I managed to get outside for a few minutes tonight to get a shot of the moon and Venus forming a close conjunction. Here is a photo!
Click for full size.
Monthly Archive for February, 2009
This set of posts is about the TV Lens we were generously given by CTV to make into scopes.
Myself excluded, most people with these will need to make a tripod, and some kind of mount, probably a fork mount for sake of simplicity.
I recently acquired a planer as well as a second table saw that I can keep in Vancouver, so I have enough tools to build parts for people without such tools for the cost of material.
The tripods can be made of 2 X 6 lumber cut at an angle for legs, two pieces of plywood glued together for the mating plate. Door hinges can be used for the tops of the legs and a chain connected to eye bolts to prevent the tripod from collapsing.
The fork is a special problem. Mine is made out of a piece of aluminum tubing rectangular in cross-section. To make the U shape, I cut 22.5 degree wedges of material out, bent it to shape and had it welded by Pro-Tec Marine Welding in North Vancouver for $140. I didn’t cut through completely, but left the cut so that one side of material was still there and with enough room between the cuts so that when they were brought together, a proper weld with filler rod could be done. Mine ended up being not quite parallel but close enough I can probably cold-set them.
One problem with this lens is where the focus comes to. I think it may be too close to the last lens element to make for a convenient position, so I think some kind of negative lens element is needed to add some back focus distance.
I was able to get a couple of photos of the moon through my Skywatcher 80mmED refractor a few nights ago. These are worlds better than the pics I took with my camera lenses, but they still lack a lot of the detail I was able to see visually. There were some rilles (long, winding canyons) in particular that were striking through the eyepiece, but which didn’t show up in the photos.
Feb. 2009 moon
And, for fun, here’s the same photo with the colour saturation artificially enhanced. I don’t know how representative of reality the hues are, but this is what came out of my camera:
Feb. 2009 moon, with 'enhancements'
Cameron
This is a photo of a frost pillar taken above Grouse Mt. It is caused by ice crystal of a flat hexagonal form acting like an array of tiny mirrors above the light. There was one shown on the Weather Channel, but their explanation left something to be desired.
Hello astronomy buffs. I was out tonight and saw that there was a ring around the moon:
moon-ring
And since I was out there, I thought I would try a shot with my 300mm telephoto lens:
the moon
Not bad for a shot straight out of the camera!
Cameron
