Category: AOMO Activity Log

AOMO LOG Aug. 27, 2011

Oleg Mazurenko, Leigh, Terry McComas, Mark Speller and April

Arived: 9:20pm

Temp: 14 C

Clear Magnitude 5 sky.

My appologies ahead of time as my notes for this night are minimal to say the least.  I didn’t think I would be this delinqent in keeping up the AOMO log this past summer.  I will do the best I can from memory (which is getting more unreliable as the years go by).

Mark and April spent the night doing a binocular walk of the night sky.  They were very good at finding objects and helped me find a couple of items I have always had trouble finding.  It is always rewarding to be with a group of astronomers on a clear night.  I always seem to find something new to learn.  Also Mark entertained us all by identifying aircraft flying overhead by the sound of their engines and the few markings visible on their tails.

Terry brought his recently purchased telescope to get some help with his learning curve.  His Questar 3.5″ Maksutov-Cassegrain is a beautiful instrument and I am sure he will have many a viewing pleasures with it as he becomes more comfortable with its use.  I was glad I was able to be of some small help and I look forward to getting more opportunities to view through it in the future.

Oleg spent his time in the dome on the big scope taking images again.  I helped him a little at first and then left him to it.  Oleg has since sent me an email with an assessment of the scopes performance and possible maintenance projects going into the future.  Thank you Oleg for your very helpful report.

Feel free to fill in the gaps as I was visiting everyone and not spending very much time on any one thing.

Depart: 2:15am

Temp: 12 C

Darkness meter: n/a

AOMO LOG Aug. 7, 2011

Oleg Mazurenko & Leigh

Arived: 12:35am

Temp: 13 C

Clear Magnitude 5 sky.

Oleg and I took a late (or early morning) trip up to the AOMO to enable Oleg to try using his camera and laptop to image through the observatory’s telescope.

Upon start up of the telescope we tried to synch to Altair.  We found the telescope to consistantly slew to 1 hour east of Altair.  We were able to centre the star using the RA control of the telescope alone.  We checked the telescope’s clock setting, which was accurate, and the computer’s time setting and found it also to be accurate.  Once the telescope was synched we had no futher problems with finding objects.  We will have to sort that out another night.

We mounted Oleg’s camera with the same nose piece Mark used on his DSLR, screwed into Oleg’s lens T3 adapter.  Oleg used his laptop to control his camera.  Oleg carried on doing focus and test images while I went down to the office to catch up on some work on my laptop.

Oleg was able to come up with some suggestions for adjustments and maintenance on the telescope based on the results of some of his images.  He has since sent me an email and I hope to work with him through next year getting some of his ideas acted upon.

Depart: 4:am

Temp: 12 C

Darkness meter: n/a

AOMO LOG July 31, 2011

Mark & Leigh

Arived: 8:45pm

Temp: 14 C

Mark & I set up Mark’s EQ6 with his Takahashi 106ED mounted upon it.  I tried to cheat the darkness a little by trying to align Marks mount while the sky was still quite blue.  I fell for the old mistake of aligning to the wrong “polaris”.  Needless to say we then wasted time trying to obtain three star alignment and eventually came to the realization that something basic was wrong.  By this time of course we could actually see polaris and realize my intitial setup was completely haywire.  I hung my head in shame and fixed the problem.  After that, things went remarkably well.

Mark then imaged NGC7000 (North American Nebula) and IC5067 (Pelican Nebula).  He took the images with his Canon modified DSLR.  I think he was pleased with the results and in fact his image of NGC7000 apeared on the inside back cover of our July/August issue of NOVA.  Mark also imaged M31 before the morning dew and clouds of mosquitoes convinced us to call it a night.

I got home just as the sun was poking its first rays over the mountains to the northeast.  I had to wait for a family of racoons to waddle out of my driveway before I could park.  Overall a very nice summer night at the AOMO.

Depart: 4:am

Temp: 10 C

Darkness meter: Twilight

AOMO Log: July 29, 2011

Members: Leigh, Rohit, Oleg
Arrive: 10:00 pm
Temp: 15 C
Weather clear and dry.
Our night was delayed by the condition of the road for 200 metres above the second gate.  The roadway was extreme washboard with a soft texture that gave very poor traction.  Rohit was unable to make it through with his car so I backed back down the road to shuttle him and his equipment the rest of the way to the observatory.  On the second trip up  I had to shift the Tracker into 4 wheel drive as the roadway was getting worse with each passing.  While loading Rohit’s gear, Oleg showed up as well.  He decided to use the Tracker shuttle service as well.  Once past the soft spot, travel was more normal for the forestry road.
The first thing I noticed upon arival was the beautiful display of forest spring flowers all over the place.  The undergrowth nearby had gone nuts since the last time I was up to the observatory.  Another item to add to the work list.
The mosquitoes were happy to see us again, however they didn’t seem to have the same willingness to press the attack as usual.  Just a small amount of deet (carefully applied) sufficed to ward them off.
Rohit set up his 12″ dob on the pad and Oleg set up his equipment right next to him.  Oleg was setting up to do imaging.  He used a Equinox 80 mounted on an iOptron Cube mount.  During the night Oleg imaged M31 Andromeda Galaxy, M76 Little Dumbbell Nebula and NGC7331 Stephan’s Quintet.   Oleg imaged with a Canon 350D unmodified camera.  You can view his images at the following website:
Rohit continued his Messier hunt and was successful in finding M39 for the first time.  His list grows.  Rohit also set up my binos on my camera tripod as well.  I got a very nice view of M31 on this moonless night.  I was able to see aproximatly 1/2 of the disc on each side of the centre core.  Not bad for an urban setting.
While locating M31 I was fortunate to observe a really beautiful meteor streak south to north from Pegasus through Andomeda, then cutting the “W” of Cassiopeia in half and finally trailling off in Camelopardalis.  It was a real “sparkler” just like kids used to get at birthday parties when I was young enough to still look forward to them.  It had a slight orange appearance and left a “smoke” trail that persisted for several seconds after the meteor sputtered out.  That was the best I have seen in a long time.
I spent the rest of my night in the dome trying to obtain better focus with the camera.  I had some progress.  Practice will improve my abilities I hope.  The problem has also been this year that the weather has greatly limited our practice time with the equipment.  I spend far too much time re-learning what should come natural by now.
I was later joined by Rohit and Oleg in the dome.  We took off the camera and did some hunting with one of Oleg’s eyepieces.  We got a real nice view of M57.  I could definitely make out a greeny blue colour in the ring.  We also tried to split the “double double” in Lyra.  We are pretty sure that we split one of them, but I only split the other with my imaginary vision.  We also slewed to M2 and M4 to view these pretty little glogular clusters.  We also hunted down Neptune.  It was a tiny blue dot that didn’t sparkle at all.  Otherwise I think I would have had a hard time being certain we had found it.
By 2 o’clock our feet were starting to get cold and tired as we had all worked all day leading up to our night.  We decided to pack it in.
I once again shuttled Rohit and Oleg to their cars before departing for the night.  With one last look at our beautiful dark sky in the forest (Jupiter was just sneaking from behind the trees), I was off for home.  It was again nice to have the roadway lined by pretty forest spring flowers alluminated by my headlights as I drove down out of the forest.
Departed: 2:30 am
Temp: 13C
Darkness meter: n/a Could see hint of Milky Way.

Log entry: July 4, 2011

Members: Leigh,Mark
Arrive: 9:10 pm
Temp: 15 C
Weather clear and dry, still blue sky.
Mark commenced to setting up his new Astrotrac on the cement pad as soon as we arrived.  He wanted to learn how to use it and give it a test drive on familiar ground.
It didn’t take long to notice that the local musquitoe population was hungery and glad for some exotic take out food delivery.  A change is as good as a rest they say.  Nice that we could be of help.
I went up to the dome and started to prepare for the night ahead.  I was soon joined my Mark and we started by synching the telescope to Arcturus.  We then slewed the telescope to Vega and again re-synched the telescope.  After connecting the telescope to Maxin DL we mounted the camera and started it up as well.
We then moved the telescope to Beta Lyra to work on obtaining focus.  We found outselves battling some poor seeing that night.  The quality of the air would come and go.  Sometimes we thought we had real good focus, only to have the image go to pot in a few minutes.  It would then get better again.  Something we have come to get used to at the west coast.
After trying to fine tune the focus for a while we decided to try a test image of M57.  Things started out ok, however the seeing took a turn for the worse and we decided to quit with the camera.
Mark had brought his Ethos eyepieces with him so we decided to do some viewing with the main scope to see what we could see.  We slewed the scope over to M13 and what a view we got of the beautiful Herculius cluster.  Wow!  We used Mark’s 13mm eyepiece and the view was the best I have ever seen with my eyes of this cluster.  It was as good as a lot of images I have seen of it.  It made my night.
Mark was using his Cannon DSLR mounted on his Astrotrac to take some wide field images of Cygnus.  I have not seen any finished images from the night so I do not know how they turned out.  I’ll let him report on that.
By 11:30 the clouds started to role in so we decided to call it a night.  After shutting down and putting away the telescope and closing the dome, I brushed off the few remaining mosquitoes that discovered the hard way that weight does matter in the physics of flight.
Departed: 12:20 am
Temp: 14C
Darkness meter: n/a

AOMO LOG June 4, 2011

Members: Leigh, Rohit
Arrive: 9:20 pm
Temp: 14 C
Weather clear and dry, still blue sky.
While Rohit set up his 12″ Dob outside on the pad, I got on with opening up the dome and starting up the computer.  Although it was still a blueish sky outside, I was able to pick out Arcturus to slew the scope to.
I had opened “The Sky6” and once I had Arcturus in the scopes eyepiece, I linked The Sky6 to it.  I then tried to “synch” the scope position to Arcturus on The Sky6.  I could not accomplish this at all.  In fact I was unable to find the button on the program to allow this.  I do not know what setting is wrong on The Sky6 that is excluding this feature as of yet.  I will have to research this more and try to sort it out.
I opened MaximDL and after a few attempts I was able to link the scope to it.  I first had to go into MaximDL’s setup and fill in the AOMO’s location and time in order to get the correct sky map.  Once done I was able to link the telescope to the program and found the pointing of the telescope from that point on to be very accurate.  I did not have time to test the tracking that night.  As nothing has been changed with the mount I do not have any reason to believe that will differ any.
I then attached the SBig camera to the telescope.  My aim for the night was to achieve focus without moving the primary mirror.  After several attempts with various nose adapters on the camera I was able to achieve focus.  I then moved the telescope to nearby Eta Bootes which is magnitude 2.7 to try to refine my focus some more.  After some focusing and imaging and with Rohit’s help at the focuser controls I was able to achieve a FWHM of 5.8 with a count of 58000.  When I tried to refine this some more the numbers started to go wacky on me and went all over the place.  I was starting to get real frustrated when Rohit brought it to my attention that it had clouded over.  OOPS, I hadn’t noticed I was so intense on watching the computer screen.  We can now focus without moving the main mirror for several eyepieces, Canon DSLR, and the SBig camera.
While I had been up in the dome, Rohit was self teaching himself about collimation with his new 12″ Dob.  He had asked for my help from time to time and my opinion on his achievement.  I have to admit, I would be the last person that I would ask for help with collimation, but I was willing to critique his handiwork.  I thought he did real well for a first attempt.  I know like any other endevour,  the more practice you get the better you get and Rohit will get lots of practice after driving his Dob up that road to view.  Hopefully in the future he will have some better mentors than me to help him with his learning curve.
Rohit and I decided to give up once the clouds moved it so he helped me pack up the equipment in the dome and then we loaded up and headed down the hill.  The sky was great while it was clear.  It stayed quite warm and the bugs are not too bad as of yet.  That will change as it stays warmer at night.
Though Rohit’s dob we viewed Saturn, & M57.  Rohit will have to fill you in on what he viewed while I was occupied in the dome.
Things to do: find correct ASCOM driver for LX200 classic.
investigate Sky6 version and compare with others loaded on other computer.
Departed: 1:00 am
Temp: 13C
Darkness meter: n/a

AOMO LOG May 19, 2011

Members: Leigh, Rohit
Arrive: 9:00 pm
Temp: Not checked
Weather clear and dry.
I set up my HEQ5 mount with my Eclipse150 on the cement pad next to the power box.  Rohit set up his 12″ Dob on the north side of the cement pad.
We both started the night by viewing Saturn with various eyepieces.  Both of us observed two moons close to the outer edge of the rings.  The sky was nice and clear, however the air was still turbulent from the days heat.
I next slewed over to M13.  I must have done a decent job setting up the mount as it put M13 in the centre of the eyepiece.  The mount continued this performance all night long.  Sometimes you just get it righter than other times.  Rohit found M13 on his own so he can check it off his Messier list.  Next I slewed over to M57 and showed Rohit what it looked like.  He then hunted it down with his dob.  He was successful at finding it and I have to say when it comes to those fainter objects, aperture definately counts.  What a beautiful view through his dob.  Another check mark in Rohit’s Messier list.
We continued this pattern for the rest of our night.  I was able to position my scope to get M81 & M82 in my 27mm eyepiece at the same time.  Rohit then chased them down and give an even more impressive view with his larger aperture once again.  I also viewed M5, however with the moonlight taking away the fainter stars nearby, Rohit was unable to successfully star hop to it.  I know he will get it the next clear dark night.
The moonlight first luminated the tree tops near us at around 11:30 and by 1:30 the sky was getting quite bright.  We decided to call it quits at that point as we both had to get up in the morning.
Overall a good night for a couple of star starved astronomers.
Departed: 1:30 am
Temp: n/a
Darkness meter: n/a

April 23, 2011

Members: Leigh, Mark
Arrive: 9:00 pm
Temp: 9 C
Weather clear and dry.
Leigh opened dome and started computer in dome.  Leigh loaded drivers for SBig camera into computer from Mark’s flash drive.  Leigh then opened Maxim DL and tried to operate the camera.  It took four attempts to pick the correct settings to allow Maxim to connect to the camera.
Mark joined Leigh in the dome and we attemted to take some basic images of a bright star.  We found that with the current adapters available to us we were unable to obtain focus.  We did not want to change the telescopes prime focus as we have it correct for a Canon DSLR and we do not want to change that if possible.  We were happy with the fact that the camera was working.  We took some measurements with the aim of manufacturing or purchasing the proper spacers to obtain focus.
We then used Mark’s Ethos 13mm on the telescope to view M13.  We both agreed that we were treated to one of the most stunning views we have ever had of M13.  It was as beautiful as most images I have seen on the subject.  We agreed that we also should make some more adapters to allow the use of more eyepieces on the telescope without fudging the clamping in of the eyepiece.  We want to be able to just plop in an eyepiece with the appropriate adapter and achieve focus as we will with any selection of camera.  With a little patience and preserverance we will accomplish this.
Mark had set up his ED80 on his EQ3 outside to view Saturn.  He put in his Ethos 3.7mm 110 deg view eyepiece and we were completely blown away by the beautiful view we were given of our ringed jewel of the night.  It drew a wow!! from both of us.  It was a great way to complete the night.
We went back to the dome and viewed M87 in the Virgo cluster before packing it in for the night.
A great night of viewing to remind us of why we keep going in this hobby despite the lack of co-operation from our west coast weather.
Departed: 2:00 am
Temp: 7C
Darkness meter: n/a

Feb. 25, 2011

Members: Leigh, Mark

Mark arrive: 7:30 pm, Leigh arrive: 8:30

Temp: -8 C

Weather clear with some moisture at hight elevation.

Mark & Leigh set up Mark’s Tak on EQ6 and Leigh set up Vixen 95mm on HEQ5 on outdoor pad. Mark took images of M101 and M42 with DSLR. Leigh tried out new laptop to test battery durability and whether programs set up properly. Leigh was able to control telescope mount with laptop, however the cameras would not be found. Probably do not have correct drivers yet for Windows7 64bit system. Will need to do more work in warmth of own home. Laptop battery performed as advertised. Ran 4.5 hours and still showed 4 hours remaining. Happy!

Liquid mirror telescope working tonight. Laser visible and showed incoming clouds by 12:15am. Bands of cloud moved throug between 1:00 and 1:30am.

Departed: 1:30 am

Temp: -7C

Darkness meter: n/a

Feb. 13, 2011 Log

Members: Leigh

Arrive: 2:40 pm

Temp: 4 C

Weather was drizzle. Inspected dome and found no sign of leakage. I did notice that a roller on the east side of the dome is not taking any of the domes weight. There is actually a gap of between 1/16″ to 1/8″.

Spent rest of time counting inventory in file drawers. Removed all the old disks from the drawer marked “Disks”. There is no drive at the AOMO for the 5″ floppy discs nor for the digital tapes. The floppy discs and the CD’s need to be analyzed to see if they are worth keeping.

Departed 4:40pm

Temp: 3 C

Darkness meter: n/a