simple perimeter of Armstrong ceiling tiles around a curved tray ceiling turned out to be much more work than I thought. Part of that difficulty was due to this being my first experience with any sort of suspended ceiling system. Once I got the hang of it, it wasn't so bad. Then I put some crown molding on the inner edges of the two long sides of the tray ceiling...

I've been working pretty much every weekend on my basement with a goal to complete everything before summer is over. A lot of progress has been made lately, and a lot of money has been spent. My astro equipment has sat idle for many months but I hope to get back into it once the basement work is finished. I'll post more progress photos and details sometime. Here is a shot taken today of the home theater room:





Painting is 99% complete with just a little touch-up required here and there. The...

The weather still has not cooperated for astronomy, but at least spring is finally here. After a beautiful week of sunny skies and warm temps, this weekend will be full of cloudy skies and cool temps. Makes me wish I still had the dob again for quick setups on week nights when I can't stay up too late. It's now been over five months without touching my scope! But I haven't been wasting my time. I've gotten a lot more work done on my basement (Tim's Basement Blog) and there's another blog that...

When the weather turns colder nothing warms you from the inside like a big bubbling pot of fiery broth loaded up with meat, veggies, and whatever else you want. This is not a dish for the 100-degree summers of Georgia - it is best enjoyed on a cold winter's evening. The broth is made up of a store-bought hot pot soup base and either water or chicken stock for flavor. In this case we chose a Taiwanese soup base in a jar. Some beef tendon was pre-cooked in the hot pot base using a pressure cooker...

The weather here has been awful for astronomy or pretty much anything else you could do outdoors. To ward off cabin fever I have been digging through some older pictures and picking the ones I felt could be improved with a little processing.
Here's one from the not-too-distant past. It was taken in October of 2006 at Brasstown Bald, Georgia. This is the highest point in Georgia at 4,784 feet. At the time I had just started using my Rebel XT with the Canon 50mm f/1.8 II lens. These are berries on...

Today I went outside and took some shots of what few plants still seem alive right now. OK, I didn't quite make it to the "great outdoors" but I did manage to walk out the back door, stand on the deck for a few minutes, and walk back in. What a shame being so lazy when it's 76° in December! It'll probably be cold and raining next weekend. Oh well...
We have some hen & chicks (or is it hens & chicks?) growing on the deck in little "mini rock garden" containers. Everything else has pretty much...

A modified DSLR camera is a powerful tool in the hands of any astrophotographer. Depending on the model, it’s a fairly low-cost method to obtain results close to that of the big, expensive CCD cameras that are made just for astronomy. You can save even more by doing the modification yourself. My first modification, as described in this post, was completed one year ago and I have done several more since then. My goal at that time was to have two cameras – one unmodified camera for normal...

As the change in my blog title reads, I am going to be expanding my blog from astronomy-only to pretty much everything in general. Astronomy will still be the main topic here, but I'd like to share some of my other interests like food, (non-astro) photography, and more food.
A few weeks ago we drove over to the parks around Lake Lanier, the reservoir that supplies drinking water to us and most of north metro Atlanta. The lake is just a mile from my house and many parks are close by. Due to the...

I was recently offered a copy of the book "Starfinder" from DK Publishing to review. I have quite a few Astronomy related books sitting around already, many of which are collecting a bit of dust right now. But it's always interesting to read something new, so I quickly accepted the generous offer. The book arrived and I was immediately surprised by the size. The "book" is actually a multi-functional case for it's contents. It is different & interesting with it's rounded shape, interior...

test 200000

/* Prototype JavaScript framework, version 1.4.0_pre10_ajax
* (c) 2005 Sam Stephenson
*
* This is a downcut version for AJAX by Alexander Kirk http://alexander.kirk.at/
*
* Prototype is freely distributable under the terms of an MIT-style license.
*
* For details, see the Prototype web site: http://prototype.conio.net/
*
/*---------------------------------- ------------------------------------ ----*/
var Prototype = {
Version: '1.4.0_pre10_ajax',

emptyFunction: function() {},
K: function(x) {return...

Now that the full moon is blazing brightly in the night sky (made even brighter by being in perigee) I am taking some time to go back over the images of M31 collected two weeks ago under the dark skies of the new moon. I spent two nights in a row collecting 5 minute, 3 minute, and one minute exposures at ISO 800. In hindsight I should have just taken a lot of 5 minute exposures and a few short ones, but I was curious if I could get close to the same result with a lot of 3-minute exposures....

Last Sunday evening I just happened to glance outside and see a thin crescent moon low on the horizon with Jupiter beginning to shine brightly above it. The color of the sky was interesting and I quickly grabbed the Rebel XT and the tripod for a few quick images.



The next evening the moon was even closer to Jupiter. Clouds were rolling in and I managed to find a break to capture this view. The bright star Arcturus is visible to the right of the moon.

Finally fall is here and the muggy skies of summer are clearing out to reveal deep black skies with stars seemingly shining brighter than ever. The clear, drier air really makes the stars pop - a welcome scene after months of heat, haze, & humidity. On the morning of Sunday 10/07, the Moon teamed up with Saturn and Venus to make a nice grouping in the eastern pre-dawn sky. I was excited the night before with the thought of viewing this event and capturing it with my camera. I was a little less...

Saturday night I set up the camera again, this time pointing more towards the northern part of the sky. Exposures were set to 16 seconds with a bit higher gain than before. You'll notice the top of the chimney flashing in the lower left corner. That's my neighbor's motion-detecting light coming on every time a car passes by on the road in front. One of the lights on his front corner points straight back into my backyard - very annoying!
Anyway, I think I caught one meteor - pretty disappointing.

I've been thinking about building an all-sky camera for a while now. It's not something I really need but it seems like a fun project. I recently received a small optical dome from Surplus Shed. I don't know what camera I will end up using for the final version. Last night I set my DMK21AF04.AS camera up on a tripod with a Fujinon 2.8mm lens attached. I taped a Baader UV/IR filter on front of the lens and pointed the camera straight up. The exposures were set to about 20 seconds each with the...

My new Astronomik LRGB filters came in last Friday and I was just itchin' to try them out. Saturday night seemed like my best opportunity in a long time - the skies were about as clear as it's gonna get in summer. In other words, hazy and humid. The seeing was just OK but that wasn't going to stop me.
I had a couple of other new "toys" - the Atik manual filter wheel and a Televue 2X barlow. I also picked up a C-mount to T-thread adapter to mount my DMK21AF04.AS camera to the male T-threads of...

Saturday night I headed out for a quick test of my new Meade DSI Pro. The weather finally cooperated on a weekend - first time in 3 months. Even after 10PM it was still pretty hot outside, and I had to wear long pants and a long-sleeved flannel shirt to keep the mosquito bites to a minimum. I was sweating, uncomfortable, and busy swatting the skeeters away from my face & ears, but I managed to capture a quick set of images. After taking a few test shots to tweak the focus, I set the long...

Today my new DSI Pro arrived from the fine folks at Astronomics. I bet they were pretty busy shipping out loads of these cameras. There's going to be hundreds and hundreds of happy new DSI & DSI Pro owners all across the country. I opted for the DSI Pro to get more sensitivity. I had previously ordered an Atik filter wheel and a set of Astronomik LRGB filters for planetary imaging, so getting a monochrome CCD camera was a "no brainer."
The first order of business was to install the Meade...

Boy, I sure do love getting new stuff. I sold a few things I had sitting around which were all not getting used much. I think astro equipment needs to be used, so I just can't see letting it collect dust (so to speak of course - I keep my stuff covered or stored in cases). One of my two modified Canon Rebel XT's also needed to go. There was no point in keeping them both any longer when I was just itching to get some new gear. I don't have an unlimited budget so I usually have to sell something...

For astrophotography, that is. It was September last year when I bought my mount, scopes, & camera, so I had just missed the soupy skies of summer. The fall and winter skies really spoiled me with many nights of crisp, clean, steady air. Now, even when you think it is clear, it's not really clear. I'll peek my head out and there will be a light halo around Jupiter, or maybe a thin layer of high clouds covering the sky. That's been the story pretty much every night this summer. Too much water...

Now let's take a look at a couple of Saturn videos. The first was taken with the DMK21AF04 in my Celestron C8 using a 2X barlow.





And here's a video taken right after the above but using my Philips SPC900NC color webcam. I'm not sure what's causing the poor signal quality.

I thought it would be interesting for anyone who hasn't yet tried lunar/planetary imaging to see what the raw video looks like coming out of a DMK21AF04 camera. You can get an idea of how much things move and shimmer around. The first video is the area of the moon around Tycho and Clavius. This video was taken in my Celestron C8 at the native focal length of 2032mm @ f/10. Things look pretty steady at this focal length:





Now let's crank up the magnification by adding a 2X barlow with a 2"...

This is from last week and it's a slightly better image of Saturn than my first attempt. I was using the DMK21AF04 along with my 2X Siebert barlow in the C8. Saturn was getting a little low in the sky at the time, but the great transparency helped me get a little more detail:



Then I swapped out the DMK for my Philips SPC900NC webcam and tried to get a color image. The images I get from the SPC900NC always seem to have some banding that I haven't quite figured out yet. I removed most of it in...