Barn Door Bliss

It's been quite a while folks.
I've moved to a great (although bright) city just south of Pittsburgh and have settled into full time dad/homemaker, which is kind of awesome honestly.  I've made tons of great new friends one of whom is a super tech savvy dude who has taken hours of his own time to help my engineering challenged self tune up my near fatally flawed home built Barn Door sky tracking mount. (More info here: Gary Seronik Tracking Mount).  His own blog is here: OnShoulders, so take some time to brows the videos about 3D printers, remote controlled airplanes and helicopters, among many other DIY techie goodness.

First some pictures of the homemade beauty then I'll explain a bit.

We (well, really HE) had to modify the circuitry a tad.  There's now two potentiometers and an attached multimeter.  The two potentiometers (which are beautifully encased with knobs and box 3D printed in my friend's basement) give very fine control over the voltage going to the motor, which is displayed on the multimeter.  As long as we keep the 3V motor running at...you guessed it, 3V it will rotate the large gear at (nearly enough) 1 RPM, which in turn moves the platform in sync with the sky.  We may have a few kinks but I think it is working as well as my construction will allow.  We are thinking of other options for our own design taking from the newer line of tracking mounts (See iOptron SkyTracker).

So, basically, you line up the hinge with Polaris (I use a green laser...watch out for planes), then point the camera at an object, set your intervalometer to take continuous shots, engage the gears, and sit back and enjoy the sky for a few hours letting the mount do the work.

Here's a couple shots from 10/8/13.  Remember, these were taken under very light polluted skies, more definition will improve when we take her to a darker sky site such as nearby Mingo Creek Park.  The star bursts in the Pleiades image are due to my low quality 300mm lens, you work with what you have. I'll try a wider f-stop next time to see if it improves.

Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
230 frames stacked in DeepSkyStacker
300mm, f8, 34sec ISO800

Pleiades (M45)
105 frames stacked in DeepSkyStacker
300mm, f8, 34sec ISO800

Hopefully it won't be so long before you hear from me again.  Looking forward to seeing Orion again (at a resonable hour).

Moon and Pleiades

[Last night] It was a great moonlit night at the observatory, thanks Randy.

If you have never seen the Moon through a large telescope, go find someone with one and ask them to point it at that big bright round thing in the night sky for you.          

...go ahead, I'll be here when you get back.

You're back?  Wasn't that amazing?!  I know!  So, as you were looking across the 235,000ish miles of space to the Moon, peering into all the many craters and gliding over the different surface features, you undoubtedly began to feel a strange impending excitement.  You felt like if you could only look long enough you would see one of those massive impacts first hand.  This excitement is, although not impossible, extremely (seriously) unlikely.  Nonetheless, a wonderful feeling, wouldn't you say?   Feel free to go look again.    ...I'll wait.

Now, to the photography.  I took 136 frames of the moon with my camera mounted on top of a Meade RCX 400, and using RegiStax 6, I attempted to stack them.  Then I attempted again.  Then again.  I'm sure I'm doing something wrong and in no way is this a slight on Registax.   It's obviously going to take a few tries and tutorials to get things rolling there.  

Here's an old-fashioned single frame image.  Not too shabby.

300mm, 1/125 sec, f11, ISO100

[EDIT - 04/08/12]  This is what the above image looks like processed in Registax6.

More eye candy last night was Venus nestled just under the open cluster of Pleiades (M45) like a lone egg in a nest.  Now DeepSkyStacker was much more first-time user friendly.  This is 9 frames stacked and noise perfectly removed.   Could have used longer exposure or wider aperture or higher ISO (one or all) to better resolve the background stars but it's quite pretty.  It's difficult to shoot a bright object like Venus and expose long enough to resolve fainter objects like Pleiades.  With my budget 300mm lens, that star[planet]burst just gets bigger and bigger.  The lens aberrations are a bit annoying but kind of appealing when you're going for something frame worthy or "artsy".

9 frames @ 300mm, 30 seconds f7.1 ISO 800