I was getting ready for bed yesterday morning about 1 AM when I realized that sleep is overrated anyway. 🙂

I got set up in the yard by about 2 AM to try some runs with the LPI. It had been in the 50s for a few days now and I thought perhaps the atmosphere would have settled down a bit from Monday… I was wrong. It was still “wobbly” as ever. I managed to glean at least a few shots from the evening and then attached the Canon EOS 300D for the evening’s Moon portrait. After that I pointed at Saturn and took a number of different exposures in order to image both the planet and then to overexpose it in order to grab the large moons. I was successful. Enjoy.

Shots from the LPI:

Lesson learned tonight, take ridiculously long movies with the LPI. Each of the above stacks started off over 300 frames. After aligning and throwing out the blurry/distorted shots, I ended up with only a dozen or so frames each to stack! 🙁 I’m actually considering putting the LPI in the refrigerator for 30 minutes before I go out next time and see if I can’t reduce some of the noise.

Portrait of the Moon with the Canon EOS 300D:

Waxing gibbous 92% illumination

click for larger

Saturn with the Canon EOS 300D:

Animation, over exposed with Starry Night overlay

Lastly, if you haven’t seen this or been following the comments to this post over at Ian Musgrave’s Astroblog, have a look… there’s something kinda neat cooking.

Well folks, almost every night this week I’ve gotten no more than about 4 hours of sleep — and tonight I had the pleasure of sitting at a car dealership for 4 hours buying a new car (which actually IS a pleasure now that it’s over — as it’s my first “new” car in 18 years).

Adieu, adieu… to yieu and yieu and yieu!

As I indicated in the previous post I began the night with the Meade Lunar Planetary Imager (LPI). Here are the results of that effort. None of these stacks really blows me away, and I’d consider maybe 2 of them decent shots (060206_MoonLPI1010 is perhaps my favorite aesthetically speaking). You can see for yourself.

All of these shots are stacks of over 100 — some of the better ones approaching 300. As I went through these (frame by frame) the point was driven home to me just how much my atmosphere sucks. At 10 frames/sec I was still throwing out maybe 15 of 20 frames due to the smearing effects of heat driven turbulence.

The final image at the bottom of this set is an assemblage of 3 images taken around the general location where I took the most shots — major landmarks are labeled.

I was surfing the web this evening about a quarter to nine and I noticed the RSS feed to boyruageek had updated so I clicked over to this post. It awoke me from my glossy-eyed computer-induced lethargy and I realized I had intended (notice I didn’t say “planned”) to take the scope out tonight! So I set up for imaging with the Meade Lunar Planetary Imager (LPI) and took the scope out.

It was a beautiful 55º F and the atmosphere was fairly clear — about as still as it gets for me. I set the scope up in polar mode as it really seems to track better when only moving in one axis. I did a number of runs (which I’ve yet to process) and when I was done I thought to myself “well, while I’ve got it set up…” 🙂

I ran in and grabbed the Canon EOS 300D Digital Rebel and attached it at prime focus. This is the first time I’ve been able to try that camera at prime focus in polar alignment and I must say, I took some of the best shots of the Moon I’ve taken to date. I took about a dozen or so and they were all so comparatively good (for me) that I had a hard time picking out the best one to post. So without further ado…

click for larger

If you like to live dangeriously, here is the full size image 2.1 MB (2048 x 2288).

Then again I said “heck, while I’ve got it set up” I turned to Saturn which by now was nearly overhead. I took about a dozen shots of Saturn at varying exposure times. The last time I had the scope out in manual mode with the 300D, I noticed that in spite of the counterweights I was still getting a little wobble from the shutter motion. I had remembered reading somewhere about what someone called the “hat trick.” Basically he took his hat and covered the end of the scope while he engaged the shutter. After about 5 seconds when the telescope had stabilized he’d pull the hat aside and begin the exposure. Just before closing the shutter he’d block the tube again with his hat. I took 4 shots of Saturn using this method and these are the shots that came out sharp! Here is the best of the lot. You can just make out Titan off to the upper left.

click for larger

That shot was about a 8 second exposure with the tube blocked for the first 5 seconds and the last 1 second — so essentially the planet was imaged for 2 seconds. It was the shortest one I took and I wish I’d gone a little lower, but live and learn.

Upon closer examination of this image I noticed an even fainter smudge in my averted vision just beneath the planet. I confirmed this smudge in the other 3 good shots in order to rule out random noise. After checking with Starry Nightâ„¢ Pro I determined that this was Rhea. I took a screenshot of Saturn and its moon system from Starry Night and superimposed it over an enhanced blowup of my own image in order determine the orientation of the other main satellites. Lo and behold after doing this I discovered I’d also managed to catch Tethys well!

click for larger

This shot was created by blowing up the first posted Saturn image to 400% in Photoshop CS2, bringing up the Levels dialog box, and then using the eyedropper on Titan to set it as my white point. After that all I did was attempt to minimize the noise created by cranking the light levels. Admittedly I processed it more than I had to.

I would not have picked out Tethys without the the Starry Night overlay bringing it to my attention. I love “discoveries!”

(animated GIF)

It really makes one appreciate all the inexpensive, modern tools we have at our disposal in this day and age. It’s simply astounding.

Tomorrow I hope to get a chance to see how tonight’s LPI runs came out. In the mean time, color me excited! It was a GREAT night at the scope for me personally. Thanks Matt, I almost didn’t even go out. I’m off to try and grab a few hours sleep before the kids get me up.

… dreaming of trying to image the Orion Nebula next time. 😉

The weather cooperated nicely this evening as did my Autostar controller (for a nice change) and I was able to get this image of Saturn 4 hours and 30 minutes past opposition.

click for larger

This image is a stack of about 500 frames, pixel doubled and then light level correct in Photoshop CS2 (mainly to make space “black”).

This was the first time since I performed the “Train Drives” procedure on the Autostar that I carefully set up and aligned the scope. I had honestly never been super impressed with the GOTO abilities of the scope but tonight that all fell away. After my imaging runs of Saturn I decided to GOTO some obvious objects in order to see if my drive training had any effect. First I punched in the Orion Nebula… slewing… oh my god, there it is in the (Meade 26mm Plössl) eyepiece with no help from me! A little off-center but I could definitely trust it to an object that was not visible to the naked eye. Then I entered Mars and again, spot on. Pleiades… how pretty. So needless to say, I have a renewed faith in the Autostar and I found that as with most mechanical problems, my inability to use it correctly had indeed been my inability to use it correctly, and not a limitation of my equipment. 🙂

On a side note, as I was moving through these objects it occurred to me that since I got back into astronomy last year, I’d spent so much time and energy concerned with imaging that I’d never really just LOOKED. This struck me the most when viewing the Orion Nebula. I stayed there for about 10 minutes taking it in and occurred to me that this might have been the first time in 20 years that I actually saw it’s light with my own eyes as opposed to an image in a book or on a computer screen.

Oh what I’d been missing…