amateur astronomy – Page 13

All Dogs Go To Heaven or Is That Heavenly Dogs?

I rode the astronomical roller coaster yesterday. I started Wednesday with an e-mail from Celestron warning me of a week delay in shipping my new finderscope. Since the forecast for the rest of the week looked thunderous, I shrugged my shoulders and moved on. Later, in the afternoon, I received the first of many calls from my father, reporting he had received the ‘new’ ETX-90 base motor drive he won on eBay last week. He hooked up the optics from the other ETX-90, trained the motors per the manual, and happily reported smooth, quiet operation. He trained the telescope on the Moon later in the afternoon to study the tracking capabilities of the drives.

Astronomical Society of Kansas City — ASKC

I found one of my expected shipments when I arrived home from work. I ordered the Meade specific cable and serial adapter for the Autostar from a telescope/optics supplier. I also found a large manila envelope from the Astronomical Society of Kansas City. It included details about my new membership, upcoming meetings, local observation sites and other benefits and learning opportunities. The next general meeting, open to the public, is a week from Saturday (April 23rd at 7:00 pm), held in room 111 of Royal Hall on the campus of UMKC, about a block west of 52nd Street and Rockhill Road. A talk on Solar Astronomy entitled “Solar Observing Basics,” will be presented by Neta Apple.

My husband and I ate a quick easy supper of frozen pizza (yeah, so healthy, and we forgot to start off with a salad!). The band started arriving, so I settled down in the great room to catchup on three days worth of missed Jeopardy! episodes. Monday’s game, first round, included a tricky River City category that stung one contestant several times, since the first four of the five answers were ‘What is the Rhine?” Other fun categories were Homer (Simpson)’s Odyssey, Ends in “SS” and Measure This! which included the clue “Contrary to its name, this signature cowboy accessory would actually hold about 96 ounces.” Monday’s Double Jeopardy! round had some great categories, some of which I cleaned up on, including “EU” first, Blue Literature, Amendment Highlights and Ancient Egypt. Final Jeopardy! round: Goegraphic Adjectives stumped me but all three contestants answered correctly. Tuesday’s game had some tough first round clues in A Capital Idea? and the Autobahn Society. Double Jeopardy! Round fun categories included Fictional Movie Bands and Men in Pink. Final Jeopardy! Round: Baseball & The Presidency again stumped me and one contestant.

Midway through Wednesday’s game, I received my second call from my father, crooning about the moon. I knew I had some work to finish remotely last night and some more DVR cleaning to accomplish, and I thought the forecast for last night included increasing cloud cover, so I declined his invitation to come join him in lunar observation. Even though I had paused the replay of Jeopardy!, I didn’t really pay much attention to the first round, besides the categories Thinking Green and Virgin Berths. I paid more attention to Double Jeopardy! round including the fun category Lost Texts from Ben Franklin, Picture “D”is and You’re So Colorful. Yet another difficult Final Jeopardy! Round category: Nobel Peace Prize Winners, where all three contestants and myself could not guess the correct two Prime Ministers.

The band took a break from rehearsing and I decide to forgo working remotely. I changed clothes, hopped in the car and phoned my dad. I arrived at his house around half past eight o’clock, with a sky still showing after sunset glow and the moon diffused by some scattered thin clouds. I had brought the box with my cable, the USB/Serial converter cable, and a couple of Astronomy books with me: a small throw-it-in-your-purse Field Guide and a large lift-with-your-legs-not-your-back full-color Backyard Astronomer’s Guide, which I hadn’t even cracked open yet since I checked it out from the library a few days ago.

Rather than traipsing through his house, which appeared to have many bright lights on in the living room, dining room and perhaps the kitchen, I slipped through the east side gate and made my way cautiously past the thorny rose bushes to his backyard. Even though last week was the ‘official’ Global Lunar Week, we gazed at the moon, watching the clouds pass quickly in front of it’s bright surface, still giving us ample detail to review. I noted the quietness and ease of movement in the motors and looked forward to attempting an actual alignment, if the clouds cooperated. Eventually, the northern celestial hemisphere cleared enough for us to dimly spy Polaris (the clouds, the streetlights and the US Penitentiary conspire to enhance the glow north of my father’s house). Once we could see Polaris, we adjusted our polar mounting and attempted an alignment (as best we could since Arcturus was obscured by thin clouds and trees to the northeast and Capella was the only star visible in it’s constellation, making it difficult to determine if in fact, it was Capella).

To test the alignment, we told the Autostar to “goto” or find Sirius, colloquially known as the ‘Dog Star’, the brightest star in the night sky in the constellation Canis Major, and a near neighbor to our solar system at a distance of only 2.6 parsecs (or 8.6 light years). Considering we were unable to confirm the actual alignment through Arcturus or Capella, the Autostar still managed to get Sirius in the viewfinder scope field of view, allowing us to fine-tune and center Sirius in the eyepiece of the telescope. We had difficulty finding Orion, not usually a problem since Sirius and Orion’s belt ‘line up’ in the night sky. Dad finally spotted Orion’s belt, among the trees to the west and partly obscured by the clouds. So, continuing our alignment test tour, we selected Betelgeuse as our next stop from the Autostar. Again, the viewfinder held the image of the star, but not quite in the eyepiece. We centered and synced again.

The only other star visible to us, thanks to the moon’s continued brilliance, was the last point of the Winter Triangle, Procyon in the Canis Minor constellation. Yes, in honor of my two Rottweilers, Roxy and Apollo, we spent some time in both the ‘greater dog’ constellation Canis Major and the ‘smaller dog’ of Canis Minor. While we were in this section of the sky, I pulled out the Field Guide to see if there was anything worth hunting to test the telescope and Autostar alignment further. Using the red flashlight, I found the appropriate star atlas and read the accompanying paragraph of local attractions. The Beehive Cluster, also known as Praesepe (and so listed in the Autostar, but we used it’s Messier objects number (M44) in the menu system). This cluster, in the constellation Cancer, can be viewed under dark skies with a low power telescope or even binoculars. However, the Moon’s brightness and the hazy thin clouds were conspiring to grey-out everything in the area, except lone Procyon.

By this time, Saturn had risen high enough in the east-southeast, and the clouds had receded, for us to observe it. Again, the Autostar successfully re-oriented on the ringed gas giant and we spent quite a while and several eyepieces basking in the glory of it’s rings. Using the 9mm eyepiece, I was able to see the shadow of the rings upon the surface of Saturn and the gap between Saturn and it’s rings (but not the gaps between the rings). A large tree limb interfered for ten or fifteen minutes with our further observation, during which I never really did find Titan. In checking Sky & Telescope‘s web applet for Saturn’s Moons this morning, and subtracting about twelve hours, Titan may have been behind Saturn or it’s rings for me to find it in my telescope.

We returned triumphantly to the lunar landscape, glowing gloriously almost directly overhead by this time (sometime after ten o’clock or even half-past ten). I again used the Field Guide to locate a map of the moon so we could identify some of the craters near or on the terminator. We gravitated towards the craters around Mare Imbrium, spotting Plato (the dark ‘spot’ in the upper right-hand portion of the picture), Archimedes, Artistillius, Autolycus, Copernicus and Kepler (perhaps … not completely sure and it’s not strictly near Mare Imbrium). As the clouds were closing in on the moon, Dad and I started tearing down the telescope and relocating all the equipment, lenses and books inside and I finally headed home for a mere six hours of sleep, dreaming about rings, impact craters and distant binary stars.

Second Saturday Saturn

Despite a pre-weekend forecast for thunderstorms, Saturday stubbornly stayed humid (to the point of Midwestern Mugginess), windy (gotta love that Gulf air from the south) and sunny (well, more hazy than clear, but not really overcast). After walking Apollo shortly after sunrise, I resolved to remain indoors and further test my new central air conditioner. I wiled away the day with housework, reading and movies (three of them, or was it four?).

I finished watching Centurion via Netflix streaming (aka Watch Instantly) around nine o’clock. I relinquished the remote to my husband so he could watch either UFC or F1 and headed north to my Dad’s house for some moon and Saturn observing.

I left the Meade ETX-90 with him last week to see if it needed a tune-up for it’s drive mechanism. I found some helpful websites and he did crack open the case to confirm everything looked in good shape (nothing obviously broken or breaking). So, tonight’s experiment involved attempting an accurate polar (or equatorial) mounting of the ETX on the field tripod. Before the sun set, he had leveled and oriented the telescope per the instructions for the telescope, tripod and Autostar computer controller.

I arrived to a darker sky with less haze than I observed last week. The moon had about a third of a crescent. Dad had the telescope tracking the moon (for several minutes) so I enjoyed reviewing the craters visible along the terminator. Absolutely stunning! I really should have grabbed the digital camera out of my car and snapped a few photos.

Somehow, we disrupted the Autostar and lost the date/time and tracking as we fumbled in the dark. We spent some time realigning the telescope using the Easy align feature of the Autostar, first confirming and centering the telescope in the ‘home’ position with Polaris visible through the eyepiece. Unfortunately, the stock viewfinder that came with the ETX-90 is unusable in the polar mount ‘home’ position because the telescope is 90 degrees to the base. You can’t get your head between the end of the telescope and the top of the drive mechanism! I have a remedy for this coming soon. On Friday I ordered a red dot finderscope from Celestron that I hope will eliminate this problem.

The first star on the alignment procedure was Arcturus (in the constellation Bootes), easily found in the northeastern-eastern sky by following the arc of the Big Dipper, and the brightest star in the northern hemisphere and fourth brightest star in the night sky (only Sirius appeared brighter last night in the southeastern night sky). The second stop on the alignment tour asked for Capella. I used the Field Guide to the Stars and Planets that I checked out from the Kansas City Public Library last week for a star chart containing that star. I learned that Capella is one of the brighter stars in the constellation Auriga (and later at home I learned Capella is also the sixth brightest star in the night sky and third brightest in the northern celestial hemisphere.

Even though Capella is bright, with the moon in the same region of the sky, with increasing haziness and wind, I could only see with my naked eye one other star in Auriga — the beta star in that constellation. I hesitantly told dad, who was steering the telescope with the Autostar and the viewfinder, that the right-most bright star above the moon was probably Capella. He centered it and we were ‘aligned’ again. Then we told the Autostar to ‘go to’ Saturn. The ETX got close, or close enough for us to find it through the light pollution (courtesy of the southeast sky and Leavenworth, Lansing and Kansas City), the increasing haziness and the tree limbs of the tall trees along the eastern edge of dad’s property.

We observed Saturn for fifteen or twenty minutes, trying various eyepieces and barlows. I had forgotten to check before leaving my laptop the location of Titan in relation to Saturn so I can’t confirm or deny whether I actually saw the moon Titan. What amazed me about this observation period was the ability to continue to observe Saturn through the telescope, even through tree limbs and clouds! I often couldn’t find Saturn with my naked eye, yet the telescope tracked it nearly flawlessly (so long as I didn’t use too high a magnification eyepiece).

We packed up the telescope once we could no longer see any stars with our eyes. Even the moon was shrouded in haze and thin clouds.

Once I returned home, I re-researched polar mounting the ETX on the field tripod. My dad had read and thought the latitude adjust on the tripod meant you had to subtract your current latitude from 90 degrees. So, instead of setting the adjustment equal to our latitude (of 39 degrees), we tried setting it to 51 degrees. I did notice that when the telescope attempted to find Arcturus, it was pointed northeast but down below Arcturus by quite a bit. So, I re-read the field tripod’s user manual (via PDF from Meade’s web site) when I got home and confirmed that you set the tripod to your actual latitude, no math necessary. We’ll just have to try it again later. We also plan to re-train the drives in the ETX-90 per instructions in the Autostar manual.

Moon Over My Meade

Just before dusk last night, I walked Roxy (my ‘ditsy’ Rottweiler). I hoped to catch a glimpse of the crescent moon, since the new moon occurred just two days before on Sunday afternoon. I had missed the first crescent on Monday night, mostly because of a large hill and trees to the west of my home. When Roxy and I left the house, the sky had few clouds (just a few in the west) and a slight haze due to the rising humidity this time of year. The clouds made a pretty sunset, but nothing spectacular. Since I’d called my dad the previous evening during dusk, he returned the favor last night while I walked. Neither one of us had spotted the crescent moon.

Just as I approached within a block of my house, I happened to look up quite a bit higher in the western sky than I had been searching, mostly to track a high-flying commercial jet airliner leaving a sunset-enhanced vapor trail. I watched it spear through the faint crescent moon. I called my dad to let him know I had found the moon, but he had just climbed over a fence chasing an errant piece of firewood, so our conversation ended abruptly. Once he retrieved his delinquent wood, he called me back and we both exclaimed at how high the moon was in the western sky (much higher than we anticipated in relation to the sun and only two days since the new moon).

Once I got home, I moved my Meade ETX-90 on it’s field tripod from the master bedroom (where I’d last used it Monday evening in a vain attempt to find the crescent moon from my west-facing second story window) to the backyard. I located a spot with no tall trees to the west and oriented the telescope to peer through the various electrical lines also crossing my westward sky view. I brought only one eyepiece (the 26mm) since the moon is quite a large object and I only need to use that eyepiece as a viewfinder for the digital camera. I attached the adapter ring for the camera and then carefully attached the Pentax K100D to the back of the telescope. This causes stress and a constant downward pull declination gears. I did not plan to use any of the motorized sidereal tracking or other features of the Autostar computer controller. The small finder scope is difficult to use once the camera is attached since your head needs to be where the camera body is. Eventually, I found the crescent moon and took a few snapshots.

I waited about an hour before moving the telescope to the east side of the house in an attempt to view Saturn. Sadly, the haze that plague me earlier while photographing the moon had accumulated into a substantial cloud cover, preventing an unimpeded view of the ringed gas giant.

This morning, I went searching (again) for tips on repairing or tuning up the ETX 90 telescope. I found this helpful article by Jordan Blessing complete with full color photos for tuning up the telescope. Another helpful link, also found at Weasner’s ETX Tech Tips page, advertised a supercharge tune-up (and repair) service offered by the Arkansas Sky Observatory. Lastly, I found a nice classified ads site called Cloudy Nights that had several ETX items posted. I also need to buy at a minimum a half dozen astronomy research and reference books, the first one of which will probably be Sky & Telescope‘s Pocket Sky Atlas.

I Spy Saturn

I unpacked my telescope this evening and re-read the instructions for polar mounting it to my tripod. Tonight I anticipated the first clear skies in weeks and Saturn made it’s yearly debut in opposition to the Sun. Basically, the Earth is between the Sun and Saturn and for the first time in a couple of years, Saturn’s rings are not ‘on edge’ to us.

Once I re-familiarized myself with my telescope, I took it out front of my house (east side) and used the tips in the article ‘Give me five minutes, and I’ll give you Saturn in April 2011’ to quickly locate Saturn in the eastern sky. Using the arc of the Big Dipper’s handle, I found the bright star Arcturus. Then, I drew an imaginary line (from left to right) from Arcturus to Spica. Almost directly above Spica, was a bright object which I guessed was Saturn.

Even though that section of the sky has the most light pollution (because Lansing, Kansas is 25 miles northwest of the Kansas City, Missouri metropolitan area and I’m also about ten miles west of KCI airport) and a few wispy clouds remained, I easily found Saturn. Terry came out and took a look for a few minutes.

Since I polar mounted my telescope, I decided to try again to use the Autostar tracking device to align, find and track Saturn. The gears still slip and have slack in them, but I don’t have any alternatives, since a call to Meade a couple of weeks ago proved disappointing. Contrary to what I was told last fall, Meade will no longer repair the model I own. They will, of course, sell me a refurbished one for $400.

Anyway, I was too close to the house to do a proper alignment on two stars, but when I told the Autostar to find Saturn, it did get within five or ten degrees of it. Once I got in the neighborhood, I fine-tuned and center Saturn in the eyepiece and set the telescope to autotrack while I had fun observing the rings of Saturn and one of it’s moons (Titan I think). I used a variety of eyepieces, down to a 7mm.

I hope it stays clear the rest of the weekend so I can see the slimmest crescent moon yet (tomorrow morning), Venus and maybe even Mercury (something I’ve yet to see). And of course, Saturn.

I also need to remember to mail off my membership application to the Astronomical Society of Kansas City. Then I can foray down south of Kansas City and use a larger telescope at the Powell Observatory.

Keep looking up!

What Do Blackbear, Hunger, Snow and Wind Have in Common?

According to today’s post at Earthsky, the second full moon of the year, which usually falls in February, can be referred to as the Snow Moon, the Wind Moon, the Blackbear Moon or the Hunger Moon.

I took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather today (74 degrees), I setup the telescope and attached the Pentax K100D to it for a couple of full moon snapshots:

I also took a quick look at the brightest star in the sky … Sirius (no photos yet, still need to have the tracking gears repaired on the Meade).

Pumpkin Pies and Moon Pies

I ran to the grocery store after work this evening to pickup supplies for pumpkin pie baking. Finding a parking spot proved challenging as everyone else must have had the same idea I did. I managed to get in and out in less than thirty minutes.

Once home, I scrounged around for the church cookbook where my mom’s pumpkin pie recipe languishes most of the year. I only make it twice a year, for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

2 cans (15 oz.) pumpkin
1.5 cups dark brown sugar
3/4 cup egg whites
1 cup half & half
2 T melted butter
2 T molasses
3-4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 pie crusts (9 inch deep dish)

I combined all the ingredients in my mixer and stirred on the lowest setting. I preheated my oven to 425 degrees. I used a large cookie sheet to hold my two pie crusts (I used frozen ready-made crusts as I didn’t have time or energy to mess with making them from scratch). I poured half of the pumpkin pie filling into each shell. I put the sheet with the two pies in the oven for fifteen minutes, then reduced the temperature to 350 degrees and baked for another 45 minutes.

While the pies were baking, I decided to drive across the river (almost due east from my home in Lansing) to Bed, Bath & Beyond to purchase a couple of pie carriers so I could transport the pies to Texas on Wednesday. I took K5 for the first leg of the trip and the nearly full moon shone through the leafless trees and reflected off the railroad tracks.

Once I returned home, with such a clear sky and low humidity, I got the telescope out and attached the digital camera to take a few photos of the ‘blue moon’ (one day late). After taking a half dozen shots of the very bright moon, I removed the digital camera and repositioned the telescope to view Jupiter. I used various eye pieces and saw the stripes of Jupiter and four of its moons (all to the left of the gas giant at this time – around 8:00 pm Central Mon 22 Nov 2010). Even though the evening was a bit chilly, I’m glad I had another chance to dodge the recent cloud cover and spy on the moon and Jupiter again before winter weather arrives.

Sourdough Saturday Ends With Jumping Jupiter and Magnificent Moon

I woke up five minutes before my five o’clock alarm this morning. Not unusual, except for it being a Saturday. But I needed to hit the ground running if I was going to get all the bread baked today.

First thing, I pulled the sourdough crock out of the refrigerator to get it warmed up to room temperature. Second, I quickly mixed up my favorite Honey Wheat bread recipe. While waiting for the bread machine to mix, knead and rise that recipe (elapsed time ninety minutes), I started recording to DVD from the DVR the Belgian Grand Prix (since I’m five GPs behind and only three left for the 2010 season) . I managed to read a few chapters of Cryoburn concurrently.

I shaped the Honey Wheat dough into a loaf and set it to rise for anther forty-five minutes. I took a short break to visit with friends for brunch at Santa Fe Depot. Probably a good choice since the new IHOP in Lansing was overflowing at ten o’clock. After a great visit, I rushed to the Leavenworth Post Office to mail off eight mooched books to various states in the lower forty-eight. I also stopped at the Book Exchange in an attempt to trade some hardcover science fiction novels, but she declined my offerings stating they were currently overstocked with hardcovers.

I returned home, completed my BookMooch and BookCrossing data updates and posted three of the hardcovers to my BookMooch inventory, one of which has already been mooched.

Now the sourdough starter was ready, all bubbly and soury. I modified my Rustic Sourdough bread recipe to work in a bread machine on the dough cycle. My modifications included the following:

1 cup “fed” sourdough starter
1 cup lukewarm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 cups King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour
2 teaspoons instant yeast

This reduces the original recipe to a single loaf variation and rather than shaping a traditional round or oval loaf, I used a regular bread pan and scored it like you would a split top loaf.

After I got the Rustic Sourdough into the bread machine, I immediately started the Rosemary Sourdough recipe in the Kitchenaid stand mixer. This recipe should not be over mixed nor kneaded, so it’s a very sticky mess when you scrape it into a glass bowl (generously coated with cooking spray) and covered with clear plastic wrap. Let rise for ninety minutes or more until doubled in size.

The Sourdoughs kept me busy all afternoon. I was able to start another, final loaf before three o’clock, which was one of my family’s favorites: Honey Wheat Black Bread. I shaped it into a braid and waited for it to rise.

With the last loaf still cooling on the rack, I rushed down to Bonner Springs to slip into the KC Ren Fest just before it closed. I have a collection of mugs, steins and goblets going back to 1988. The person at the Will Call window was kind enough to let me into the festival for a few minutes to buy a mug and a goblet. Pickings were slim (this being the last weekend of the festival), but I found a goblet and a stein I liked and quickly returned home.

I was surprised to see my dad’s car parked in the driveway as I thought I had told him to call me if he was going to stop by to partake in some star gazing this evening. Apparently, he arrived at the house just minutes after I left for Bonner Springs.

We waited for the sun to set and started setting up the the telescope in the great room in a polar mount orientation. We moved the equipment out front to the driveway, since Jupiter is not visible from my backyard until around ten o’clock. We determined the sidereal tracking in polar mount worked well and kept Jupiter and it’s three visible moons centered for an hour or so. Feeling confident, we attached the Pentax K100D to attempt a better photo shoot of Jupiter, but quickly realized the weight of the camera was too much for the motors of the telescope. We removed the camera and went back to viewing Jupiter with various eye pieces and barlowes of varying magnifications.

Just before dad was leaving and as we were contemplating putting the equipment back in the great room, the moon (more than half full now) peaked out from behind the pin oak in my side yard (which also shields the driveway from the annoying streetlight planted next to the stop sign in my side yard at the corner of Bambi Court and Fawn Valley. We reoriented the telescope to the moon and began viewing it with various eye pieces. We also tried the moon filter, which helped tone down the incredible brightness funneled through the telescope into our eyes.

After a few minutes of moon gazing, we packed up the equipment and returned it to the great room. We said our good nights and I’m grateful to be off my feet finally. My knees have had enough today.

Sunday will be easier since I only need to make one more loaf (possibly two) and then figure out how to transport six loaves to work via the vanpool without smushing any of them.

Friday Night at the Empty Nest

I stopped by Dillons on the way home for some fresh rosemary and pizza fixings. I found the latter, but not the former, so had to buy rosemay in a spice jar. Sigh. I still made it home by 5:30 or so.

Terry started working on a pizza and I started working on bread production. I set the sourdough starter out to warm up to room temperature. Then I reviewed my White Sandwich Bread recipe, setting out a stick of butter to also warm up to room temperature. I got all the ingredients into the bread machine (dough cycle) before six o’clock. Since it takes about three hours from start to finish, I could be done by nine o’clock.

The pizza turned out wonderful and we decided to watch a couple of new episodes of Mythbusters – ‘Hair of the Dog’ and featuring the Stormchasers and surviving tornado-like winds in a vehicle or, if you’re Jamie Hyneman, an aerodynamic tent he engineered, constructed and tested in winds up to 180 mph. I should check the Patent Office to see if he filed an application on that idea.

During the second episode of Mythbusters, I setup the telescope with the camera attached because the early evening was perfect for viewing the moon – clear and no wind. I took several photos of the moon using various settings on the camera but I’m not sure the results were noticably different. Click here to see for yourself.

I removed the camera from the telescpe and tried nearly all the eyepiece lenses in my case, down to a 4 mm one focused on the terminus on the moon. Outstanding clarity and magnification. On Jupiter, I got down to a 9 mm, but without putting the telescope in sidereal tracking mode, the image of Jupiter only stayed ‘on screen’ for a couple of seconds.

I completely forgot about my rising bread loaf so I got behind schedule by about 30-45 minutes; even so, the bread came out of the over looking and smelling wonderful. I brought the telescope back in for the night and headed up to bed.

I woke back up at eleven o’clock because I’d forgotten to start a process at work that I wanted to run over the weekend. I got that going and then cracked open a newly released book I pre-ordered from Barnes & Noble in late September: Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold (a long awaited installment in the Vorkosigan Saga). I got to page seven before I fell asleep. It’s very good, but I was very tired.

If Only I Had a Retractable Roof Over My Bedroom

I couldn’t sleep. Not surprisingly, insomnia occurs more frequently as I age. Sometimes, an external force interferes with my snoozing, but I refuse to point fingers.

Laying in bed, staring at the vaulted ceiling in my bedroom, I wished I could wave a hand and temporarily retract the roof. Then I’d be mostly above the treeline and able to setup the telescope for more comfortable viewing.

Sighing, I slipped on my clothes at 3:30 a.m. and retreated downstairs to the vaulted great room, grabbed the telescope I left mounted to the tripod there and took it outside. I quickly realigned it roughly on Polaris and waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I surveyed the northern sky, quickly found Cassiopeia and Perseus, but the light pollution from the Lansing Correctional Facility and the tall trees in my northern neighbor’s yard didn’t help find Comet Hartley 2. I think a field trip to Perry Lake may be in order for this weekend.

Turning to the southeast, I quickly spied Orion directly over my chimney. I aimed the telescope at Orion’s belt and may have seen a monochromatic glimpse of the Orion Nebula in his sword. Both Orion’s belt and sword contain many nebulae, but I need a darker sky to view them properly. I survey Rigel (beta Orion – brightest star in Orion (left foot) and sixth brightest in the night sky); Betelgeuse (alpha Orion – 2nd brightest star in Orion (right shoulder) and 12th brightest in the night sky); and, Bellatrix (aka ‘the Amazon star’ (left shoulder).

If you draw a line through Orion’s belt, it points to two of the brightest stars in the sky: Sirius (aka ‘the Dog star’ – the brightest star bar none and only 8.6 light years away) and Aldebaran (alpha Taurus and the 13th brightest star).

I turned the telescope to the west, where I found Jupiter peaking through the branches of one of my pine trees. Yep, it was still there and still had moons, although one of the four I observed earlier was hidden behind Jupiter.

I forgot my sweater so after about thirty minutes I brought the telescope back in and should probably retreat back to my quiet dark bedroom. Nah … my alarm goes off in two minutes (it’s now 4:58 a.m.)

Good morning!

First Attempt at Amateur Astronomical Telescopic Digital Photography

Waxing Moon — Moon Early Evening 13 Oct 2010

My first photographic effort using the Meade ETX90 and the Pentax K100D (on a two second delay shutter in an attempt to prevent blurring and shaking of the telescope) is above. I chose the moon, because it’s large, bright and easy to focus and doesn’t necessarily need to be tracked. I did not use the Autostar to track and sync the moon while taking both of these photos.

Waxing Moon (1/4 to 1/3 full) — Early Evening 13 Oct 2010 Moon (better focused)

I like the second moon photo (above) the best of the half dozen or so shots I took.

My efforts attempting to focus and track Jupiter did not bear good fruit. Of the handful of photos I took, the one above is the best of the bunch.

That’s all the photographic practice I’ll get this evening. I need to devise a counterweight for the telescope’s tube so the camera doesn’t pull ‘up’ the altitude.