Sunday, December 24, 2017
Issue #552: Merry Christmas Eve from the Astroblog!
Well, it wasn’t quite
a white Christmas on the Gulf Coast, but, as you can see from the picture
at left, taken a couple of weeks previously, we came close. Closer than in
years, and years, and years. Maybe since the 1950s.
Anyway, what is Christmas without the Christmas Eve edition
of the little old blog from Chaos Manor South? That has taken several forms over the eleven years we’ve been on the air here (hard to believe it’s
been eleven freakin’ annums, true believers). Sometimes it’s been an epistle to Christmas Eve
and its ghosts. Sometimes it’s been memories from my Christmases Long Past.
Once in a while it’s been a short and sweet “Merry Christmas Everybody and Goodnight!”
I thought this time might be a little different. Perhaps a recap of my
astronomical year, something I’ve normally reserved for New Year’s.
Before we get to that, “MERRY
CHRISTMAS CHARLIE BROWN!” And a wonderful night before Christmas, too. This
one looks to be calm and uneventful here. Just me and the cats watching
Netflix. Naturally, I put a telescope in the backyard, my 3-inch f/11
achromatic refractor, in hopes of getting my traditional Christmas Eve view of
that most beautiful and numinous of all ornaments, M42. Shall we step out into
the cold and have a look?..
“OK…what did I do with that darned red dot finder? Oh, yeah,
I was using it with the Meade APO. Here it is…hope I remembered to turn the
sucka off. Lucky Orion is in a sucker hole...looks like fog coming in. OK…smidge to the right and up.” And there it was, shining brightly
through the suburban light pollution and lingering haze. Did M42 look as good as
it does with a big scope at a dark site? It did to me. This was my first
Christamas Eve look at the Great Nebula in a while, and I cannot help but think
it’s a good omen for the coming year (fingers crossed, y’all)…
However, on this deep night the subject is 2017, not 2018.
Winter 2017
The year began with the end of my series on observing the
Messier objects as we signed off with Messiers 107, 108, 109, and 110. Most of
you seemed to enjoy the voyage through the Ms, which had been going on for most
of 2016, but my title for this installment, “This
is the End, My Friends” did upset a few of my faithful readers.
Given some of the changes I’d gone through over the previous
two years, which I’d occasionally shared with you here, and my slowly
decreasing output of blog articles, you were to be forgiven for thinking the title
meant we were done, that the blog was finis.
Not so—there weren’t to be quite as many updates in 2017 as in the past, but I
still kept moving forward in my bumbling fashion.
As the cold months wore on and the skies grew ever cloudier,
I turned to a new series, “The Novice Files.”
The entries covered the basics of the sky globe, things like R.A. and
declination, star and object names, object catalogs, etc. etc. Things that are
familiar and obvious to most of us but puzzling for Joe and Jane Novice.
That
was in part so I’d have something to write about. I sure wasn’t going to be
doing many observing articles unless I could glom onto an x-ray telescope. I
didn’t just do these articles to have fodder for the blog, though. I thought
the subjects covered were pretty darned important for the newbies amongst us.
January also found me blogging about the latest and quite
major update to the Stellarium program,
which is literally the only planetarium software I use these days (other than
the also great Cartes du Ciel occasionally). Yes, Stellarium is free, but it’s also so good,
so pretty, so easy to use, and has so many wonderful features that the heavy
hitters of commercial software, TheSky, Starry Night, and all the rest, sit
unused on my hard drive. Couple Stellarium with the ASCOM scope control add-on,
StellariumScope, and I am sitting in high cotton and don’t want for more.
As February came in and the sky began to get a little clearer, I found I needed some
images for my magazine work and drug out my trusty Celestron Advanced VX mount. Why the VX? Why not my EQ6 or CGEM?
The AVX had one big advantage: light weight. As you know if you’re a faithful
reader, I injured my back in 2015 while washing the porch of our old Garden
District Victorian home, and have suffered recurrent bouts of pain. Bad enough
that the last thing I want to do is aggravate my back.
Light weight is good, but as I recounted in the blog entry,
the VX is also surprisingly capable. With the telescopes I normally use for deep
sky imaging in these latter days, f/7 5-inch and 80mm APO refractors, it
works very well indeed, always delivering round stars. The VX has some cool
modern features, too, like auto-alignment with Celestron’s Star Sense
accessory.
Since I was doing imaging with the AVX, I thought I’d share
some of the issues involving using the Chinese “clones” of the Vixen Great
Polaris—like the AVX, the Explore Scientific Exos, the SkyWatcher HEQ5/Sirius,
and others--in “Astrophotography with
Inexpensive German Equatorial Mounts.”
I’ve always hated polar alignment, so when I found a way to
polar align more easily and accurately than ever before using the Sharpcap
software, my guide camera, and my guide scope, I just had to share that with
you in “A New Way to Polar Align.” There
is no doubt in my mind that the better polar alignment possible with Sharpcap
is one of the things responsible for me being able to kick my astrophotography
results up a notch.
Spring
Spring began to approach, and I found myself out in the
backyard ever more frequently thanks to the slowly improving weather. So, I was
back to fiddling with everybody’s favorite auto-guide program, PHD2. One of the
recurring questions I get from new astrophotographers is, “Rod, what do I do
about all those darned PHD brains settings?” I set out to answer that in “Getting Your PhD.”
Despite the time I was spending in that backyard—or maybe
because of it—I found I had to bite the bullet and slow the blog down. In “Is This
the End?” I broke the news to my faithful cadre of Sunday Morning
aficionados that I just couldn’t keep up the weekly publication schedule I’d maintained
for years. I hoped, I said, that I
could eventually begin to get new articles out the door every week again, but cautioned
that “once a month” was more likely—which has turned out to be accurate.
Looking over my output for late spring and summer, I’m actually amazed I published as often as I did. The weather down here was frightful. It was as cloudy as it has been in a long time, and that’s saying
something given the nasty weather cycle we’ve been in for the last five
years or so.
Summer
Despite Stormy Weather, I pressed on through a tropical
summer. I even managed to get my traditional yearly image of M13 in July. From
my backyard—I’ve grown weary of lugging a ton of gear out to my dark site.
Despite the scudding clouds of a muggy night, one on which I felt like was
observing from underwater, I was still able to bring home My Yearly M13 with my SkyWatcher 120mm APO and the reliable and
dependable AVX.
Despite raindrops and mosquitoes, July actually turned out
to be a good month for the blog, with several entries appearing. It seemed that
with the pressure to publish turned
off, I was having more fun writing the Astroblog than I’d had in a long while.
One of my favorite articles from this time was “To PEC or not to PEC?” wherein I not
just explained the Periodic Error Correction feature of modern telescope mounts,
but programmed PPEC into my VX, bringing its RMS error down to a very respectable
(for a sub 1000-dollar GEM) 1” RMS or so.
The next July entry, “Good,
Old EQ6” was an epistle to my much-loved Atlas GEM mount, which I’d owned
for ten years by this time. It was also a goodbye to it. Unfortunately, back problems meant the handwriting was most assuredly on the wall for the EQ6—it
was too heavy for me to lift safely anymore, and I’d just have to get rid of it. The article came from my backyard checkout of the mount prior to selling it. The
Atlas performed so well that I almost decided not to let it go after all. Until
I was removing the mount from the tripod and almost aggravated my back, wouldn’t you
know it?
The final July article was in the same vein, and concerned
my disposing of some more beloved gear beginning with my Celestron CGEM. The mount had been a great performer for me—don’t
believe everything you read on Cloudy Nights—but, like the Atlas, it was just
too freaking heavy and I had to sell it too. Which I did.
Perhaps even more sadly, I let go of my C11 for the same reason. If there’s an SCT I’ve
loved best over the years, it’s probably Big Bertha, my NexStar 11 GPS.
However, I decided leaving the OTA sitting in her case month and month after month
wasn’t doing either of us any good. So it was that with a heavy heart I
determined that the C11 would follow the CGEM and Atlas.
Don’t feel too sorry for your Uncle Rod, though. Having a
small pile of cash before me allowed for the purchase of a new GEM, one a
little lighter and easier to manage than the two Syntas had become. A brand
spanking new Losmandy GM811G arrived in late August, which was chronicled in “A Losmandy GM811G Comes to Chaos Manor
South.”
Fall
The summer weather was awfully punk, and the fall was most
assuredly no better. Thanks mostly to that weather, I didn’t get to put in a
lot of hours with the Losmandy. But what little I was able to do with this very
pretty mount impressed me. I
especially loved the full-color touch screen Gemini 2 hand control and the
mount’s Ethernet connectivity.
September and October only featured a single entry apiece.
One concerned the experience of using the GM811 for visual observing, and the
other my (semi) return to video observing—prompted by the arrival of a
wonderful box of video goodies from the legendary Orange County Telescope.
Winter
November? November only got one entry as well, a report on
the Deep South Star Gaze for 2017. Alas, that much-looked-forward-to star party
was a bust for me this year. Poor food, poor skies, and a couple of rather
irritating episodes gave this piece its title, “You Can’t Win ‘em All.”
December looked like it would only be blessed with a single
update too, this one—no way am I gonna skip the Christmas Eve blog. But the
week before the holiday brought another article. With the pressure to take
pictures for magazine articles off for the moment, I thought it would be
nice to get out for some relaxing visual observing with my simple,
non-electronic GSO 10-inch Dobsonian Zelda. It was and I frankly enjoyed that run
more than I have any observing in a while. Sometimes the secret is “Minimize”…
…and so, Christmas approaches, me stirring from my semi-doze
on the couch only long enough to click Netflix’s accursed “Are You Still
Watching?” button. What more is left to say? Only “Have a great holiday, God
bless us everyone, and here’s to a wonderful 2018”—old glass half full me (on
my good days) has decided it IS gonna be a good one.
Comments:
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Merry Christmas, Rod! Thanks for continuing the blog...may your nights be starry (and your DSOs be bright!)
# posted by 
: 11:03 AM
: 11:03 AM
Have a great 2018, Rod. I enjoy your blogs, and look forward to many more. Clear skies!
# posted by : 11:56 AM
: 11:56 AM
Happy New Year Everyone!
2018 will be a competition between my year 2000 C8 FR and my ES102 as by the 10th of January I will have EAA/Imaging remote setup and working in my studio/office.
I will never get rid of my C8 but Rod has convinced me to try a Refractor. I always thought a 4" ED/APO of some sort would be a great companion for my C8 and I had some extra dollars and was able to get a double discount on the ES102. Hopefully sometime this year I will get an Alt/Az mount for quick peeks with it.
I know the C8 with by my Herschel Galaxy imaging tool but I must say I am somewhat excited about seeing how good the Triplet ES102 is.
May 2018 bring you clear skies and good health, and Rod thanks again for being my test lab:)
2018 will be a competition between my year 2000 C8 FR and my ES102 as by the 10th of January I will have EAA/Imaging remote setup and working in my studio/office.
I will never get rid of my C8 but Rod has convinced me to try a Refractor. I always thought a 4" ED/APO of some sort would be a great companion for my C8 and I had some extra dollars and was able to get a double discount on the ES102. Hopefully sometime this year I will get an Alt/Az mount for quick peeks with it.
I know the C8 with by my Herschel Galaxy imaging tool but I must say I am somewhat excited about seeing how good the Triplet ES102 is.
May 2018 bring you clear skies and good health, and Rod thanks again for being my test lab:)
Just a follow up Rod. So besides the ES102, this week I ordered a ZWO ASI 224 (the sale or drop in price was the bait that got me) and am using an older laptop with SharpCap for the next couple of months.Trying to decided between my 909 or using my meade rs232 cable with one of the 9 pin to usb convertors (any idea of which of the cheap ones on Amazon work, looking at the ones that say Windows 10 certified). Will use EAA at home for most of my viewing.
In March I plan on getting a good laptop to run EAA or guiding and perhaps remote control from the house.
Since I can't make up my mind about a new mount, just going to use the LXD75 for the coming season as my piggy bank has lost wieght with the ES102, ZWO224, and new laptop:)
In March I plan on getting a good laptop to run EAA or guiding and perhaps remote control from the house.
Since I can't make up my mind about a new mount, just going to use the LXD75 for the coming season as my piggy bank has lost wieght with the ES102, ZWO224, and new laptop:)
I've been reading your material about SCT's for months and just realized that you only live about 20 minutes from me. I'm a high school science teacher in SE Mississippi. I'm just getting into the telescope hobby and I would like to have a chance to talk to you. My email is schesser@jcsd.k12.ms.us. Thanks, Shawn
Final order today Rod.
Laptop i5/8 gig/ 256 SSE and rs2322 to 9 pin. Piggy bank now needs a big rest.
BTW here is the free download site for Deepsky, I know you posted Steve was looking for one, apparently he got one:
http://www.mikehotka.com/DAS/masterdownload.htm
Laptop i5/8 gig/ 256 SSE and rs2322 to 9 pin. Piggy bank now needs a big rest.
BTW here is the free download site for Deepsky, I know you posted Steve was looking for one, apparently he got one:
http://www.mikehotka.com/DAS/masterdownload.htm
Hi, about relatively light mounts with acceptable payload capacity, I have found the iEQ45 Pro (payload: 45 lbs mount weight: 25 lbs)
Cheers
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Cheers
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