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Moon, 2005 Mar 16Here you will find the fruits of our hobby. Well, for Maria it is a hobby; for Roland it is closer to an obsession. Still, this is where you will find some of the fruits of that work. In March of 2000, we purchased an 8-inch Newtonian reflector on a Dobsonian mount from Orion Telescopes, the SkyQuest XT8.

Using the telescope was a learning experience, especially since time and responsibilities did not allowed us to get to any star parties or meet members from any clubs in the area for nearly a year. Usenet news on sci.astro.amateur was a lifesaver. Most of the time we were viewing from our 3rd story porch in Queens (in the eastern part of New York City). Views to the west were compromised by massive light pollution from Manhattan and during the coldest months the city generates significant heat that ruins the seeing even as high as 60 degrees above the horizon. Still, there are plenty of things which can be seen with the 8-inch scope, or for that matter, with our 10×50 binoculars.

In October of 2002 we moved to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. We no longer have the 3rd floor porch, but the skies actually seem to be darker. Some of this is because we are near the water which means that in some directions there really is less light pollution. We’ve also acquired some camera equipment and a several telescopes as Roland has gone on a shopping spree (not really, it just kind of accumulates). At this point we have a couple of smaller scopes includeing a 90mm f/5 refractor, its bigger brother, a Orion 120ST 120mm f/5, and older Tasco 60mm f/11 (or so, not quite sure), and an Orion Apex 127mm. And since the imaging bug bit, I’ve acquired a Losmandy GM-8 mount with Gemini GOTO and an older “push-to” Mountain Instruments MI-250 mount. Storage is a problem, but having enough scopes for kids activities is not.

Lost Drivers from the Days of Windows 7

So I haven’t used my Orion ST120 in a while which means I’ve gone through two OS upgrades from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and recently to Window 11. Which means I don’t have a driver for my archaic James Lacy LazyFocus controller that goes with my very nice first generation Moonlite focuser. Fortunately, I’m …

Lost Drivers from the Days of Windows 7Read More

PixInsight Background/Gradient Removal

Sometimes, you just have to keep asking the same question over and over again until you get a good answer. PixInsight has some really good background/gradient removal tools and if you use PixInsight, you’re immediately thinking of the Dynamic Background Extraction (DBE) or Automatic Background Extraction (ABE). Truth is, that’s what I always think of, …

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NGC 7000

This is the object that got me hooked on astrophotography. Well, sort of. I started a long time ago with a Pentax 35mm film camera and a CG5 mount and tried to take a picture of Cygnus. It was horribly underexposed, but one of the frames had just enough exposure to make out the North …

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Leo Triplet, Luminance Mosaic Test

This was shortly after (I think) some work to improve the collimation on the Ritchey-Chretien. I don’t know why I didn’t concentrate on a single target, but I jumped around from several last March, so once again I have mediocre data on all. Object M65, M66, NGC 3628 Camera ASI1600MM-Pro, Luminance Only Lens/Scope AstroTech RC6 …

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M36 with Marginal Collimation, a Misbehaving Mount, and Poor Seeing

And if that title wasn’t enough to pull you in… The seeing in Brooklyn is always bad. I’m on a flight path to LaGuardian. So 3-arcsec is typical. And did I mention I’m in Brooklyn, NY? So the light pollution is always bad. Which make star clusters reasonable targets. Object M36, Open Cluster Camera ASI1600MM-Pro, …

M36 with Marginal Collimation, a Misbehaving Mount, and Poor SeeingRead More