Saturday morning I got up at the uncharacteristic hour of just after 10AM. I don't know how I pulled that off, as my bladder felt like a water tower. Nothing beats running while you're still waking up...
After that close call, I went downstairs to say Hi to the girls. I was informed that they were going to my wife's parents for the day to go shopping, etc, we'll probably stay the night, do you want to come?
OK Mark, clear the cobwebs and think quick here. If I go and go do this shopping thing, I will be with three girls/women ranging in ages 14-70. That might not fare too well for yours truly.
I know my wife's father won't go either.
I could sit with him while the girls are out shopping, but he'll either complain all afternoon, fall asleep, or probably a bit of both. Fun times.
Either way, dinner will come to pass, the wine will flow, and I'll get to hear the same stories I've heard more times than there are asteroids in the belt
Then everyone will pass out and wake up with a bit of a hangover. That will make for an exciting time at breakfast, for sure.So after that 5 seconds of thought, I said, "Nah, I think I'll just stay here, maybe do some housework and a few other things". My wife looks at me; probably surprised I used the word housework without an expletive before or after it, and says "OK, have fun".
Well, I'll have more fun here by myself than with the out-laws... But I will miss the girls...
Ahh, housework. Let's extrapolate here:
noun - regular work done in housekeeping, such as cleaning, shopping, and cooking.
Hmmph. I think to myself, 'the place is pretty clean, my dear wife got the groceries yesterday, so all I really have to do is cook something for me for dinner'.
Man, that was easy
I spent the afternoon welding up a bench mount and some connecting shelf brackets for my shed. I've been meaning to do this all summer, but welding in a shed with a hot tin roof at 90F+.... I'll pass. Yesterday was only 70 out, so that was bearable for the most part.
4PM and I was hungry. Finished up what I was doing and fired up the BBQ. I had a couple cheeseburgers and a salad. The
She finished my salad as I stretched out on the couch. Happy that she got her salad fix, she came over to stretch out on my stomach. Thanks, just what I want; a fat
I open my eyes. The
I get a drink, go outside, and see the Moon off to the south east a bit. Still rather light out, but I go get my 80mm and camera. I take the mount out of the shed and set everything up. Now it's just after 8PM, still twilight; I took 24 shots anyways. I put away the BBQ, check on the
After my laundry and a few other things are done, I go back out at 11PM. Not the clearest of nights by far. No humidity at all, just high thins. The Moon is setting to the west, and I think why not; take some more shots. Took another 24, then I took 24 darks to go with them. The last time I did the darks thing, it helped with the "cross-hatch" pattern I sometimes get from AS2 when it's humid/thin clouds outside while taking pics. The darks cleared it right up.
Both images are taken with a Canon T3 through a C80-HD
This first one is at 8:06PM. I used the darks I took to make the sky blacker than it really was:
And this is at 11:30PM. You can see the change in orientation as the time passes. There's a term for this and I completely forget what it is
After that was done, I sat for a bit, looking at the Moon between Saturn and Jupiter. As I was doing so, a plane flew slowly in from the south. In a few seconds, I could see it was going to pass in front of the Moon. Made sure the scope was lined up, waited a few seconds...
Well. It's midnight, now what? I consider trying some manual tracking and
As I'm staring at my scope, it hits me.
I line up the mount with Polaris. To do this, I take off the cap where the polar scope goes and eyeball the star through the hole
I then get the scope lined up so the star stays put in the viewfinder crosshairs as I turn the Now I don't have to worry about star trails
Not the most interesting target for sure, but I figure with my I take 10 shots at 10 seconds, 4 at 15 seconds, 3 at 20 seconds, and finally 2 at 30 seconds. Turn the camera off, go get a T-shirt and my tablet, open up white.htm, and proceed to take 20 flats.
Off comes the shirt, on goes the lens cap, and as I'm proceeding to take the first of 20 X 30 second darks, the battery light comes on the camera
Well, I don't have the 10 minutes it'll take to do all those flats. So I take four at 30, four at 20, etc. I know, I don't have a spare battery... Bad FatKitty.
I take the camera downstairs and upload the files to the computer. The camera shut off about 10 seconds after the last file, so good timing there!
I then load the files into
They all stacked well, though I believe some more flats would have been in order. And what I can't figure out as well is why Polaris has these three spikes coming off it? It's like I was using a Tasco reflector; they have three arms holding the secondary. I figure it's an achromatic thing...? No matter.
And I certainly learned a few things. I admire you folk who do this; people seem to think it's easy, and it is not. Just getting the flats to be right is work in itself, and I've just scratched the surface, I know. Not to mention the equipment!
Anyways, here is one of the two 30 second shots untouched (notice the dust bunnies, vignetting), and the next one is it and the other 30 second picture stacked in
All that took me to about 3AM. I went back out, but I could barely see the Pleiades, which were just over the roof. Had some leftovers, and called it a night at 4.
And today I woke up at 10. The girls got back at 2PM, bearing clothes and food and "Oh guess what happened", etc. They had fun, it would seem.
I'm glad they did. So did I
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading and have a great night/day,
