Bill's Sky

Moon rise over the Sapphire Mountains, 18:16 MST, 26 Jan 2024   Time flies. I hadn't realized how long it had been since I posted last. Hopefully I will not have as long a lapse again! The image above was a quick snap taken with my Samsung A42 5G, just using default settings. We had just returned from running errands and picking up some groceries. I looked over, and the Moon was illuminating that lower layer of clouds from behind. I wanted to get a picture of that, but wasn't quick enough. I did try to be a little "artistic" by using the pine tree in front of our house to frame the shot. If I was being really artistic I would crop the image so that lens reflection lower and was cut out. I was thinking about getting the telescope out, since the temperature was still slightly above freezing, but the sky was 90% clouded over in another thirty minutes. I haven't done any observing since my last entry. The primary reason has been weather. Not many clear nights, and col...

  No observing so far since the last entry, but some notes on process. I have been reading a lot of information in the Cloudy Nights sketching forum and Stargazers Lounge sketching forum . They both have links to some very good resources. One of the resources  mentioned a lot is the book pictured above. I was lucky enough to be gifted that book, along with a set of good drawing pencils, some white graphite pencils, and a pad of black sketching paper. Based on the infomation in the book, I added to that kit by picking up a small set of three different sized blending stumps, a gum eraser, a pink pearl eraser, a Prismacolor white pastel pencil, and a sandpaper stick pencil sharpener. We already have some small hand held sharpeners, and I thought I still had an eraser shield.  Turns out I don't anymore, so I will pick one up next time I get to the office supply store.  In playing around with the black pad and the graphite pencils, I had some uneven results. The graphite...

 I haven't been able to get out and observe since my last "learning experience a couple of weeks ago, but I did some reading and playing around with sketches. There are many people who do their sketches using chalk or white pencil on black paper, and do a fantastic job. They turn out professional looking images that are mind boggling. Just take a look at some of the Sketch of the Month winners on Cloudy Nights and those just posted in the Cloudy Nights Sketching Forum or the Stargazers Lounge Sketching Forum .  You will also find people doing as I do, using pencil on white paper at the eyepiece. One thing I found out is that many sketchers will take a picture of their pencil sketch, then use a program such as Windows Paint to simply invert the colors. This gives the black background with the object or stars in white. My sketches are a long way from being in the same ballpark even, but I applied this step to the ones I have done, and here are the results.They come out looking...

      This was my first chance to get out and observe since October 19. Before going out, I used TLAO and Stellarium to make a tentative observing list. Proposed targets were M30, which is a globular cluster; M52, an open cluster; M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy. There were a few clouds widely scattered, but mostly clear sky. Transparency wasn't great, but most of the sky was workable.  Jupiter was clearly visible when I started setting up, just after sunset. By the time I was all set up Capella and a few other stars were visible. I did an All Sky Align using Capella, Saturn, and Jupiter. This is the first time I have tried mixing planets with a star for alignment and it seemed to work well. I slewed to M30 using the goto function. It was easily in my FOV, but was very faint. I slewed back to Capella, set a cover over most of the scope and a plastic cover over the table with my eyepiece case to protect from dew, and went in for dinner. I left the scope tracking Capel...

  Transparency tonight is not the greatest, but is tolerable for most of the sky. USFS is doing a prescribed burn about 10 miles southwest of us, so there is a pretty good layer of smoke to the south. There is a thinner haze of smoke over the entire valley. The Moon is shining through the smoke. I got set up about 20:00MDT. One thing I have started doing is to take the OTA (optical tube  assembly) off of the mount and carry them out separately. This is much less awkward to carry. It also makes it much easier to level the mount, which is critical for getting good alignment. It seems that starting out with the mount and OTA level, and pointed close to north when starting, helps the alignment process. My first target was M2 , a globular cluster approximately 37,000 light years away in the constellation Aquarius, has a diameter of about 150 light years, and contains over 150,000 stars. I started out using the 32mm eyepiece, for about 63.5x. This also gives the widest view of any o...

Went out about 21:00 MDT and set up on the driveway, just far enough  past the west end of the wood shop to block the floodlights on the side of the truss companies new building. Successfully used Sky Align. Just a quick note about conditions. The temperature was down to about 50F when I started with relatively high humidity. It si getting cool enough at night that many people are lighting their wood stoves in the evening and early morning. In addition the county burn ban was lifted last week, so there have been a lot of people burning slash piles, and USFS controlled burns. This has resulted in a light layer of smoke over the entire valley. My first target, mostly to check alignment and tracking was Saturn. Seeing was about 2 to 2.5/5 ( I am going to start using the scale from "The Backyard Astronomers Guide"). Had several moments of clear seeing, and otherwise minimal blurring with the edge of the planetary disc "dancing" a little. I started with the 25mm eyepiece...

    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...