YUK!

A little Sun on my lunch break

The sun popped out during lunch and I captured a few shots. 3 frames combined, 25000 frames each with Rocal Reducer, digital camera and 20mm EP. The brightness plays havoc on the white balance of the camera, it kept switching back and forth. Colorized in Gimp.

A little Saturn in an unexpected clear bit of sky

Didn't get to use the "new" method but still was able to capture a little Saturn, 10mm plossl with barlow threaded to EP.

Mars Afocal 4.19.12

I tried a new technique for Afocal, pretty unorthodox. I found a usb video capture cable on the net for 17 bucks and plugged that into the digital camera. This allows me to use the manual mode on the camera and adjust the exopsure, etc... and see the live results in Sharpcap and to capture the video at 720x480 AVI, instead of the 640x480 mpeg in the camera. Although I was hoping for better, it was a good test. Seeing was not very good, and I still need to experiment with the settings more. It's certainly better than I have been able to get with the digital camera so far.
Sony Cybershot 7 MP
10mm with barlow threaded to bottom of EP
10" SCT
USB capture cable to Sharpcap
Tried a couple of different zoom levels.

Sunspots with a Webcam

Break in the clouds for just a moment, so rushed out and hooked up the webcam for the 1st time and got a couple of quick shots. Focus is a bit off, it's hard to focus on the sun!

1st Solar Image

Da Sun, there were a bunch of dust spots I tried to clean up in Gimp.
 Captured a couple of sunspots, and faculae.
Sunspots 1459 and 1458 4/15/2012

Mars and saturn 4/6/12

7MP digital camera connected to eyepiece, 3 minute videos stacked in Registax

Moon Jupiter and Venus 3/26/12

Digital Camera

Flame Nebula - with a reflection artifact

Manually guided with 60mm refactor - 8 2:00 min exposures

M51 - 1st try

40 30 second exposures stacked in DSS, can't wait to try this one again

Jupiter Mars and Saturn with digital camera

7MP Sony Cybershot 15mm EP with 2x barlow threaded. Afocal.

M42 with Point n shoot

The Orion Nebula afocal with the 7MP sony cybershot. 8 exposures @ 30 seconds, 20mm EP, 10" SCT, flats. Stacked in DSS, stretched in Fitswork, final layer mask and tweaking in Gimp. Click for larger image.
 The little fuzzy spot toward the bottom of the previous picture is this.

Orion Constellation just digital camera

Put the point n shoot 7MP sony cybershot camera on the telescope for tracking and took 16 30 second exposures with the 3x optical zoom at ISO 400. Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker,edited in Fitswork and Gimp. No flats or darks, just jpegs! The star colors were originally really blue, guess that's camera CA?. This is my 1st widefield attempt and with a DSLR should be stupendously better, but still, I was proud of my little 7mp Sony.
 The fuzzy spot towards the bottom is M42, the Orion Nebula.

1st attempt at Mars

10mm Ep with barlow lens screwed in. Sony cybershot digital camera. 400 frames each. Bad seeing, thin clouds passing in front of the planet while shooting.

Moon Venus and Jupiter 2/24/12

Set the digital camera on the wife's car in the driveway. 8 second exposure

Moon Mosaic Crop

Jupiter 2.2.12

Jupiter afocal with 7MP digital camera, 17mm plossl and barlow lens threaded to eyepiece.

Webcam Lunar Mosaic 2.2.12

Using the $20 donated webcam I attempted the 1st mosaic, just wandered around the moon taking pics, will go for a total mosaic later.

Great Night - Venus, Jupiter, Crab and others

Finally a clear night, played with the webcam and got some good observations in. Very cold, around 30* F.
 Started with Venus and the Lifecam, I have added a 1.25" eyepiece barrel and used the Celestron UHC/LP filter to get the brightness of Venus down, sort of worked, but I forgot to take it out for the Jupiter captures.
 For visual I used the 10" Dob to view M42, M45, The Hayedes, NGC 1807 and 1817 (2 open clusters close together in Taurus and the M1, the Crab Nebula (Dim oblong patch of nebulosity).  Used 7x42 binoculars to view M45 (no nebulosity visible but did see a weird line of 5 stars at the bottom), M42 as a wisp like a little tornado, 3 open clusters in Auriga - M36 (almost mottled), M37 (just a small fuzz patch) and M38 ( more dim, non stellar appearance)
 Used the 10" SCT and digital camera to get 5 30 second exposures of the Crab Nebula, came out just about like I saw through the eyepiece of the Dob.

Microsoft Lifecam VX-1000 webcam modded for Astrophotography

Finally, my 1st webcam to use with a telescope. My co-worker Karen gave me their old webcam, she was going to donate it or throw it out. It's a 640x480color webcam and there are drivers for Win & 64 bit...yay!
 So the mod is super easy, just unscrew the screws, pop it apart, unscrew the lens, put it all back together. Unfortunately the IR filter is glued to the back of the lens, so it had to go, I broke it trying to get it out. The focus ring on the webcam is almost exactly 1.25", so it fits right in the focuser and is not an issue.
 This is the 1st light with it, about 600 frames taken and used the best 120 in registax.
Gassendi Crater is 68 miles wide and on the edge of Mare Humorum, the central peak was an alternative landing site for an Apollo mission. It is so named for Frenchman Pierre Gassendi, the 1st person to watch a planet transit the sun in 1631.

Why Aliens Have Never Visited Earth

There is a widespread belief that it is very possible alien life forms, if they exist, have the capability to travel to the Earth, and may have done so in the past or may even be doing it now. This is not a reasonable belief. First, it assumes there is intelligent life out there in the Universe. (If you don't believe that then none of this really applies to you does it?) I like this 1st assumption, I believe we will eventually discover that life, or the seed of it, is everywhere, and if it finds a place it will grow. In my personal view of the Universe, the Earth is just a crack in the sidewalk. Second, it assumes that these aliens have some way of traveling great distances across space within a reasonable time. It's this second assumption that is seriously flawed. Third, it assumes that the UFO's we see are from somewhere else. This is also folly. There is no evidence to suggest that any of the unidentified objects we have seen are from anywhere other than here. It's not like we saw them coming as they passed Jupiter and Mars, then the moon, then entered Earth's atmosphere.
Alright, first let's start with a famous equation, I like to think of it as garbage, but the media keeps throwing it out there. The Drake equation, I am not going to go into detail, but it goes something like this. If you have "X" number of Stars and "Y" percentage of those stars have planets capable of supporting life, then "B" percentage of those planets have life and of those, "M" have intelligent life. ( I made up my own letters but this is the basic idea)
This "equation" is full of made up guesses, garbage in garbage out. There is no real data here. But, for the purpose of this discussion we are going to go ahead and assume that there is intelligent life out there. Matter of fact we are going to assume that there is intelligent life ALL OVER the Universe, every galaxy, has self-aware creatures, and in every galaxy there are one hundred advanced civilizations.(Not the little freak galaxies that have been split in half or are tiny weird variations, just typical spiral galaxies, ok?) Crazy right? This is WAAAAAY more than the Drake equation would ever allow. So just so we are clear, the basis of our little thought experiment is that there are 100 other civilizations just like us in our own galaxy, and 100 in every other spiral galaxy out there.

It’s too far, we’ll never make it.
OK, let's start with our nearest spiral neighbor, Andromeda. The reason we are going to start there is because if "they" can't get here from there, it's pointless to assume they might get here from any other galaxy, there are about 30 galaxies within 4 million light years, but only a few are regular spirals, so we'll just use Andromeda as a reference point. The rough estimate of the distance to our closest spiral galaxy neighbor is 2.5 Million Light Years, so let’s be nice to our aliens and say 2 million.
OK, we now have 100 civilizations and a distance of 2 million light years. Now let's make them all smart, really smart, and give them a desire to get out there and see the neighborhood. One of them starts playing with fusion and they get the power of a medium sized star in a shoebox, I think we can all agree with that kind of power and technology they are ready to go. Then, for whatever reason, they head straight for us, not stopping to look at this or that, no detours, no study of anything along the way, shoulda went to the bathroom before we left, we ain’t stopin till we get there!

Speed of light - The whole house of cards comes crashing down.
Our little aliens have the power of an entire star at their disposal, but that is not even close to being enough to propel them the speed of light. Much of our current theories and laws of Physics and Astronomy, our understanding of how the Universe works, is based on the speed of light, ergo, the most popular mathematical equation in the world...E=Mc2, Energy equals the speed of light squared. This foundation, this revolution in physics, states that nothing with mass can go the speed of light, NOTHING...EVER...PERIOD. This is checkmate for our little visitors. This means that even if they could go very very close to the speed of light, it would still take 2 million years to get here. I think we can rule out Andromeda as a source of alien visitation.

Now that we have ruled out visitors from another galaxy, what about our own? Well alright then!
We have 100 smart aliens right here in our own galaxy, with the desire to get out and tour the countryside, great!
So here is the 1st problem, they are still, really, really, really far away. Our galaxy is around 100,000 light years across. Traveling as fast as the speed of light still takes 100,000 years to get from one side of the galaxy to the other, and that’s going right through the center, which is probably not a good idea. So if our little friends happen to live on the other side of the galaxy, it will be 200,000 years after departure before they can tell their friends back home that they have found something. You see, it’s not just matter that can’t travel faster than light; it is information of any kind. (There is a weird special circumstance, due to the expansion of the Universe, that some really distant galaxies are actually receding from us faster than light, and due to that, no information can ever be known about them, we can’t see them anymore.) Well, good thing we have decided that there are 100 of these guys out there! We spread them evenly about the galaxy, staying away from the center, (because it’s too busy in the center, life would most likely have a chance to form and flourish out along the arms) and for simplicity we will say there is a band of life making a perfect circle around the center of the galaxy, the same distance from the center as us and the same distance away from each other. We are about 27,000 light years from the center, so that gives us a circle of roughly 170,000 light years, divided by 100 and you get 1,700 light years.
1,700 light years from us to our theoretical best case scenario neighbor, that’s pretty close, right? Well, it’s much better than 2 million, but it still is too far, even at the speed of light. Let me put it to you this way, if they left around the fall of the Roman Empire, they would just be arriving now.
The only tiny (and I mean tiny) glimmer of hope for the odds, is the fact that there are something like 50 stars within 20 light years of earth. 20 light years is doable, they might even be able to pick up “Friends”. Alas the odds are overwhelmingly against a neighbor this close, more on this later.

What do you mean “We’re out of toilet paper”???
Up to now we have only discussed the distances and speed, but to make the trip you have to eat and poop. Even if they have suspended animation, they have to have all the stuff they need when they get here. The logistics of galactic travel are mind boggling, and they will be on their own when they get here, no calling for help or spare parts, not to mention the physical effects of low gravity for extended periods, radiation, computer glitches, (C’mon, you KNOW they would have computers…), micro-meteors, and unexpected stuff in general. Try cramming all that gear into a flying saucer…

Sorry babe, it’s just not our time

Well, here we are, 14 billion years after the big bang, talking and flying, going to the moon and being modern hominids. We’ve come a long way in the last 100,000 years.
100,000 years… seems like a long time doesn’t it? It’s not; it’s a drop in the bucket. In the timeline of the Earth and out star, a million years is not even that long, and many people would agree there is a strong possibility humans won’t even be around in a million years. We are but a fleeting moment in the grand timeline of the galaxy, and therein lies another huge problem. We are not just separated from our potential neighbors by distance, but by time. It is very unlikely that the 100 intelligent beings we have so graciously given thought to, will ever develop around the same time. It is far more likely that they will develop at minimum, a million years apart, so that, even if they traveled the galaxy and came here, we were not here, or won’t be here when they arrive. One intelligent life form developing at the right time and distance from another is like the desert wind blowing together a perfect replica of a telescope, sure there is nothing in physics that prevents it, but it is so unlikely you may as well call it impossible.

Don’t get me wrong, I want to believe, I just can’t.

A couple more Jupiters from 12.1.11

The Triangulum Galaxy

Borrowed Liz's camera again and took 1hr 14min of this galaxy. Screwed the flats up, tried to take them the next day, but didn't go so well...still my best galaxy so far.
M33

Mark's ETX-80 Telescope

11.08.11 -Update - picked up superglue and fixed the broken plastic part, just tested the scope with 2 star alignment, Jupiter was slightly off goto with a 20mm, slewed to Andromeda and it was in the eyepiece, slewed to the Ring and it was slightly out but found it easily. Rockin!
Mark let me borrow his Meade ETX-80 Refractor. After setting it up I realized something was wrong, the gears were being blocked somehow, the scope would only rotate so far, then it was running into an obstruction of some kind. Unfortunately the only way to find out what, was to open it. With owner permission I started disassembly. Not too bad, only one hidden tiny hex on the RA clutch lever. When I opened it I quickly noticed the worm gear was not right, it was loose, after further inspection I found a broken arm on the plastic assembly that holds the worm gear. The gear had fallen down slightly and was torqued slightly sideways, That was causing the 2 screws that mount the scope to the tripod to come in contact with the gear assembly. Wouldn't you know it I am out of superglue.
 The only thing I can figure is the scope was dropped or impacted hard enough to break the little plastic piece, or the RA was turned while the cluctch was locked.

Jupiter afocal 11.1.11

Seeing was pretty bad, tried using the 20mm Titan EP with 2x barlow lens screwed in barrel. Registax hung up many times trying to get the vids to stack, this was the best of 4.