David's Astrophotography Chronicles Let's see how far this goes... Pictures are shown from my first attempts to the latest attempts |
Updated : February 15, 2004
Current Telescopes: Meade 3.5" ETX90EC May 2003 Meade 8" LX200 GPS/SMT Jan 2004 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - I have always enjoyed looking up into space and contemplating our existence in it. However, it doesn't take long before my brain starts to hurt. Space cannot end, right? If it does, what is on the other side? Thinking about us being on a rock that is hurtling through space around a star helps put things in perspective for me, especially when I start to take myself too seriously. My first telescope was used. A co-worker needed some cash and asked if I would be interested in it. It came in a wood box and was long and white. Looked pretty cool, so I bought it from him for $50. This was around 1975 or so. I had no books, manual, or instructions of any kind, so I just set it up and picked the easiest target in the night sky, the moon. My first look at the moon through this telescope was incredible. I could actually see the craters in detail. It was fantastic. Soon I had another surprise. I put in a eyepiece with higher magnification and saw craters in greater detail, however, the moon quickly vanished out of the view! Where did it go? I looked up and sure enough, it was still there. We all know that the solar objects move around each other but now I could actually see the motion through the this telescope. It was really fun to actually see the moon move out of the view. The telescope had a finite movement control knob that would let you track the moon as it moved so that you could keep it in view. One day not too long after purchasing the scope, I put it in the trunk of my car to take to a friends house. I don't remember if my friend saw it or not, but I know I left it in the trunk of my car for awhile. The next time I opened the box to use it, the front lens had fallen out. I never did try to put it back together, and I still have that scope somewhere. Since then, I have wanted another scope. Well, I finally got another one last month. A Meade ETX-90EC with UHTC. Meade is running a sale on the ETX series where you get a free tripod and autostar controller (saving $350). So I did it. Thanks Cathy! So far it is a blast. However, I am quickly learning the capabilites (pro and con) of a 3.5 inch catadioptic telescope. However, seeing Jupiter and Saturn for the first time (I could not make out the cassini division in Saturn's rings) was a thrill I will not forget, however small they appear in this telescope. Several neighbors and their kids also got a thrill out of Saturn and Jupiter. Since I already have a Kodak DC280 digital camera, it is only natural to want to take pictures. My first efforts involved trying to hold the camera as close to the eyepeice as possible to take the pictures. That did not work out too well, so I bought an adapter to mate the camera to an eyepiece. That works much better, but there is only so much you can do with a Kodak DC280. Time to break out the SLR Canon AE1 and mount it piggy back. Note: There are some outstanding astro photographers out there with web sites. If you look at theirs and then mine you may wonder why I bother. Because it is fun. It is the journey the counts. David D. Robinson |
Put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars. Sir James Jeans (1877-1946), English Astronomer |
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My Story... |
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My Story Part Two... January 21, 2004...As you can tell by the pictures I have had a lot of fun with the ETX90 scope. At first I was very frstrated with the new scope. It is a go-to scope. You are supposed to be able to punch in what ever it is you want to see on it's hand control and it will "go-to" that object. Well, it aint' that easy! First, we had what seems like about six weeks straight of clouds. I couldn't believe it. That is why there is only on set of pics in May. So after the skies clear up I start the alignment learning process. To align the scope you put it in a "home" position or a Polar position> Polar alignment is for pictures because the soope will only move on it's left to right axis instead of moving on both it's left and right axis and it's up and down axis. After putting it in eiher home or polar position, It will then go to two stars which you identify as correct and center in the eyepiece. Now it knows where it is. After learning all of this and setting it up it would work okay for awhile then take off on it's own. I thought it was defective. This went on for awhile. I was getting very frustrated with it. One night I decide to take it out to a "dark" sky sight at work to get away from the neighborhood lights. Instead of using the AC from the house I had to use the power from the car. Guess what? The scope worked perfectly! It went to all the objects like it is supposed to do. You should have seen me. I was so excited. Everytime it would go to a new globular cluster or open cluster I would let out a little yell (yahoo) and do a little dance. This is what is was all about. I bet I must have looked funny to someone not knowing what I was doing out there. Since then I have purchased a portable power supply that is DC and it has worked fine. Since it starting working correctly I have been out in the driveway with it a lot. I mean a lot. I would even get up at 4 a.m. on the weekends to see what the morning sky has to offer. At sawn I would go back to bed for a few hours. Lots of fun, but I bet the paper devlivey folks think I am crazy. In Sept Cathy let me purchase a Nikon Coolpix 4500 digital camera. She wanted to get a digital camera for our son for Christmas and she knew that I wanted this one. Plus it had a $200 rebate since it was being discontinued. So I bought it and gave the Kodak to Brett. He is happy and I am happy. The pictures from Sept on are with the Nikon. The Nikon works much like an SLR. You can change the ISO from 100 to 800 and change the aperture and the shutter speeds. It even has a 5 minute bulb. That is what I really wanted on a digital camera. The Kodak only had a two second adjustment on it's bulb. But after awhile the small 3.5" aperature on my scope was beinning to only tease me. Looking at the Andromeda galaxy in the scope is like looking at a "smear". You can only make out the bright center when looking through the scope. It is different when I take a longer exposure of it through the camera. Two minute exposures on a digital camera's CCD chip gathers a whole lot more light than what the human eye sees through a telescope. Through the scope globulars all look like small fuzzy tennis balls. I could only see the "hole" in the ring nebula if I looked at it through the side of my eyss instead of directly looking at it. Even this leaves a lot to the imaination sometimes. At first this was fun in itself just to know that I was looking at a "glob" or a nebula or whatever. But it was getting harder to excite myself to take the scope out anymore. to see these feint fuzzy objects. So, in early January I noticed that a telescope store had a 8" Meade LX200 GPS w/o the new smt and LPI gadgets for sale at a considerable discount. It had some shipping damage and was returned to the factory for repairs and once returned it had to be sold as "damaged". After talking Cathy into buying it I hem and hawed around before I made my decision. to go ahead and buy it. This was a process of about five days. I even called the store twice to make sure they still had it. But when I decided to buy and called for the third time it was gone! I was pissed and bummed. So a month later I noitce that the same store has another one except it has the smt and lpi gadgets but it is used. It was not quite as good a deal a the first one, but pretty close. This store has a good reputation so even though I will not have a one year factory guarantee, I bought it last Monday. Still waiting for it to arrive. It will be quite the leap from the ETX. Should be a lot of fun. Stay tuned for pics and a write up. David D. Robinson |
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