Venus,Jupiter and moon conjunction

A Venus,Jupiter and crescent moon conjunction….what a great way to end the first day of December!. It was sunny for a good share of the day but,as luck would have it,clouds began to roll in just as the sun was setting and before the sky had turned completely dark it was overcast.I did manage to get a few images in between clouds and for that I am thankful.About 15 minutes after the image below was shot,it began to rain/sleet . Mother nature has a strange sense of humor!.Earlier in the day at about 1:30pm, I spotted the crescent moon with Venus just to the west.Unfortunately,Jupiter couldn’t be seen at that time.As you could imagine…I was pretty excited!!!. If you haven’t already seen the event yet,just look to the western skies.You won’t be disapointed!!!.

Enjoy!!!!

click on image to enlarge

Venus and Jupiter conjunction

Hello all!. I am still here,although time spent here at my pc is limited.I am pretty well settled in here in VT and enjoying the quiet dark skies whenever possible.The month of November in these parts is typically overcast as the season slowly turns to winter so,any observing is by chance/luck.On the nights that it is clear,I spend as much time observing with the bino’s as possible or just using my eyes.The skies up here are fabulously dark and as I have said before,I am able to see the Double cluster and Andromeda with the naked eye!! :p .One of the other objects that I am amazed at seeing in such dark skies is the constellation Orion.I am used to seeing this crowd pleaser from a light polluted area and even though it’s shape can easily be distinguished,the surrounding stars are not visible.Here in a dark location however,the mighty hunter stands quite majestically among his friends.

One of the early evening treats that we all can enjoy is the sight of Jupiter and Venus as they seem to be going hand in hand into the sunset together.Just look to the western skies and you will notice 2 incredibly bright looking objects.The brightest of the two is Venus at -4 mag and just above is Jupter at a -2 mag.The night of November 30th (tonight!) the two will be seen about 2 degrees from each other making this one of the best conjunctions of the year.Unfortunately for me the sky is to be cloudy with a snow/rain mix….ugh!!!.

Below is a wide field shot that I took with my dslr just after sunset.

and for all the bird watchers out there…….below is a shot of a Blue jay that I also took.These birds are ravenous pigs at the bird feeder!!!!!.

Moving….

No, not my blog!.

This just a note to let everyone know that I will be away from my Pc for a while.I am in the process of moving to be closer to my family in Vermont,which means much darker skies for observing but,also means that it is going to be a while before I can get in touch with my astronomy blog friends.Isn’t it amazing how many personal belongings one can acquire in almost 14 years of living in one place?.Hahahahaha,I found things once thought to have been long gone lurking in the nooks and crannies in the back of my closets.It is kind of fun to find them because,it is like going back in time!.I also found myself asking “why the hell did I save this?” to a lot of things.Which I promptly put into a box thinking,well their must have been a reason.Of course,I do realise that I now have the same items that will soon be shuffled to the back of another closet.Just so that in another 10-20 years as I look in the back of the closet, I will ask once again “why in the hell did I save this?”.I like to call such behavior “The cycle of life for useless crap”.So,wish me luck and I hope to be back soon!.

NGC 869,NGC 884 (The Double Cluster)

One of the other naked eye objects that I took images of is of the Double cluster.As I mentioned in my last post,this cluster was easily seen without optical aide which is one of the objects that I can’t see naked eye, when observing in the middle of town.This is obviously due to the fact that this cluster is located to my north which happens to be directly over the middle of town.So,all I see in that direction are a few brighter stars shrouded by the pinkish glow of street lights.

I had written a post previously about the Double cluster including a image and thought that it looked pretty nice with what I thought at the time included lots of stars.Heh,I decided to compare the two images and to my surprise,the most recent shot has probably 3 times as many stars as the old one.Dark skies dark skies dark skies!!!.That is what it is all about.The difference is truely amazing!!!.

The famous double cluster in Perseus was known in antique times (probably even pre-historically), and first cataloged by the Greek astronomer Hipparcos.
Both clusters are situated in Perseus and are only a few hundred light-years appart, at a distance of over 7000 light years.
At a visual mag of +4.3,NGC 869 is approaching us at 22 km per second.
At a visual mag of +4.4,NGC 884 is also approaching us at a slightly slower 21 km per second.

 

The Andromeda Galaxy

Yes,it finally happened…..I observed from a dark site!!!.

So far this has been the observing/imaging event of the season for me.After a summer full of rain and clouds,we were blessed with some of the clearest skies I have seen in almost a year.

Last week Mike from Mountwashingtonvalleyastronomyinvited me to a incredibly dark site located in the White mountain national forrest for a evening of observing.Words cannot describe the beauty of the heavens that I had the pleasure to experience.Having always observed from a light polluted site,I never truly had the opportunity to see the night sky through my scope.Until this weekend that is.I arrived fashionably late as usual but,still early enough to relax and enjoy a couple adult beverages and get the scope set up.Not being use to the absolute quiet,I was abit disturbed…in a good way!!.The only noise I could hear was the slight rustle of the tree’s from a northerly breeze and the chirps from the native crickets.The temps were warm and the humidity was dropping,which meant that the skies were going to get even cleaner.As the night sky approached,I couldn’t help but,to compare the sky from this site to the night sky that I am used to.The sky in the mountains at 8pm were better than the clearest night at 2am in the city where I observe from and only got better.By 10pm I was in a state of shock as many thousands of stars filled the sky.To put it in another way,I can find the Ring nebula with very little difficulty when I observe from the middle of town.At the dark site I couldn’t find it….heh because,their were so MANY stars filling the eye piece.I didn’t get as much observing in as I wanted due to the fact that I just kept bouncing the scope from one object to another.One of the most amazing sights that I saw was M51.Believe it or not this was the actual first time that I have ever seen it through my scope.Some of you might be thinking huh?….but Andrew….you have pictures to prove that you have seen it…they are even posted on your blog?!.Well,this is true Buuutt,I can’t see M51 from the city so,the images that I have taken are slew to the galaxy and aquire images by the seat of my pants.Yay,I saw it!!!.What a remarkable sight it was too.I would have taken some shots but,as fate would have it,it was setting behind some tree’s  :(  !. So,after the ooh’s and ah’s I slewed the scope to the Sunflower galaxy (which I have seen in with the scope) and again,it was incredibly bright.Ok ok…take a deep breath!.Again,this was yet another object setting behind some tree’s.Can you tell I was bouncing around the sky?. No?.Ok,my next selection were the galaxies M81 and M82.Cover your ears…WOW!!!!!!.These galaxies were so intense looking,I could easily see structure.Why didn’t I try to image them?.I don’t know!.My next stop was the Dumbbell nebula.Once again,I could easily see the whole structure.I tried to image it with the DSI but,for some reason my scope didn’t want to track too well.Well,I know why now.I will save that story for some other time.Did I mention that it was crystal clear?.I was able to see the Double cluster and Andromeda…..without optical aid!!!.Being northerly objects they are usually obscured by the city lights so,seeing them with the naked eye was like visiting old friends that I haven’t seen in a long time.I did manage to get some images but,again my tracking was off a bit so,I didn’t get very long exposures.Below is a shot that I took of Andromeda.I had the ISO set pretty high (because the tracking was off) and I wanted to get as much detail as possible but,ended up getting lots of noise.

Hope you like it?.

       

Sundog

While taking a break from the pain in the butt that I call painting my house.I just happened to look up in the direction of the sun.Of course,not looking directly at it,I noticed a sundog taking shape right before my eyes.I have seen many of these atmospheric phenoms but,almost never seem to have the DSLR handy.This time however,I did!.Since I am painting house/window trim on my second floor apartment.The DSLR just happened to be at arms reach through a open window which I quickly grabbed.Below is one of the shots that I took.

Powerful storms rock the Northeast

Last night saw some rather strong thunderstorms here in NewHampshire.After several hot humid days with temps in the high 90’s and dew points in the 70’s,a strong cold front plowed through the state like a bull in a china shop.Many townships to the north lost power due to lightning strikes and high winds.

Here in Laconia,the weather was a bit less intense but,mother nature still put on quite a light show.At one point the flashes of lightning were so numerous it reminded me of strobe light at a rock concert.As the storm was approaching,the wind began to kickup sand from a nearby construction site pelting my eyes and mouth with grit.This small scale sandstorm was so bad that even though I was only standing about 40 yards from the house,I temporarily lost sight of my safe refuge.Then the rains came which was a welcomed feel after a hot and muggy night,dropping the temps from the upper 80’s to the lower 70’s in about 20 minutes time.

As you will see in my photo albums,one of my favorite summer time activities is to take pictures of lightning.While it is loads of fun it can also be frustrating especially when trying to gauge where the next series of lightning bolts will appear.I managed to be pointing the camera in one area of the sky, as vivid bolts flashed in other areas.This happened quite a few times but,I still managed to get a few decent shots.Unfortunately,these decent shots don’t compare with some of the bolts that I missed out on.Below is one of my so called “decent” shots that I took from last night.Luckily,this is just the start of the summer storm season and I hope to be taking much nicer shots?!.

Hypertune complete….?!

Well,I performed the hypertune on my scope this weekend and it proved….well…interesting to say the least.I arrived at Michael’s house and home of “Mount Washington Valley Astronomy,a few hours later than I said I would be.Heh,I fell asleep at my home .As the evening meal was being prepared (Michael proved himself as being one heck of a good cook),we watched the Hypertune DVD trying to digest as much understanding as to the inner workings of the LXD75 mount as possible.

TIME 9PM:No sooner had the DVD ended,that we headed out to the workshop and proceeded to dismantle our LXD75 mounts.Almost from the beginning,I knew that we were in for a struggle.Not being very mechanically inclined,I was the one doing the struggling and in the back of my mind figured that I would have parts left over after the hypertune!.Both mounts proved to be quite tough to disassemble and it wasn’t long into the tear down that we realised that our mounts were in fact quite different compared to what we were expecting in relation to the DVD.After a couple hours of carefully dis assembly,we decided to start fresh the next morning.

After breakfast on Sunday morning,we began the task of cleaning the nasty factory grease off of the gears,spacers,bearings and all the other places that this sticky grease resided.The next step in the hypertune process was the time consuming sanding and polishing of the gears.This proved to be  very satisfying and interesting to see,as the gears go from a dull finish to  almost a mirror finish.Soon however,my lack of mechanical ability began to show it’s head.Instead of keeping the spacers and the other partstogether for each drive separate.I just willy nilly placed all of the parts together in the cleaning tray,not giving any thought to any possible problems that this would create.To give a idea of what I am talking about,each drive has a minimum of 5 spacers of various sizes.These spacers have to be assembled in the order that they were removed!!! .Not including the other small threaded pieces!.To add insult to injury,the set screws for these mounts proved to be trouble as some were nearly impossible to remove.Now began the assembly of the freshly polished and greased mount and the increase of my frustration.As tough as the tear down was,it didn’tcompare to the problems that I had putting it back together.Good thing I didn’t have to put humpty dumpty back together again.I would have gotten frustrated and turned him into breakfast!!.During my battle of trying to remember which spacer went where and in what order,Michael in the mean time was calmly and efficiently putting his LXD75 mount back together without a hitch.My scope however,had suddenly turned into a stubborn mule and it seemed to fight me every step of the way to completion.The biggest battle was inserting some copper shims that keeps the DEC housing from binding up against the rest of the mount.Without the shims the scope would be able to move on it’s DEC axis.Finally,after creating more shims from thin washers,we were able to tightly bolt the 2 housings together without binding.The next thing was adjusting the worm gears and installing the motors….no problems!!.

The time had finally come to test the mount for smoothness.I placed the mount on the tripod and fired the scope up.The RA gear moved  much better than before and this gave me a boost in spirit.The DEC motor seemed to work a bit smoother but,sounded much louder than before.While testing the motors,I forgot to do one important thing.I forgot to add the counter weights and without thinking,I had slewed the scope to a point where gravity took over and the OTA flopped over and made contact with a tripod leg.It seemingly didn’t hit very hard (or so I had thought at the time) as Michael and I had tried to stop it before it made contact.With that said,I decided it was time to head for home and said my thanks and goodbye.I awoke very early yesterday morning and felt unsure of the resulting hypertuneand sound of the DEC motor so,I removed the motor and tweaked the worm gear again.This time the gear sounded much improved and ran even smoother than before.All happiness fire that I had at that point was quickly extinguished when I looked down the long axis of the OTA and saw a dent near the primary mirror.OMG,the OTA did hit and had apparently hit hard as the dent is about 3″long and about 1/32-1/8th deep.Fearing the worst,I quickly inserted a laser collimator to see how badly the mirror was out of whack and wouldn’t you know it….the batteries were dead.So,I drilled a hole into the supplied eye piece cover and checked the mirror that way.It didn’t look too bad but,I wanted to be sure it wasn’t messed up so I went to Radio shack for new batteries.I inserted the new cells into the laser and checked.Yay!.The laser light was dead center and the OTA just looks… well… used!.

In the mean while,I contacted Richard of Scopetrader.com (where I bought the hypertune kit from) and presented the above problems to him.I had other issues with the hypertune that I didn’t mention in this post as well.He has offered to tweak and finetune my mount at no charge except shipping to and from his shop.I must say,it is nice to see a company stand behind their product and I highly recommend Scopetrader to anyone that wants to tune up their gear!.I won’t be shipping the mount to him yet though.I want to give the scope a trial run first, to see if it will or won’t perform to what I am expecting.

I will keep everyone updated on the results so,wish me luck!!.

                                               

 

The hypertune kit and encoders have arrived!!

The hypertune kit for my Meade LXD75 arrived this morning via priority snail mail and in the kit are numerous items that can be found at your local hardware store or contractor supply.I sort of expected this at the time of purchase but,felt it best to use the same materials as the professionals at Scope trader would!.One of the first things that I checked for were the complete list of everything that was to be included in the kit for the upgrade,including the separately packaged encoder wheels.I was a bit surprised if not abit disturbed to find the fragile encoder wheels placed inside a computer CD plastic jacket,free to rattle around.Their was no apparent damage which put my mind at ease.A couple items in the kit that can’t be found at a hardware store are;a 9 pin connector cable for downloading the latest autostar updates and a step by step how to DVD that begins with some good R&B music that caused me to turned the surround sound up on my home stereo for good measure !.As EDfrom Flintstone Stargazing pointed out in a recent comment,the recording on the DVD isn’t a ”Hollywood production – but it’s got exactly what you need to know”.I watched the whole video and was a bit intimidated by the mechanical upgrade.I’m not much of a monkey wrench so,that part of the tune up will be have me on my toes.Luckily however,I will be assisted with the hypertune by Michael who will be giving his LXD75 a tuneup as well.The weather is suppose to be rather crappy this weekend so,any thought of giving both scopes a trial run will have to wait.I will be writing a post with pix about the upgrade followed by a vigorous test of the newly upgraded scope so,wish me luck!!!. 

It was a good night to observe

Hey hey hey,Mother nature finally gave me a break!.I actually had clear and calm skies for observing and I took full advantage of it.As most of you know,my observing luck has been anything but good for the past 6 months.It seemed that anytime we did have clear skies,it was either in conflict with my schedule or the clear skies were accompanied by brutal cold ,high winds or both at the same time.Most of all however,it was the record breaking snowfall!.Oh well,that is all water under the bridge now and their is no reason to dwell on the past!.

The only conflict I had the night before last is a busted up shoulder that I have. I am scheduled for a MRI on Friday to figure out what the problem is.To cover their butts,the company I work for have requested that I don’t come in to until I have the MRI. After flipping a coin and asking myself “should I or shouldn’t I?”and knowing that I had the next day off,I pulled the trigger and decided to suck it up and fight the pain!.My thinking was,unlike the constant heavy lifting that my job requires, the only heavy lifting I would have to do is lugging the tripod down one flight of stairs.I set the scope up at 9PM and was ready for observing by 9:45.While waiting for the scope to cool down,I checked the equipment for any potential problems.I also made sure the Meade DSI and LPI were performing correctly with the laptop.I didn’t want to fix any issues with the software in the dark like I did the last time out!.Luckily,both cameras and laptop worked great!!. My original plan was to observe for a few hours before calling it a night.HAHAHAHAHA…how time flies when a big kid is having fun!.The scope performed flawlessly,the sky was clear and the temps were almost perfect for observing/imaging.One of my first targets to image was the moon which I only got a few images because,by the time I got the scope set up,it was beginning to drift behind a building.After the moon had set behind the building,I slewed the scope to globular cluster M13, which I haven’t seen since early last Fall and I had all but forgotten how big and bright it was…..I blame the pain meds!!.While I was imaging M13 with the DSI,I had a visitor.I have had visitors before but,this was of the four legged variety.I’m sitting at my laptop looking at the live image of M13 on the monitor,when suddenly a big raccoon came around the corner of my car ,which was only about 10 feet away!.We both locked eyes and for a split second it had turned into a staring contest.He quickly turned and bolted for the nearest tree line.I don’t know if it is human nature or if it is just me but,I felt the need to give chase?!,(Heh,before you say it,I will save you the trouble and say it for you”Well,that was a shockingly stupid thing to do!”).After chasing the poor fellow up a tree,I sat back down and resumed imaging and managed to get some of the best shots of M13 that I have ever taken.Even if I did forget to take dark frames.Actually,I didn’t forget to take dark frames,I just forgot I had to create them again after uninstalling and reinstalling the software from the last time I tried to use the camera!.My next target was M82 a.k.a the Cigar galaxy.Because the galaxy is located directly over the middle of town,I had to use averted vision to see the faint thin line of the galaxy when looking through the eye piece.I connected the DSI and after a few tense minutes of fiddling with the camera settings and focus,it came into full view.All I can say is WOW!!!!.It showed a lot of detail including the knots of light and dust located near the galaxies center.Once i get the quirks of the DSI down,I will be revisiting this object!.So,on to the next target which was M15.It appeared as the usual faint glow but,again exploded into view when looking at it on the monitor.Most of the stars were nice and sharp with the exception of the stars near the core.

Ok,so now it is getting really late…(or early depending on how you look at it) as Jupiter was slowly coming into view between some tree’s.I half heartedly slewed the scope towards the bright planet in a attempt to get some quick images but,by the time I had the planet on the monitor,it had hidden behind the next set of tree’s.Not wanting to wait for it to reappear,I decided to pack up and go to bed instead.I was really tired but,before I went to bed,I wanted to download the images to my desktop Pc using a USB flashcard.HAHAHAHAHA,no sooner did I get the images downloaded to the desktop and get the desktop shut down for the night I got a telephone call!.It was my work place calling me into work after they told me not to come in!.Even though it was a bad morning to work,it was a good night to observe!.

Note: I have a actual website in the making.Thanks to Michael over at Mount Washington Valley Astronomy for giving me the opportunity of being the owner of the AbovethecloudsII website.The creation of this site is like I said”still under construction” and should be up and running in a few weeks…I hope?!.I will keep people up todate on it’s contsruction.In the mean time,hop on over to Michael’s site and tell him I said Hi!.What are you waiting for???.

Below is the the first image of M13 I have taken this year.