short book review
Exploring Mars by Robert S. Richardson It doesn’t take long getting into the book that yes indeed, it was published in 1954. No landing on Mars, travel to Mars, or…
Perseid 2016 peak
The total count for the night was 58, of which one of them looks suspiciously like an alien spacecraft veering off course in just over 6 hours. The first recorded…
Perseid runup 2016
It has been surprisingly clear in the runup to the 2016 Perseid meteor shower. Over the last few days we have had captured on our allsky2 system: Tue 20160802: 14…
Mars 20160718
Was imaging the moon last night just after sunset and managed to start two and only two runs of Mars when the bus stopped and all the mosquitos got out…
Mars 2016 June 23
We went out Thursday evening 2016 June 23rd after sunset.. ie 21:00EDT! wow! Found Mars pretty quickly and ran 10 imaging sessions from 01:11 UT to 01:28UT.. only 17 minutes!…
Our 1st meteor smoke trail!
Early this morning at approx 03:07:12 EDT (07:07:12 UTC) we had a good, bright bolide/fireball, and even better it was right overhead, and even better… it left a smoke trail!…
Saturn 20160524 UT
Saturn the same night as Jupiter and Mars, but even lower to the horizon. No cassini division visible, poor seeing and poor transparency. It can only get better!
Mars 20160524 UT
Mars as imaged still very low to the southeastern horizon, right in the light pollution dome of Kingston, Ontario. Mars is approaching closest approach for the next 26 months and…
Jupiter 20160524 UT
It’s been 10 days since my last imaging run, mostly because of being away for the last week and then prepping for the last week. Went outside and discovered that…
Jupiter 20160514 UT
A poor session of imaging Jupiter in the evening. Gets dark very late now… not worth imaging before 21:30 EDT. Otherwise I get strange colour balancing going on with RGB…
Jupiter 20160611 UT
I modified the LX200 back to planetary imaging (after the Mercury Transit event) by removing the f3.3 focal reducer and putting the microfocuser back on, along with the televue x3…
Mars 20160528
Well, Mars did not turn out too well last night. At best it was 17 degrees off the horizon. What with mosquitos and cloud coming in, that was as good…
Jupiter 20160506 UT
Went outside to clear skies and a bit of a wind to test out the celestron nextar GT mount. In the meantime I fired up a new beta of firecapture…
Telescope mount reno
The Transit of Mercury is coming up soon and we are still scrambling to put together a tracking telescope mount in case we have to go travelling to get out…
Jupiter 20160428
Another attempted Jupiter imaging session Wednesday evening.. I know I know, up against “Survivor!” There was high passing cloud that “Clear Outside” said was 2%. Ha! It sure was lit…