March 2011 – Magic Shirt Astronomy

Polar Alignment – Part 1

Actual view of laptop screen — Polaris perfectly aligned, right???

For the 2011 season, as I trek into the uncharted territory of capturing images at a focal length of 1625mm at f/8, it can only help to ensure that tracking is as good as it can possibly be. It is easy to find research material about what works for others (qualified and unqualified), how good tracking must be for given image resolutions and other theoretical goals for producing excellent images. That research highlights the important considerations for adequate tracking. At some point, though, the experimenter/engineer in a person takes over and insists that he/she tests and confirms what works… with the proof, ultimately, in the pudding. My quest for better tracking will initially focus on polar alignment.

Last season and before, my thought was to use the polar alignment scope, get Polaris in the little circle, and polar alignment would be good enough. And perhaps at focal lengths of 714mm and under, it was acceptable. But this season, my goals are to both achieve better initial polar alignment, and also assess the quality of alignment once the mount is all loaded up and ready to go.

This entry introduces one tool that may help to improve polar alignment, a neat little trick that was first shared (as far as I know) at astronomy shed. This mod is simple and perhaps not really necessary, but it is really cool. And it can certainly make things easier… which can lead to more accurate results. In summary, the idea is to attach a web cam to the mount’s polar alignment scope, allowing the polar alignment to be completed in a comfortable, upright, human position, rather than crawling through the wet grass, looking through the polar scope at an awkward angle, and in the case of our club’s Greene County site, kneeling in cow patties!

Installed Webcam — My implementation of the polar cam

Here are additional pictures of my version of the mod, however the whole process is much better demonstrated in a video by Dion from Astronomy Shed. To date, I have tested this in the front yard to get things focused, and to ensure Polaris will ultimately be bright enough to identified behind the light of the polar scope (and under a glaring street light). So far, so good. Looking forward to an actual night out soon.

Next time, more about Polar alignment.

While waiting for a clear night…

Patience is a necessity for astrophotography. So many things can go wrong, expecially when you are a nomad without a permanent observatory. I try to be a patient astronomer and astroimager, but in reviewing last year’s progress in my journal and in my hard disk archives, the queston keeps popping into my head, “Where are all the images?” Then, however, I hit on an entry that made me smile:

May 7, 2010 – First time guiding and imaging together. Was able to take 6 minute exposures for the first time.

So less than a year ago was the first actual guided image of anything over a minute. Here is the image from that night:

First guided image, first picture of a galaxy. Hooked.

So this year, with the new telescope from Audrey, exposures will have to be even longer, guiding will have to be even better, polar alignments will have to be impecable, and certainly, the images wil be more spectacular. And surely a warm clear night will be coming soon.

Patience.

First Post – Mars Flyby; Getting Started

So how to kick this off with a bang?

Do you have that pictured? Well most likely, here is the opposite.

Content here and on the gallery will be evolving for a while. I don’t have that many completed pictures to post on the gallery, and I am launching with… one. I intend to take my time and reprocess several of the images armed with improved processing skills gained before the holidays.

Going forward, I hope to use this blog to provide additional information about the objects I photograph, and to also share some of the supporting projects, trips, and other behind the scenes happenings that result, in my case, in precious few pictures. I might occasionally drool over new gear or offer an opinion about gear I have tried… although I don’t expect that many will care about that opinion. I have been dutifully logging these activities in a journal over the last year, so it seems like it should be easy to keep the same information here. And, harder to lose.

The other portion of my adventure is learning about both blogging software and photo gallery software. In my case these are Word Press and Zen Photo. I am starting things off with precious few features enabled, but more may be coming.

So, I truly hope that with this initial, dry post, I have set the bar of expectations so low that I have nowhere to go but up!

So with that out of the way, here is something pretty cool. This animation was created from actual still photos sent back from the Cassini spacecraft as it was surveying Saturn.

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.

For those who know about APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day), this was it for March 15, 2011. I expect that we may talk about APOD in future posts.