Stunning night!

One of the best nights in a long time tonight, real shame have to work tomorrow otherwise I'd be up all night at a dark site.

Did a bit more tinkering with the CDD and took a couple of pics.

First one is of M83 The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy. 10x5min subs.
This shot certainly is a little bit better than my first ever astro image which was off M83.

Second is 4x5min of Eta Carinae Nebula.

Dew Vengeance

With winter come less wind and clear, cool nights. Perfect for us astronomers, the only problem being is the humidity and therefore dew which is astonishingly bad. It is almost like rain which drenches everything, not good for electronic and optical equipment. There is things you can do to reduce the problem which we will cover in a tutorial soon.

Solar Glasses

Thinking about putting in a order for some eclipse/solar glasses for the Venus transit and November eclipse. They will be around the $5 mark depending on quantity.

Who interested?

Clear Skies!

Nice clear skies at the moment, just the small problem of having to work to sort out so I can enjoy it :)

Got the go ahead from the RSL tonight at the committee meeting to use the hall or board room for out monthly committee meetings.

Working on doing a bit of tweaking on the blog and will start on some content like tutorials and review soon.

Please subsribe

Eeek!

Thought that there might be a bit of misalignment, vignetting and dusties but didn't think it was this bad.

QHY8L finally seen the light!

After a whole year off not being used, the QHY8L CCD has finally had some real photons chucked at it.

Still learning the hardware and software and these are only short test shots but they sure do show promise.

The first 3 are of the Triffid Nebula, 3 shots totaling 11mins worth and each processed a bit differently.
Last two are of the Lagoon Nebula and are single 5min shots.

All taken with the CCD at -18c/-19c on the 8" Newt, EQ6 Mount and guided. Only Lights taken, no darks, flats or bias frames so there are some hot pixels, vignetting, dust etc.

Binos with no shorts

Had a good viewing session with the 14" dob in the backyard for a few hours. Tinkered around with adapters, barlows, extenders and such to see if it was possible to use the binoviewers without adjusting the focal length of the dob. Normally I have to move the secondary a few inches down to reach focus and this not a problem with the collapsible dob but I managed to get them to work with no adjustments at all! Such a pleasure viewing things like Saturn with both eyes open.

Weather

Yup, back to the old weather chestnut. Looking like this weekend is a write off as usual.

Ad is in

The $89 ad is in todays Guardian

Saturn n Moons

Here is a couple of the shots from last night. One of Saturn with 6 of her 60 odd Moons and a single frame shot of our one and only lonely photon chucking reflector.

I named the moons so you can know which ones are which when you look with your scope. You can quite easily pick out the moons with a modest scope.

All shot with Canon 600D prime focus on the wedged LX90

Polar align done!

Finally got the polar align happening with the LX90, did a drift alignment as well. Need more practice but getting there.

Took a couple fairly wide shots of Saturn trying to capture the moons and then got some nice snaps and vid of the Photon chucking reflector.

Now just need time to process them.

What ya want?

What do you want here, what kind of content? random stuff? Reviews? Tutorials? what?

Please let me know.

1yr CCD

My QHY8 CCD will be one year this month and I still haven't one image out of it yet :/

Hoping this year's winter will be better than the last and I can finally get some photons on that tasty sensor.