FINALLY...SUMMER and CLEAR skies!

Yes, it has been a LONG time since the weather and my schedule lined up, more the weather than my schedule, though!
So last night I got out under the clearest skies since winter and here are some results!

I broke out my small Bushell scope (see earlier post for a review of it) and captured the thin crescent moon:

First up, some test "wide field" views with a 40mm "pancake" lens on my Canon Rebel t3i:

Here you can see what I have to deal with when looking south from my observatory position: lots of tall pine trees! You can see Antares in the lower center.

Here is Cygnus (The Swan) nearly overhead at midnight, swimming in the Milky Way.

 And just to the north of Cygnus, more of the Milky Way

I know this is a rather mundane shot of the "Big Dipper" otherwise known as Ursa Major (The Big Bear" but it helped me locate M101 galaxy!

 
This is my first attempt at this galaxy and I only stacked about 5 images in Lynkeos, using my old Orange C8 scope with Celestron's focal reducer and prime focus (cropped for this image).
But other objects lured my attention last night as well!

Next up: Mars!
Earth is moving away from Mars now and it is smaller with less detail than it had only a month ago. You can also see that it is no longer round, due to the fact that we are seeing it at an angle now.

Ah, but Saturn was serenely calling for a view!
Saturn was spectacular last night! In a good moment you could just make out Cassini's Division in the the two rings! This image you can also see a faint band on Saturn itself.

But here is what it looks like in color:

But my night wasn't over yet! The Ring Nebula was beautiful, too!

Again, I had the focal reducer on the scope to let in more light and keep the exposure times shorter. I will make this object the subject of greater efforts to get more detail out of it this summer!
Finally, I just had to photograph M13, the great globular star cluster in the constellations Hercules. It was overhead and just a joy to view and photograph!

Wow! God's creation has so much variety and is wondrous to behold!

Stay tuned more more!

Mars a month after oppostion

Well the weather surprisingly was clear last night and the air fairly steady so I was able to capture this image of Mars with my old orange Celestron C8, Canon t2i body mounted in eyepiece projection (9mm) and selected images stacked with Lynkeos.

Here is what CalSky said a telescope like mine should see:

Not too bad for the weather conditions and such! We have had nothing but unuseable weather for the past 2 weeks so it was great to get outside for a session in the observatory.

The air was sweet and the temperature was comfortable, too ! Closed up just after midnight! God is good!

Another photo of April, 2014 Lunar Eclipse

Taken just after totality began and just before the clouds moved in and obstructed the view for the night.

April, 2014 Lunar Eclipse from my observatory!

Jupiter under poor viewing conditions

The weather is starting to clear up but the air is still quite soupy (lots of atmospheric turbulance.)
But I thought I would give it a try anyway last night since Jupiter was right overhead at about 9 pm.
Celestron C8 Classic
Canon T2i
Eyepiece projection right onto the CCD with 28mm eyepiece.
Cropped 620x480 movie mode
Lynkeos software
Stack of 20 images, cropped
Final sharpening with Macbook Preview

Review of the Bushnell NorthStar 78-8890 90mm Catadioptric Telescope

Last weekend I picked up a Bushnell NorthStar 90mm Catadioptric Telescope for a reasonable price of $150 off of craigslist.

I bought this with the idea of a cheap "goto" scope that is small and very portable.

The downside was that, though it is a motored scope, it cannot be used in the equatorial mode.

The upside is that the scope can be removed from the mount and mounted on a tripod via the typical tripod socket and used as a super long telephoto with the addition of a t-adapter. In addition it can accept my 0.5x Focal Reducer 1.25" which both reduces the power and lets in 50% more light. I also have in mind to piggyback this on my Celestron C8 scope as it is reasonably light.

As is, it produced a good image but upon further inspection it was out of collimation
Since the from secondary mirror can't be adjusted I checked out the back cell and found there were three Allen wrench screws that adjusted the back mirror.  I inserted a home made plastic cap with a tiny hole in the center.

By making tiny adjustments I was able to bring it closer to collimation.  But when I inserted the right angle mirror it appeared to be out of alignment by a big amount! What happened?  Upon more inspection I found that the rights angle unit fits too loosely in the rear cell and when secured by the two set screws they pushed the unit out of alignment.

By adding a few small strips of ordinary tape to one side of the unit and spinning the screw housing around 189 degrees it brought it back into collimation!

Now I can take it to a more precise collimation with higher powered eyepieces.

As for the "goto" part of the mount... not so good. Even when I selected and followed the directions (what there were of them would be confusing for an absolute newbie) when I asked it to go to a known planet or star... it missed it by enough that even the low power 25mm eyepiece wasn't even close. If you didn't know where the object really was, you would be lost.

Anyway, the optics are more than acceptable and I look forward to using it as a guiding scope or a quickie scope (I will have to do the pointing) for an "out and in" session.

Here is where you can download the manual for this Bushnell NorthStar 78-8890 90mm Catadioptric Telescope

UPDATE: One nice thing about this scope is that the tube at the back of the scope that holds the eyepiece only needs a T-adapter that is made for one's DSLR camera. Since I have a Canon DSLR all I needed to use the scope as a telephoto was a Canon T-adapter (like this one from Amazon.com).

Crisp 15 degree F morning yields 4 astro beauties!

This morning I captured four astronomical beauties with my small Bushnell NorthStar 1300mm x 100mm 4" Maksutov Cassegrain Telescope (Model 78884). Didn't even turn it on, just attached my Canon Rebel XSi body to it and fired away. Didn't get as sharp a focus as I could have...hey, it was 15 degrees outside at 6 pm here! Give me a break! Plus I had to get back into the house quickly to make breakfast for my wonderful wife!


In crescent phase, Venus was as bright as ever! (Discoloration due to optics not being ultra-inline)

Next to the west was Saturn. I was surprised that I was able to capture it as well as I did with such a small scope!

Then next to the west of Saturn was Mars. Once again I didn't have the best focus but the southern polar cap is hinted at in this photo, anyway.

Finally, I captured the tail end of the "Worm Moon" (given that name by farmers who realized that worms began to become active in their fields with the full moon closest to spring equinox.