Bats on the Moon

I don’t think I’d believe it if I hadn’t seen it but while I was looking at the Moon this evening I saw a bat flying across the face of the Moon.

It was flapping madly for about 10 seconds before it finally reached the edge of the Moon and went out of view. Cool.

BatMoon.jpg

Wish I’d had the camera set up at the time.

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Astro pictures July 11, 2009

It was nice and cool this morning with a light breeze the interfered with my picture taking but felt good so I rather have had it than not.

Took a look at the ring nebula again but don’t have any pictures worth sharing and followed up by checking to see if it really was Neptune that I saw yesterday morning. Turns out that it was indeed.

Neptune.jpg

The picture’s not great because of the wind but the blueish dot is the planet Neptune. No, really.

Susan couldn’t sleep and came outside with Chip to see some stars and I showed her what I’d been looking at. Jupiter put on a good showing and the Moon was pretty as usual.

Moon.jpg


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Astro pictures July 4, 2009

Woke up in the middle of the night wide awake and decided to see what was happening in the sky this morning.

At first I found that there was a thin layer of clouds obscuring everything but soon enough those went away and the sky became fairly clear and moonless.

I spent some time just looking at Jupiter and playing around before pulling out the cameras and a new holder I made last night that fits all my cameras and also fits over all my current eyepieces.

AstroCameraHolder.jpg

The nylon screws ensure that the eyepieces won’t be scratched yet hold the camera securely to said eyepieces.

I took several shots of Jupiter before moving over to look at M31, the Andromeda nebula and M32. I see now that I should have gone looking for M110 as well but I guess I’ll have to do that another morning.

I got some halfway decent shots of Jupiter both before Ganymede moved into Jupiter’s shadow

JupiterGanymedeIo.jpg

and after. The moon’s gone!

JupiterIo.jpg

Afterward I attempted a 15 second shot (the longest my camera is capable of) of M31 which came out ok.

AndromedaNebula.jpg

It looks like a big fuzzy patch which is pretty much what I see through the scope.

Things look quite a lot sharper through the scope and I have some hope I’ll be able to get better pictures with practice.


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Jupiter June 23, 2009

It was another good morning for observing. I set up the scope at 4:30am and started out by observing Jupiter for a bit and using some fuzziness I saw along one edge to tweak the collimation of my scope. I know I can get better collimation out of it but I got as good as I could pending more practice.

I moved on to M31 for a bit and attempted to find a couple of open clusters (no luck, probably the magnification was too high) before moving back to Jupiter and its moons Io, Ganymede and Europa in order outward from the planet.

I tried to get a picture and was partially successful.

Jupiter062309.jpg

It’s a bit fuzzy but not too bad

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Saturn, June 15th

I haven’t come close to mastering taking a photo through my telescope yet. Heck, I haven’t completely mastered aligning the thing but I have been having fun attempting shots of Jupiter and Saturn. The Moon has been relatively easy since it’s so bright but the former two have presented a challenge.

I got an "ok" shot of Saturn a couple of nights ago though…

Saturn.jpg

It was taken through the eyepiece with a Canon S400.

If you look closely at the "left" side of Saturn you’ll see a small dot that is one of its moons, Titan.

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Safelight for the computer

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If you find yourself needing to take your laptop into the lab, you can make life simpler by making a safelight cover for the screen.

I know most of you who make holograms don’t carry around a tablet and those who carry around one probably don’t make holograms but for others who, like me, do both, here’s a way to take the computer into the lab without having to turn the screen off while film is out and about and you can save your "night" vision for what is probably a dimly lit lab.

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Optic cleaning with collodion

This could also have been called optic destroying with collodion. You’ll see why in a bit.

Based on my first three attempts, I wouldn’t recommend bothering to use collodion with cheap mirrors.

Collodion is used for a number of applications, such as cleaning optics used in astronomy. It was recently mentioned on the Holography forum as a way to clean our precious mirrors and lenses.

Here’s the first mirror with a tape dam at an angle which attempts to show all the crud on the mirror. It’s not excessively dirty like you might get with optics used in astronomy but it’s dirty enough that it’s interfering with my reference beam light. The mirror is used to steer the light coming out of my spatial filter up to my collimating mirror and needs to be as clean as possible. Note that this was a cheap $1 mirror I bought at a local electronics shop.

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