Bill's Sky

    This bottom image is from my attempt at astrophotography back on August 14. It is one of 50 images taken with our Canon EOS Rebel T7 DSLR mounted piggyback on my Celestron Nexstar 8SE. These were 10 second exposures with a Canon EF75-300 zoom lens. I had it set at 300mm focal length, which gives an F number of  5.6. As I noted at the time that little fuzzy spot just above center is the Andromeda Galaxy, Messier 31 (M31). After taking the images, I attempted to process them using Siril , a free open source astronomical imaging tool. I attempted to follow the steps outlined in the You Tube video by SarahMaths Astro . She does an excellent job of explaining the basic process. However, when I tried to run the processing script, I found out that I had messed up in taking the calibration frames, which caused the processing script to fail.  As the skies got cloudy with some fall weather, I revisited the processing. I looked at the additional pre-made scripts that had b...

  This is just a very short note. I had wanted to try to catch Comet Nishimura ( C/2023/P1). Days prior to this where it might have been more readily visible were cloudy in the morning. I also had my doubts about seeing it because the time when it would clear the Sapphires was getting close to dawn.  I got up at 05:15 on Sept 9 and took out the 12x50 Nikon binoculars. I didn't think I'd have time to set up the telescope before the comet came up. Using the Sky Tonight app on my phone I was able to orient myself to the approximate location where it would come up. Using Venus as a reference point, I was able to locate the comet almost as soon as it came over the mountains. The comet was not visible to the naked eye with the sky starting to lighten. It definitely showed as more than a pinpoint, slightly fuzzy in outline. At time it seemed to have a very faint blue-green tint.  Other nearby stars were very sharp, verifying that the fuzziness wasn't due to being out of focus or...

  Set up to observe Jupiter. The blocks on the stool are to increase it's height while observing at low angles. A head lamp is hanging on the side of the eyepiece case so I can reference "Turn Left At Orion", a reference notebook, and my journal. I was holding my Celestron red light to take the picture.      I wasn't planning on observing tonight because the forecast cloud cover was too much. However, at about 20:30 the sky was almost completely clear, with a few high cirrus far to the west.  Started at 21:30, but had to realign because I accidentally pulled the power jack out of the mount. At 21:45 I was on Saturn again. Was picking bright targets because sky was bright, even though the Moon wasn't up yet.The seeing was similar to last time I observed Saturn. About 22:17 a band of high thin cirrus passed in front of Saturn, causing it to be more unsteady and fuzzy, as though out of focus. At 22:20 the 92% waning moon came up the Sapphires. I took time to go in ...

  The Moon was up, at about 65% of full and 30-40 degrees above the horizon. Had just a few minutes to look at it before it went behind trees to the SW, so I didn't bother to align the scope, just slewed to the Moon and followed it with the hand controller.   Saturn was well up in the sky. so I did a 2 star alignment and then spent over 30 minutes observing. Started with the 25mm eyepiece and then was able to use the 13mm. I had several moments of steady seeing and was able to  make out separation of rings from planet, and a faint color band on the planet.See the sketch from 14 August.   The sky was fairly light from the moon. Light glow from town seemed brighter than usual, I think humidity in the air was magnifying it. I had checked out the Starry Sky kit from the library. Just after midnight I tried the SQM (Sky Quality Meter) and got readings of 20.81, 20.96, and 20.82. This is equivalent to a Bortle 4 sky. The Sqm measures "magnitude per square arcsecond". See...

      This night was my first attempt at using our DSLR (Canon Rebel EOS T7) on the piggyback mount. When mounted, the camera aligns very well in altitude, just had to make a slight adjustment in azimuth. I used a tree top about a mile away as the alignment target. I had to set up within 50 feet of the house. I was using a trial version of Backyard EOS for the camera control and capture software, and it has to maintain a wifi connection to work. Because of where I had to set up, the sky available not blocked by trees was from NNE to SE. The camera is connected to the laptop using a USB cable. The lens on the camera was a Canon EF75-300 zoom. I had it at 300mm focal length, which gives an F number of  5.6.   Given the available sky, and my desire for a fairly bright target, I chose the Andromeda Galaxy, M31. After aligning the scope using 2 star alignment, I visually centered M31 in the eyepiece and observed it visually after the imaging started. Note that ...