M92

Managed to get a quick image of M92 during special viewing session with Boothe Memorial Astronomical Society (BMAS) on Sunday evening.  Messier 92 is a very bright (+6.4) globular cluster located in the Hercules constellation.  This image is only 7.5 minutes total exposure, I've taken other images of clusters with much longer exposures and they aren't as bright.  It has a diameter of 115 light-years and estimated to have 400,000 stars.  One more Messier object off my list (Messier Objects with an ED80 by Kurt Zeppetello), although I plan to get a longer exposure of this object. 

M92
Location: St John's Cemetary, Monroe, CT
Date/Time: 08/07/16 10:15 pm
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T3i, Backyard EOS
Telescope: Orion ED80 80mm f/7.5 Apochromatic Refractor Telescope
Barlow: None
Focal Length: 600mm
f/7.5
Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G GoTo Telescope Mount
Filter: Astronomik CLS, 2" (48mm)
Autoguiding: QHY-5L-II-M attached to and Orion Short Tube 80mm
Exposure: 15 x 30 sec (7.5 min)
ISO: 1600
Temp: 32 C
Post Processing: Deep Sky Stacker, Photoshop, Lightroom

Good Night at Booth Hill Observatory

Pretty good turn out and a better than expected observing night at the Boothe Memorial Astronomical Society (BMAS) Observatory on Friday 5-20-16.   Regular meetings are from 8-10 pm on the 1st and 3rd Friday's of each month, all are welcome...

Taken with Canon T3i (600D)

Taken with Canon T3i (600D) mounted on Allen's 9.5 inch SCT.

First Shot of Jupiter from the BMAS Observatory

This was the first shot of Jupiter from the rebuilt Boothe Memorial Astronomical Society (BMAS) 16-inch reflector. It was sky not ideal for planetary imaging as there was lots of atmospheric disturbance, also Jupiter was not overhead so images are not as clear as they could be.  I published an image a couple weeks ago based on 1000 stacked frames.  However, another BMAS member, Elliott Severn, informed me that I could could combine all three 1000 frame video clips in Registax if I convert them to single frames. Since I use Backyard EOS (BYE) and BYE already creates single frame jpeg's along with the video clip it was easy to bring them into Registax.  Another program I used prior to Registax was Planetary Imaging PreProcessor (PIPP) which among other things, can cut down the size of the file Registax has to work with. So here is the newly reprocessed image.

Image 1 - Reprocessed (1950/3000 frames)

Image 2 - Reprocessed, Cropped to the same Size as the Original Image (1950/3000 frames)

Image 3 - Original Image (650/1000 frames)

Astronomy Night at Boothe Park

The newly refurbished 16'' f/15 telescope at the Boothe Memorial Astronomical Society (BMAS) Observatory in Boothe Memorial Park is operational (thanks George).  At our regular meeting on Friday November 20, 2015 we finally had a good first light with all the equipment working as planned.  Meetings are open to the public and are from 8:00 - 10:00 pm the 1st and 3rd Friday's of each month.

Below are some images of the moon through the scope that I took and a link to a video survey that Elliott Severn shot.  The images of the Orion Nebula were taken through my Orion ED80.  There was nothing fancy about it I just had few minutes and decided to take a 30 second unguided image.

Link to the video survey by Elliott: video survey

Moon Images

Location: BMAS Observatory, Stratford, CT

Date/Time: 11/20/15 10:53 pm
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T3i

Telescope: 16 inch Reflector Telescope

Mount: Huge Sturdy Dinosaur (Unk)

Autoguiding: none
Focal Length: 6000mm

f/15

Exposure: 250s 

ISO: 800

Post Processing: none

M42 - Orion Nebula

Location:  BMAS Observatory, Stratford, CT

Date/Time: 11/20/15 10:44 pm
Camera: Canon EOS Rebel T3i

Telescope: Orion ED80 80mm f/7.5 Apochromatic Refractor Telescope

Mount: Orion Sirius EQ-G GoTo Telescope Mount

Autoguiding: none
Focal Length: 600mm

f/7.5

Exposure: 30s 

ISO: 800

Post Processing: PS