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UlteriorModem 10-24-2015 12:04 PM

Amateur Astronomy?
 
Any amateur astronominers out there?

Me? I have a homebrew 6" push around Dobsonian, and XT8 goto dob, and a pair of brand new 9x63 Binocs.

Been putzing around with AA for a few decades now and still learning something every day :)

Right now I am completing a leveling base for my goto.







Also working on collimating my laser collimator here is a link about what I am doing (no that's not me). The little pvc stand works a treat!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE09_X43UUQ

Anyhow I kind of thought Astronomy and Rockets go together :D

tbzep 10-24-2015 03:41 PM

I have a 10" SCT, but like most of my other hobbies, astronomy is in hibernation right now.

Speaking of that, now that it's getting dark earlier and getting daylight later, a lot of people have been asking me about "that bright star with another star close to it". I have to explain to them about Venus, Jupiter, and Mars lining up, but most of them don't have the eyesight to see that rusty red star running formation with the other two. :p

dlazarus6660 10-24-2015 06:57 PM

(With a southern drawl) Hey what's that big white blob in the nite sky? :rolleyes:

I just watched the ISS go over again tonight. I love to watch it over and over and over....

UlteriorModem 10-24-2015 08:09 PM

That big white disk would be the moon, it'll be gone by the end of the month :)

/// 10-25-2015 10:08 AM

Yep.
And that ultimate money eater.. Astrophotography.
'Hibernation' is a good description. This was my last serious hack:
http://www.astrobin.com/98888/0/

tbzep 10-25-2015 11:54 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by ///
Yep.
And that ultimate money eater.. Astrophotography.
'Hibernation' is a good description. This was my last serious hack:
http://www.astrobin.com/98888/0/

I haven't fooled with astrophotography since playing around with the old Logitech QuickCam webcam modifications. Remember the Yahoo group, QCUIAG?

UlteriorModem 10-25-2015 12:45 PM

Nope never heard of them.

Astrophotography is a challenge unto itself, however it has gotten easier and less expensive with the ccd cameras that just slip into the eyepiece of your scope. Image stacking is the thing now taking like 200 2 second exposures and using software to 'stack' the images culling out the ones with 'noise' and combining them into a single clear image.

Still have to have your tracking dead on though.

aeppel_cpm 10-25-2015 09:42 PM

In high school and college summers, I spent my evenings doing public shows at a little observatory owned by a private school on Michigan's Leelanau Penninsula. On off-nights I did astrophotography - gas hypered 35mm frames in an 8" Schmidt camera using a C-14 as a guide scope. I was patient enough to hand guide 30 minute exposures. Not patient enough to wait for them, so I'd develop them in the downstairs darkroom before heading home. (At 2am on a moped :-).

I remember being totally irritated by looking up after a long exposure to find I had been shooting through aurora.

Good years.

/// 10-26-2015 08:07 AM

Quote:
Originally Posted by aeppel_cpm
... gas hypered 35mm...

I remember being totally irritated by looking up after a long exposure to find I had been shooting through aurora.


Oooo! Techpan or Fuji Velvia/Provia?
I'm guessing if you developed your own it would be techpsn, but there were die-hards that did thier own E6 processing!!

Done the aurora thing too, but was only a 10min exposure! Aurora are _extremely_ rare at my latitude (~35 south) that i thought it was just gross light polution and swung to a new target. Was only much later that I worked out what it was. Wish I had realised on the night and shot Aurora instead :(

aeppel_cpm 10-26-2015 08:45 AM

Oh, then I was a die hard.

I tried the tech pan a few times, but good old Ektachrome was my go to. That way I could get color reversal paper and do my own printing. Just couldn't trust the normal photo labs to get it right. Besides, the Schmidt camera took single frames of 35mm, cut to length and preloaded in a magnetically fastened holder. Those short little clips also confused the shops.

8", f1.2 was really good for deep shots into the Milky Way. I've got a couple nice pics of the North American nebula.

I was doing this in the late 80s, early 90s. Great solar max. We had full sky aurora at 45N fairly regularly.


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