Astrophotography

So I have recently restarted my interest in Astrophotography, which had been hampered by a lack of good equipment and added too by a lack of the correct equipment (at least that is what I remembered from the previous time ;-) ).
Solving both of those wasn't easy, but now I have some good equipment and the night sky is mostly cooperating with my pursuits.

I now have a fairly "large" Celestron CPC (fairly large is contrasted against one of my dream telescopes, which are not portable... hint: the CPC still is "portable" like maybe 50 ft if your really feeling strong). I also have a Canon Rebel XTi with a T-ring and adapter (which can hold eyepieces for magnification) and a Lunar Planetary Imager (essentially a 640x480 webcam stuck in an eyepiece tube).

So now I am all set to get some awesome shots, right?

Well sort of...

Ah the challenges of life.. ISO what? Exposure time? Vibrations? Tracking / time delay? I found it funny that any photo experience that I had before with my manual 35mm, was all thrown out the window by owning these stupid "point and shoot" cameras over the past 8 years or so. I had actually forgotten how to operate a relatively simple camera (XTi isn't exactly a 5d ya' know) and manipulate it to do what I had wanted.
The robot cameras have taken over our lives!

So Astrophotography, just like many other pursuits I "enjoy" doesn't lend itself to the easy way, every thing is done manually... repeat everything is done manually. There is no "easy" button here. Now it is at this point that I remember, that it wasn't just the equipment which made me put away my astro-photo equipment before... a very strong point could be made that the lack of decent equipment made the results so poor that it wasn't worth the headache of going through all the other procedures and manual operations just to get a grainy shot of the lunar surface, or a barely discernible speck of light that I would point at and say "really, that is Jupiter".

So here is where the old story ends and the new one begins, dusting off all the "old skillz" and learning how to force my camera to do what I want it to do, as opposed to what it has trained me to do (autofocus doesn't work here, remember?) and connecting that up to some really good optics that can now display very very good detail (non-grainy) of things in our solar system and beyond (especially under good conditions)... I have found a sliver of happiness as well as encouragement in the results obtained so far, which drive me to delve deeper into this.

As I explore, I will share my learning's as well as my fruits with y'all here... hope you have as much challenge and fun as I do in whatever you pursue. If you like what you see, want to know more or want to offer advice on how to make it better, drop me a note to let me know..

Here is a URL to some moon shots taken with the new "scope" and the Rebel XTi:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sub.moa/Nov2008MoonShots#

And here is some taken with the "fancy webcam" and the new scope:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sub.moa/MoonShotsWithDigitalImager#

You should be able to see some pretty big differences in the clarity of the shots..

Until the next post...take a peek in the night sky just after sunset on Nov 30th - Dec 1st, you will see Jupiter / Venus and the Moon in all very close to each other, this is the last time that will happen again until 2052 so please take the time to check it out, it should be quite the show and maybe the first / last time we will have to see it within our lifetimes (one never knows).

May your sky's be stable and with low light pollution... :-)

bloggidy blog blog blog...

Saturday evening..

Saw the new 007 movie.. thought that the action was good.
I remember the days of yore.. when the bad guys were tracked down and then set straight by JB... now we are on installment two.. and we still have no clue who the bad folks are yet.
Hoping that we get this all sorted out by the 3rd installment.

At least the "Potter" series had a different plot for each installment, the "Solace" movie was merely a continuation of the "Casino" movie, again not saying it was bad.. because it wasn't. The director though, man he needs to lay off the caffeine and stop cutting back and forth on all those shots. I have strong "sea-legs" and I was getting a little frothy after only 5 minutes in that movie :-).


Well another wonderful post.. likely due to my bad ankle, which precludes me from being out somewhere with my telescope.

Until the next post..

Taking things for granted...

Funny... you hear this over and over again:

1) you don't know what you miss until it is gone

2) don't take things for granted

Oddly enough, I had a bit of a wake-up call this past 9 days... I tripped on some stairs (ascending) and messed up my ankle and wrist.

I went through a couple days of being unable to tightly grasp things with my right hand, which was a minor issue but still drove me nuts as I was unable to perform some normal activities.

My ankle was a completely different story... for the first 3 days, it hurt badly but I continued to walk on it (stupid) slowly / gingerly, but still walked on it... until of course, I started to feel a very painful "grinding / popping" coming from the ankle, which was accompanied by swelling to about 3x the normal size of the ankle and a feeling like my foot / ankle was on fire!

Went to the Doc's finally, and was told... 'no fractures, but man I haven't seen a sprain this bad in quite a long time' followed by, 'do your shoes even fit anymore? your foot and ankle looks like a block of flesh with no normal foot outline'... then came the real fun: 'I need you to wear an ankle brace, use a crutch and take these NSAIDs, until things normalize'.

Now this is where the fun comes in, did I mention that it was my right ankle / wrist? That essentially means I cannot drive so I have been locked up in my house everyday for the past 10 days.. sweet! .

Ok, long example that kind of proves out the "wisdom" of not taking things for granted, in this case I can now appreciate all the things I was able to do previously and am unable to do now, like running, playing soccer, walking, having unlimited mobility, going where and when I feel like it .

Good thing is.. the swelling is now going down.. and the foot / ankle is finally starting to look like a foot again.. in all likelihood, I may actually be able to start moving around again without the brace and crutches within 3-4 more days (by the looks of it).

Hopefully I can remember those feelings of denial / anger / frustration / hopelessness and ensure that I appreciate everything just a little bit more:

- my interactions with family and friends

- exercise

- astronomical observations / photography

- breathing, walking and just about everything else

Wishing all health and happiness

 

The Tao Of Ham-Kune-Do

Yes, I cheezily played off of the "Tao of Jeet Kune Do" of Bruce Lee fame, but that aside... and oh, by the way I did indeed say "HAM-Kune-Do" the way of the HAM. No, I am not referring to the way of Miss-Piggy or some other swine, I am speaking of Amateur Radio (aka HAM Radio) the practice of radio communications engineering.

Today is Oct 19th, 2008 (no not 1968) and I am here to tell you that HAM radio is alive and transmitting..er ah, kicking.

This weekend, I participated in Pacificon 2008 in San Ramon, Ca.

I spoke briefly with some of the organizers and volunteers at this weekends convention and was very surprised to here that this years participation was up about 20%, yes... even in a "down-economy" (aka: recession).  Add to that I recently spoke with a testing team, whom stated that they are seeing upwards of 200 - 500 new Technician licensees per month (Technician is the first level of FCC licensing on Amateur Radio) and with 4 testing sessions per month, there are approximately 800 - 2000 new HAM's every month!

So what are all these HAM's doing?

1) High Frequency (HF) / Ultra High Frequency (UHF) / Very High Frequency (VHF) Radio Transmissions

2) Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS)

3) Amateur Radio Packet Data

4) Fast Scan Television

5) Satellite Radio Communications

6) Low Power Radio Transmissions

7) Morse Code Transmissions

8) Emergency and Community Communications

There is something for just about any geek around, what could be better than a good ol' practice of engineering methodologies and hackin' around with radio wave propagation?

So some quick things about HAM radio as a hobby that I found interesting:

1) If there is an emergency (civil or otherwise) HAM radios are usually the primary form of communications during the emergency. For instance in the recent earthquakes in China, the HAM operators there had communications up and running again in a day (when all cellular communications were totally wiped out). So, in an emergency, chances are good that HAMs will be around to "save your bacon" (forgive me for that one, I had to say it... :-) ). Living in California, I think it is a good idea to have a mechanism for communications as part of your emergency plan.

2) Look around the next time your at a parade or running, cycling or other civic event, it is likely that you will find HAM's around helping out and reporting into the event organizers, telling them the current status in their "zone".

3) You can use a HAM radio to communicate with the ISS or Space Shuttle.

4) You can combine radio communications with the Internet or satellites to extend the reach of the radio and explore new forms of communications. 

If your interested in HAM radio, there are many places to get you started, for example:

• www.arrl.org
  
• www.qrz.com/i/howtoham.html

Take care and as HAMs say "73's"

Ken 

(KI6SCQ)