The Astronomy hobby thread

[Eric Hahl]

Originally Posted by masraum

Eric, any good shots of the comet?

Unfortunately no. All my astro and camera gear is torn down and boxed up right now. Divorcing, selling the acres and moving. Made an offer on a nice little property 25 minutes from work that's in the middle of farm country and darker than where I'm at now.
Hoping to hear today if they accept my offer.

The seller is also willing to entertain leaving this behind for a price.

[masraum]

I'm sorry to hear about your divorce.

I hope you get the place, it sounds nice.

I have always loved Merc SLs, and would love to have one. It'll be cool if you get that one, nice that it's got the hard top too.

[pmax]

Moon next to Mars.

[tcar]

How's it going, Eric????

[masraum]

Originally Posted by pmax

Moon next to Mars.

Yeah, I wanted to see that last night, but it was the first cloudy night in weeks.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by tcar

How's it going, Eric????

Yeah, did you get the other place?

[Evans, Marv]

Hope you're doing OK. Divorces are always really hard times in life but like any other change, an opportunity for improvement.

[Eric Hahl]

Hi all, it's going as well as can be expected. We came to an agreement on the new house sans Mercedes and are working towards closing later in the month. I'm staying in a hotel for the month as we closed on our existing house.
Looks like our wild fires really flared up yesterday with the crazy winds we've had and the sky is dark. Some fires getting closer to the new home Should be ok though.

On the Astronomy side of things...the new house is in slightly darker skies than the old place so that's great. I'll have to pour a footer for the pier and get the observatory set up once I get settled.

[Eric Hahl]

The sky this morning....

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Eric Hahl

The sky this morning....

Well that looks great for astronomy!

[masraum]

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/mount-wilson-escapes-wildfire-amateur-observatory-destroyed/

A few of the club’s founding members had leased the property in the early 1980s; by 1983, they had constructed an observatory and donated it to the club. Another one of the club’s founding members built the observatory’s first telescope, a 17.5-inch Coulter, and its mount. Later in 1999, another member built a fiberglass Home-Dome and donated it to the club, along with a 16-inch Meade telescope in 2007.

Originally the site was named the Sky Shack, but in 1998 the club voted to rename it the Hidden Hill Observatory, or H2O. Over its almost 40 years of service, the Tri-Valley Stargazers and the surrounding community have used the site for observing, research, astrophotography, and outreach events. Recently, the club had finished an extensive two-year renovation project, including improvements to the building and equipment upgrades.

Now, H2O has burned to the ground.

“When fire swept through the area on August 19th and destroyed the building, it was a heartbreaking loss for the club and for everyone who looks to the night skies for inspiration,” says club president Roland Albers.

Among the club’s losses were two custom-built telescopes, an 18-inch truss-tube Newtonian, and a 17.5-inch aluminum-tube Newtonian. The mirrors broke and aluminum melted in the heat. Club members also found several eyepieces from their premium collection melted in the wreckage. All of the electronics, solar panels, reference materials, finders, collimation tools, filters, and furniture that were in the observatory are gone.

Moving Forward

Despite the loss, the Tri-Valley Stargazers remain hopeful. The fire did not take everything, leaving the observatory’s small dome unscathed. Importantly, the landowners made it out safely, and their home escaped the blaze.

The Tri-Valley Stargazers plan to rebuild the Hidden Hill Observatory over the next two years, with an estimated cost of roughly $30,000. They plan to build a similar-size building and outfit it with two new scopes. The club has created a GoFundMe page to finance the project, and in just 14 days, they are less than $6,000 from their goal. “I am overwhelmed by the support we've received so far from the community and from fellow stargazers throughout the world,” Albers says.

[Eric Hahl]

Wowsers!

[Pazuzu]

Holy crapola, I've never done planetary imaging before, this was just a whim. I didn't even get to use my hi-res camera, and I was looking over the neighbor's roof at about 40 degrees, so probably terrible seeing.
But...the "new" software and techniques make it easy! 30 frames per second, collect afew thousand frames in a video, then free software analyses the video, extracts the sharpest frames, and stacks them. Like, it took me about 15minutes to download, learn and run the software. Again, I've never done planetary work before, and this is FAR from optimal equipment. It's not even the best stuff that I have.

So, here's 2500 frames at about 33 milliseconds each, aligned, stacked, normalized, and a simple sharpening algorithm applied. Orion/vixen 102mm f/9.8 refractor, no-name 3x barlow I picked up in a package somewhere, Phillips SPC900nc webcam converted to an astrocamera (also picked up for free in a package), AVX mount, SharpCap software to take the video, Autostakkert software to stack. Image scale is 0.38"/pixel. Images shown are 280x280 pixels.

[Eric Hahl]

Yeehaw Mike, those are great!

[flatbutt]

Have you seen Mars? I hope the clear skies last until the new moon.

[Pazuzu]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

Have you seen Mars? I hope the clear skies last until the new moon.

My Western horizon is poor, Mars was sitting right in the middle of a big tree last night when I packed up. I'll have to wait a month for it, or set up in a very non-optimal location.

However, the Moon and Mars are plenty far apart now and Mars is quite high before moonrise, so don't wait.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by flatbutt

Have you seen Mars? I hope the clear skies last until the new moon.

Many years ago when I still had my 8" dob, I had a good night of seeing and Mars was up. I think I was able to get to about 300x mag. Wow, polar ice caps and the canals, that was very cool. Unfortunately, I've never owned a scope when Saturn was at a good angle to see the rings that well. I bought my old scope just before it went edge-on. I have also seen the GRS on Jupiter as well as some of the detail/turbulence in the bands. Very cool stuff.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

Holy crapola, I've never done planetary imaging before, this was just a whim. I didn't even get to use my hi-res camera, and I was looking over the neighbor's roof at about 40 degrees, so probably terrible seeing.
But...the "new" software and techniques make it easy! 30 frames per second, collect afew thousand frames in a video, then free software analyses the video, extracts the sharpest frames, and stacks them. Like, it took me about 15minutes to download, learn and run the software. Again, I've never done planetary work before, and this is FAR from optimal equipment. It's not even the best stuff that I have.

So, here's 2500 frames at about 33 milliseconds each, aligned, stacked, normalized, and a simple sharpening algorithm applied. Orion/vixen 102mm f/9.8 refractor, no-name 3x barlow I picked up in a package somewhere, Phillips SPC900nc webcam converted to an astrocamera (also picked up for free in a package), AVX mount, SharpCap software to take the video, Autostakkert software to stack. Image scale is 0.38"/pixel. Images shown are 280x280 pixels.

It's amazing at what technology has done for AP. And the ease that you can do planetary is really boggling.

[masraum]

[flatbutt]

Originally Posted by Pazuzu

So, here's 2500 frames at about 33 milliseconds each, aligned, stacked, normalized, and a simple sharpening algorithm applied. Orion/vixen 102mm f/9.8 refractor, no-name 3x barlow I picked up in a package somewhere, Phillips SPC900nc webcam converted to an astrocamera (also picked up for free in a package), AVX mount, SharpCap software to take the video, Autostakkert software to stack. Image scale is 0.38"/pixel. Images shown are 280x280 pixels.

I have had issues getting my AVX to track well enough for stellar pix, but at 33 milliseconds....