The Lagoon Nebula, M8

The Lagoon is one of my favorite summer objects. It's a nice combination of open cluster and diffuse nebula. Click for a larger image.



Shot from the Heritage Park Observatory. Meade 10" LX200, f/6.3 focal reducer, Canon Digital Rebel XT @ ISO 800. 24 x 30 seconds unguided. Levels stretched in Photoshop.

A little blobby, but I'm pretty happy with this unguided shot.

Pearls

I kind of miss working on the jewelry store account sometimes.

Cool Clouds

Click for a larger image.

First Day of School

Wow, was that a lot different than last year! We had to hold Ian back until the bus stopped and opened the doors for him to get on.


We went to the school open house last night, and when we went around the corner to Ian's classroom, he saw his teacher and went running up to her and gave her a big hug. I have high hopes for the year.

A Joke I Found on the Internet

A stupid question deserves an appropriate answer....

I was in Wal-Mart buying a large bag of Purina for my Golden Retriever and was in line to check out.

A woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

On impulse, I told her that no, I was starting The Purina Diet again, although I probably shouldn't because I'd ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry & that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.

I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story, particularly a tall guy behind her.

Horrified, she asked if I'd been poisoned and was that why I was in the hospital.

I said no..... I'd been sitting in the street licking my balls and a car hit me.

I thought the tall guy was going to have to be carried out the door.

Trouble Comes in Threes

I took the first week of July off from work with the hope of spending several nights in the observatory only to be thwarted by clouds. Fast-forward to the Sunday night before going back to work--I'm walking Buddy the Golden Retriever around the block when a pit bull comes out of his yard, crosses the street and bites Buddy twice, once on the back and once on the leg. The owner comes running and is trying to pull his dog off, I'm using unkind language about my intentions toward his dog, and finally get the pit off Buddy with a full-force kick to the side of his jaw, hard enough to lift him off the ground.

Buddy's recovered fine after a trip to the vet for stitches and antibiotics. CPPD and Animal Control paid the other guy a visit. I'm out $125 but am willing to walk away as long as I never see that animal again.

I'm jumping ahead, though. On the way home from work on Monday--it's already bad enough having to go back to work after a week off--I'm making a right turn at a traffic light. I'm stopped and looking over my left shoulder, and as soon as I look forward and start to go the car behind me rear-ends me. There's not much damage apparent, but we swap info anyway. I wait it out for APD, all the while angry that I'm now dealing with two police departments on two days. I HATE the culture of victimhood, and here I am, a victim twice over.

The other driver's insurance comes through, and I should have my own car back from the body shop any day now. That "little tap" is setting Farmer's Insurance back $800 plus a week of rental car.

At this point I was afraid to ask what else could go wrong. I really didn't want to find out, but alas. We started getting some outstanding nighttime weather, and I was in the observatory with the telescope, camera, new MacBook and a can of orange soda. Picture the scene: camera attached to the back of the scope, cable from camera to laptop curling around the soda can. Slew the telescope, cable pulls can over, soda spills, laptop dies. Jeff beats himself up for not acting on his original thought that maybe the soda might be better not sitting by the computer. Craptastic.

But, the extra $9 a month I pay on my homeowner's insurance for computer coverage came through. The hard drive in the Macbook was undamaged, so I was able to swap it right into a new machine. All is well.

So, that's my July. I've had worse, but it could have been better. In the end everything is pretty much as it started, so I can't really complain. But where would be the fun in that?

An Hour Of Jupiter

12 May 2006. One frame every five minutes. The moon is Europa.

Review: Eclipse Makview 4

I've been spending a lot of time doing planetary observation and photography, so when I got the chance to review an Eclipse Makview4 Maksutov-Cassegrain from AGENA AstroProducts, I jumped at it. Maks enjoy a reputation as excellent planetary scopes with their long focal length and performance approaching apochromatic refractors of the same aperture.





The Eclipse Makview 4 is a 105 mm, f/13 (1365 mm focal length) Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope featuring BK7 glass optics. The manufacturer claims a wavefront of 1/5 wave (corresponding to a surface accuracy of 1/10 wave) or better. Superficially, the scope resembles the well-known Meade ETX-series OTA with a plastic rear housing containing a built-in flip mirror and eyepiece holder.







The scope arrived nicely packed in an aluminum carrying case. Inside, the scope, finder and two eyepieces ride in custom-cut dense foam. That said, I did encounter a couple of issues. The lack of foam at the objective end makes this a carrying case and not a shipping case, since any shock can be transmitted to the tube. The other thing I noticed right away is that the finder must be removed from the mount, and the mount completely disassembled to fit the cutouts. That means re-aligning the finder from scratch every time you take the scope out. For me, that's enough hassle to make me want to skip the case, which is a shame. It looks like the foam is deep enough to re-engineer this, however.



With the scope out of the case, I proceeded to mount it to my equatorial mount by attaching a dovetail bar to the 3/8-16 and a 1/4-20 thread mounting socket. From there, I attached the 6x30 finder to its bracket, and then to the scope. The finder bracket uses two sets of three screws, which I find harder to adjust than the o-ring/spring-loaded pin system other manufacturers use. In addition, the metal mounting screws dinged up the finder scope while I was using it. To top things off, there's no way to adjust the focus on the cheap-feeling finder scope.



Before I ever inserted an eyepiece, I ran the focuser through its range. The movement was very smooth, and the large, rubber-gripped knob comfortable in my hand. Alongside the focuser at the rear of the scope is the lever controlling the internal flip-mirror and t-threaded eyepiece holder. There's a simple 1.25-inch plug in the rear, which leaves the t-threads exposed. I would have preferred a screw-on cap to protect them from the inevitable damage. The combination of the flip mirror and threaded connector is a nice touch, allowing you to easily switch between an attached camera and eyepiece.



Overall, the fit and finish of the telescope is fine. The coatings on the objective appeared smooth and even. The primary mirror was clean and appeared well-polished. My sample did have a small blemish in the paint on one side of the tube.



You don't buy a telescope to look at though, you buy a telescope to look through. I inserted the supplied 20-mm eyepiece and pointed the scope at Jupiter. Sadly, that's where I encountered the Makview 4's most glaring faults. The very first thing I saw when I put my eye to the eyepiece was an out of center donut, indicating that the optics of the scope were misaligned. The next thing that happened is that the donut moved from one side of the field of view to the other when I turned the focus knob. I own two other cassegrain telescopes--a Meade ETX-90 and a 10-inch LX200, and neither of them exhibit nearly the amount of mirror shift when focusing that the Eclipse unit does. I suspected the flip mirror might be contributing to the non-concentric diffraction rings I was seeing, so I bypassed it by attaching a 1.25" diagonal to the rear port, but saw a very similar pattern, leading me to believe the scope truly is out of collimation.



Despite the somewhat misaligned optics, the planetary views were pleasing. Using a 13-mm Nagler Type 6 eyepiece, Jupiter's equatorial belts and temperate zones were visible, along with a darkening at the poles. The Great Red Spot could be made out, but it didn't exhibit much redness. I wasn't able to make out Red Jr., but I didn't expect to, either. Saturn was getting pretty low by mid-May, but I could still view the two equatorial bands on the planet and the Cassini Division in the rings. The three-day old moon looked very nice, with lots of detail and contrast in the Nagler and a 22-mm Lanthanum Superwide. As for deep space objects, well, it is a four-inch telescope. The globular cluster M13 was unremarkable and unresolved in the small aperture from my moderately light-polluted suburban back yard.

The unit I reviewed included two generic Plössl eyepieces, but I'm not commenting on them as they are due to be replaced by higher-quality eyepieces.

I'm disappointed overall. I really wanted to like this telescope, but the out of collimation (and not easily adjusted) optics coupled with the large amount of mirror shift made viewing more difficult than it should be. While the views were nice, I couldn't help this nagging feeling that I wasn't seeing the best that the scope had to offer. I also found the US$375 OTA-only price a bit high for the overall quality, especially considering the competition's similar scope priced only $35 more including an EQ-2 mount.

Eclipse Makview 4, www.agenaastro.com

This review is also available as a PDF file.

Jupiter From the HPO

CSC says 4/5 seeing, but no way was it that good. Jupiter was swimming in the heat. I'm pretty happy with the finished shot, though. That's Red Jr. just above and to the right of the GRS. Ganymede is on the lower left, and Io on the right.

Darth Vader's Mounting Plate

The last piece of the observatory is finally ready to go.The mounting plate is back from the machine shop, and you won't see another one like it. Now to bolt it up and watch the rain!

HPO First Light Party

Thanks to my fellow Dam Astronomers for helping me christen the Heritage Park Observatory. My back yard looked like a used telescope lot!


L to R: Andy, Daniel, Dave, Ian, Me, Barry, Kathy & Ralph. And Buddy the Astro Dog.

Observatory Update

One Setback Encountered, Another Avoided

I got the mounting plate back from the machine shop, and boy, does it look sharp. I bolted it to the top of the pier with a little effort, and immediately discovered that the holes for the wedge attachment were drilled 15° off. I double-checked my drawing, and the part was machined wrong. It's OK, it's just a matter of drilling & tapping new holes--the old ones won't hurt anything. If there's an upside, it's that I found this before the plate went out for anodizing.

While I was trying the plate out, I thought, "Man, the wedge sure looks close to the roof." So this morning I set the tripod up alongside the pier, mounted everything up, and breathed a sigh of relief. It looks like I have about 1 1/2 inches (37 mm) to spare. It is tight, though, and I'm not quite sure what I'll do if I want to piggyback anything on the tube in the future.

What would I have done if the scope didn't clear the roof? Disassemble the shed, put down concrete pavers under the floor, and rebuild on top. I'm glad I don't have to deal with the money and labor now.

How To Build An Observatory in 5 Minutes (With Music)

It's a Shed!

It's a shed!

Observatory, Day Three

Day Three: There's a Hole In My Floor

Easier than digging a hole in the ground.

Observatory, Day Two

Level & north. Suppose Meade will sue me?

I'd rather mix concrete than dig holes.

Now the worry starts--did I mix right? Is everything well-compacted? Am I going to unwrap the tube and find huge voids?

Slide show here.

Observatory, Day One

My arms are killing me.

View a slide show of the first half of the pier installation here.

Jupiter at 45° Reprocessed

I re-ran my stack and got a tighter alignment. The half-size image looks pretty good, so there's that at least.

Jupiter at 45°

I don't know what I can do get a sharper image. The scope was (should have been) well cooled-off--I ran the cooler for 45 minutes, and this was shot after being out for about three hours. Jupiter was 45° up, which is still low but not awful. Seeing was good--the difference between the good frames and bad ones was very small. I tweaked focus back & forth for about 15 minutes, and am satisfied it's the best I can do. I looked at the collimation on Io, and to me it looks spot on. If I push the wavelets any harder I get ringing around the planet.

The only thing I can figure is it's my collimation skills. I get nice round concentric rings on one side of focus, but they're all spike-y on the other. I wonder if the collimation knobs are installed correctly, or if the the secondary is somehow being "pinched."

10" LX200 Classic, 2.5x PowerMate, NexImage, 500 frames (35 seconds) in alt-az

Lunar Processing, Pt. II

I used five zones this time--the 4 corners and the center. No wavelets at all--just the same three passes of high-pass filtering and an unsharp mask. It's a little noisy still, but I'm making progress with the process.

Original:



Re-Processed:

Lunar Processing

After getting turned on to Tony Gondola's lunar processing workflow, I thought I'd give it a shot.

Here's my first attempt at a six-zone (3 col. x 2 row) stack & mosaic, followed by high-pass filter sharpening.

I enlarged my original 640x480 .mov 150% in Quicktime Pro player and aligned & stacked on six areas in Keith's Image Stacker. I did one pass of wavelets, and am afraid I used to much.

I used PS CS2 to crop the six images and automerge them back into one. I made three passes with the high pass filter at 6, 3 and 1 pixel using Tony's settings.

I reduced the image back to 640 x 480 and despeckled. Alan Friedman is safe from me for a while, but I can see great potential here.

Original version:



Reprocessed:

Baby Blues

Sunday: "You really want to be an astronomer?"
"I'll be anything that lets me stay up past my bedtime."

Monday: "Is this just homework by another name?"

Tuesday: "We're amazed, all right."

Wednesday: "Wow, look at all the streets."

Thursday: "Galileo must have been a bachelor."

Friday & Saturday

Sometimes the weather just won't cooperate. Friday night I was invited to the Audubon Society's evening event to host a little star party for their members. Alas, the clouds moved in hard, and there was even hail overnight, so there was obviously no stargazing. I did bring the iBook and a projector, so we all looked at fake computer stars instead. I had fun, and several people expressed their appreciation, so I suppose it wasn't a wasted evening after all.

Saturday night was better-I took Ian and the two Wades to the Erwin Center and watched the Austin Wranglers play Arena League Football. It's a different game than the NFL or NCAA play, but still a lot of fun. The league works hard at being fan-friendly and it showed. They host an autograph session on the field after every game, and the players & cheerleaders are very accessible. They seemed pleased to have the opportunity as well.

See my pictures from the game here.

A New Version of an Old Joke

George: Condi! Nice to see you. What's happening?
Condi: Sir, I have the report here about the new leader of China.
George: Great. Lay it on me.
Condi: Hu is the new leader of China.
George: That's what I want to know.
Condi: That's what I'm telling you.
George: That's what I'm asking you. Who is the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes.
George: I mean the fellow's name.
Condi: Hu.
George: The guy in China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The new leader of China.
Condi: Hu.
George: The main man in China!
Condi: Hu is leading China.
George: Now whaddya' asking me for?
Condi: I'm telling you, Hu is leading China.
George: Well, I'm asking you. Who is leading China?
Condi: That's the man's name.
George: That's who's name?
Condi: Yes.
George: Will you, or will you not, tell me the name of the new leader of China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir? Yassir Arafat is in China? I thought he's dead in the Middle East.
Condi: That's correct.
George: Then who is in China?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir is in China?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Then who is?
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Yassir?
Condi: No, sir.
George: Look Condi. I need to know the name of the new leader of China. Get me the Secretary General of the U.N. on the phone.
Condi: Kofi?
George: No, thanks.
Condi: You want Kofi?
George: No.
Condi: You don't want Kofi.
George: No. But now that you mention it, I could use a glass of milk. And then get me the U.N.
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: Not Yassir! The guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi?
George: Milk! Will you please make the call?
Condi: And call who?
George: Who is the guy at the U.N?
Condi: Hu is the guy in China
George: Will you stay out of China?!
Condi: Yes, sir.
George: And stay out of the Middle East! Just get me the guy at the U.N.
Condi: Kofi.
George: All right! With cream and two sugars.

A Dam Good Friday

It didn't look like it was going to be much of a night last night. The sky was full of crud, and every time an airplane flew over, it left a contrail that just fattened up until it covered a big stretch of sky. By about 11:00 most folks at the dam were packing up to go home, but I wasn't ready to give up just yet. There was a general clearing in the west, and I suspected that the reason those contrails weren't going away was that we had a pretty steady upper atmosphere, which would mean good seeing.

I'm glad I stuck around, because by 0100 the sky was completely clear. There was no wind, the temperature was reasonable enough to not require a jacket, and the dew was just holding off, mostly.



So here's the boring side of Jupiter, with Io just peeking around the edge. Unless I modify my camera, I don't know any technique I'm not using to get the most out of my setup. Collimation? As good as I know how to make it. Focus? The WO focuser is working well, and I've been bracketing my shots to try to find the sweetest spot. Seeing? I can't control it, but last night was as good as we've seen in a long time. Jupiter's altitude above the horizon? It's just 39° up at this point, but even at transit it'll barely top 43°. It's just not going to be a great summer for shooting Jove this year.

Anyway, here's a three-frame animation shot in just six minutes. The big guy moves fast!

The Military Life

I came across this curiosity today and thought, I didn't spend but a month sleeping on a rack like that and I didn't find it very much fun at all. This is a toy?



Then I wondered if I could get a little R. Lee Ermey doll to go with it.



It turns out you can.

2006 LKY Ranch BBQ & Spring Frolic

The wind blew 30 mph all weekend, so no astro pics, but the rest of the photos and a short video are here.

Jupiter & Ganymede

Patience finally pays off. At 2:00 this morning Jupiter was 40° up, which is about as good as it's going to get. I could see the seeing rippling across the disc, even with 3/5 seeing. Red Jr. is just visible at around 2:00 on the image.

A couple of guys driving a 1970 Camaro and 67 Mustang stopped by looking for their dog. They both looked at Saturn, Jupiter & the Moon and were suitably blown away. It's funny--sometimes I think astronomy is about the geekiest hobby possible, but when 20-something hot-rodders proclaim the view of Saturn "the coolest thing they've ever seen," well, maybe it's not so geeky after all.

Star Hoping

That's when you point the telescope at the sky and hope you see something.

Like last night. I didn't want to set up the LX200, so I took the little 6" dob into the back yard with my red flashlight and Star Atlas. I did pretty good on M81 & M82, but totally failed on the Leo Triplett. To be fair to myself, the transparency was only so-so, 6 inches isn't a whole lot of aperture, and my star-hopping skills are practically non-existant.

Meanwhile, here's a new design at CafePress!

Damned If You Dew

There must have been at least 25 telescopes out at the dam last night for maybe the best night so far this year. I was late getting set up, but got nice views of the Leo Triplet (M65 group), and a whole mess of galaxies in Virgo.

I planned on staying out until 0200 to shoot Jupiter. The Great Red Spot was coming around and seeing was holding up pretty well. What I was unprepared for was the cold. By midnight it was in the 30s, and one fellow's thermometer read 34° at 0100. I held on, mostly by hanging out in the car or in front of Bryan's dam heater, but the iBook crapped out. I'm guessing it was a combination of the cold and dew, but the NexImage image was filled with the same herringbone noise I saw last time it was cold.

I got as far as focusing, but was geting so cold and miserable myself I decided to pack it in and wait for a warmer night.

So--imagine a nice picture of Jupiter here.

Saturn Variations, pt. 2

Brad Carlson, aka RedIrocZ-28 on the Cloudy Nights forums did a nice job touching up the latest Saturn:



CSC is forecasting 4/5 seeing for Friday night, turning to 5/5 early Saturday morning. Who needs sleep?

Saturn Variations

CSC said 3/5 seeing, but it may have been better. I shot 2k-frame streams, and stacked about 1500-1800 in Keith's Image Stacker. 10" LX200, 2.5x PowerMate & un-modded NexImage.


Nice view of the Crepe, but low contrast on the planet.



Same shot with highlight contrast enhanced. Kinda crunchy.



High (low? opposite) gamma capture. Sharpest of the lot, but no sign of the Crepe.

Spacewalker T-Shirts

I've put up a new CafePress store with this original illustration.

Gassendi & The Crepe Ring

Sounds like a great name for a band.

Mare Humorum: "On the north 'shore ' is one of the most beautiful and intensively observed lunar formation, the walled plain Gassendi, about 55 miles in diameter. It has a curious lop-sided appearance and its walls are quite high and complete except on the extreme south where there is a gap. It seems that in the remote past the fluid material of the Mare Humorum destroyed this part of the south wall of Gassendi and flooded the south part of the floor. At the center is a splendid group of mountain peaks, the highest of which rises to 4000 feet. On the south-east part of the floor is the remnant of what was probably once a nearly concentric interior ring. Gassendi is notable because of the variety of details on its interior, among which are about 30 or 40 clefts. Two of the most prominent of these diverge from the central mountains over the floor in a south-west direction. Associated with these are two craterlets that are very bright at full moon. These and other clefts in the south-west part of the floor are easily visible in a four inch telescope but the others that are on the east half of the interior need large apertures to be seen. They criss-cross or run parallel in a complex manner and cannot all be seen on any one occasion. Good seeing, the right angle of illumination and favorable libration are essential for their successful visualization. The cleft system has been charted by different observers and there is a strange diversity among the different delineations. In fact, it has been said: "Every Man his own Gassendi". The north wall of Gassendi is intruded upon by the crater Clarkson and just to the east of the wall of Gassendi is sliced through by two prominent gaps that continue across the floor as two parallel clefts. On the east wall is a curious crater-like depression from which extends on the outside in a south-east direction the Percy Mountains defining the north-east border of the Mare Humorum." The Moon Observer's Handbook by Fred W. Price.

I shot this on a breezy night at the dam with pretty good seeing (3-4/5) using the LPI in the LX200 with the TeleVue 2x barlows. I compared the Meade LPI side-by-side with the NexImage, and for lunar imaging the image differences are too close to call. The LPI does have a different pixel size, so it has less apparent magnification.

---

I finally captured the "C" Ring around Saturn, aka the Crepe Ring. It's a pretty low contrast feature, so I turned the gain up on the camera much higher than I had been. The down side is that the image is noisier than usual, but that's OK.

Truth is, I was pretty disappointed when I was shooting this since the capture was so noisy. I was sure that the whole thing was going to be sucky, so now I'm extra pleased.

NexImage/LX200/TV 2x barlows. 600/1000 stacked in KIS, final processing in Photoshop.

Twenty Years Ago

And sixty pounds lighter.


This must have been the summer after my freshman year--1984. Clint's old boat on Lake Conroe. David took the picture.


David took this one too. Spring semester 1985, sophomore year. I was living on campus at J324 Prather Hall, and my phone number was 495-DUMB, but I don't remember my roommate's name that semester. (Marc?) I do remember he kept sweat-soaked hockey gear in the closet and was a cheapskate moocher. Anyway, I must have had a really repulsive personality, because if I couldn't get laid with body ...

Pants on Fire

It's not my fault that politics is so interesting these days; CNN keeps lobbing up these softballs, and I'm compelled to swing at them.

"He lied so the plot could proceed unimpeded," Robert Spencer said in his opening statement. "He lied, and 3,000 people died."

Is Spencer referring to A: Admitted al Qaeda member Zacarias Moussaoui, or B: George W. Bush?

Not Too Shabby

CSC said 3/5, so I went for it. Dropped the frame rate on the NexImage from "best" to 5 with interesting results--the image is actually noisier. I took a minute to tweak collimation beforehand too, and it may have helped. If it was out, it was a very close, as I just barely touched it.

Will the Real Patriot Please Stand Up?

OK, one more political post. I thought it was ironic that this moron said this while discussing renewing the "Patriot" act:

"Civil liberties do not mean much when you are dead," Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Kentucky, told the Senate.

Looks like we've come a long way from "Give me liberty, or give me death."