Saturday, October 8, 2011
Full-moon and clouds do not make for good astrophotography...
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Thursday, September 29, 2011
Before shooting auroras, I captured 60s exposures for this milky way time-lapse: The bright star that starts out about mid-height to the left of the middle is Deneb, the brightest star in the constellation Cygnus. As it swings down and to the right the Andromeda galaxy becomes visible in the top left corner towards the [...]
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Some nice northern lights (aurora borealis) appeared just as I was going to pack away by tripod and camera after shooting another fixed-tripod milky-way time-lapse. So no packing away and instead Aurora Borealis shooting for another three hours. These are 20s exposures through a 17mm/F4 lens on a Canon 500D at iso3200. Fixed tripod. The [...]
Monday, September 26, 2011
Up north away from the civilisation light pollution, it's easy to see the milky way with the naked eye. Here's a short time-lapse of 60s exposures with the camera on a fixed tripod (I didn't drag my tracking-mount with me this time). Without a dew-heater it didn't take long for the lens to fog up [...]
Saturday, September 18, 2010
I turned these knobs from 40mm stock on a manual lathe during the week, and JI cnc-milled them to shape today. There's still one bit missing from the wedge: the fine-adjustment piece for the azimuth-angle during polar alignment. I'll try to make it on the lathe next, and then everything should be ready for anodizing.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
CNC machined two side-plates for the equatorial wedge today. Next up are some M10 and M6 knobs on the lathe, and the fine-adjustment for azimuth. Then all parts should be polished and anodized.
This is the top plate of the wedge which will be tilted so that the alt/az mount which is bolted to it has its azimuth axis pointing towards the celestial north pole. The side-plates will have to wait until next weekend.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
I'm building an equatorial wedge which will transform my new alt/az goto-mount into an equatorial mount. This is the first part which attaches to the tripod. Two smaller side plates will be bolted to this plate and support a similarly shaped tilted plate to which the alt/az head attaches. The design is similar to the [...]
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Wide-field shot of the area around Leo. The bright dot low and right of center is Mars, and I think next to mars is the open cluster M44 (a.k.a. "the beehive cluster" or "Praesepe"). These pictures really need to be taken on nights without the moon. There's a huge gradient from dark to bright towards [...]
3 x 20 min = 60 min exposure of Ursa Major through a 17-40/4L lens at ca 17mm and stopped down to F5.6. There is something funny with the polar-alignment or the guiding which makes the stars in the lower left corner not look good.