•20071102•
Decided to take a look at Comet 17P/Holmes after all the hub-bub. Was delighted to be able to see it naked eye from my light-polluted suburban back patio! So I trekked over to the dome and made a few exposures.
•20071020•
Getting back out after a few external repairs to the dome. Catching back up with the Meade DSI and DSI-pro with Meade's latest software using drizzle technology. Makes imaging a lot easier with the Classic LX200. Will make use of the narrow-band imaging filters shortly.
•20051028•
Mars returns for close approach...tried ToUcam straight and with 2x Barlow / stacking 2 2x Barlows / and the 5x TeleVue PowerMate. Divided my time shooting from the dome and remote shooting from inside. Temp mid 40's ClearSkyClock=VeryGood. Getting better results with the 5x than previously and taking 2,000 instead of 200 frame avi's. We'll see what the next few nights bring.
•20051008•
Getting back to some astronomy - and testing equipment for the upcoming Mars opposition. Took several shots with the ToUcam and Kathy's assistance.
•20050729•
Leo was back in hospital for 11 days with complications and returned to his home on the 22nd. Sadly, this morning, Leo succumbed to his last valiant endeavor...and I will greatly miss my best friend...and father.
Gary Cundiff
Parks Brothers Funeral Service has established a webpage and guestbook at The Leo Cundiff Obituary and Guestbook Page Please visit and consider signing.
•20050709•
Imaged M16 from the GladysLeo Observatory. Tracking getting better but still needs some tweaking. LazyFocus keeps very accurate control on the Meade 1209 Zero Image-Shift Focuser...alas...DSLR-focus only autofocuses Canon cameras.
The DSI-Pro allows us to use multi-second exposures for tracking faint magnitude guide stars with the LX-200. Many, many more targets are now open to us.
Leo is still trying to recover the use of his legs and we hope his progress continues.
•20050630•
Experimented with the Meade DSI-PRO...the Classic LX200 won't auto-guide but will auto-track (which is similar except it doesn't use the newer guide commands autostar uses). Imaged Altair, the Moon, and Mars. The DSI-PRO seems to work well.
Ordered and received a handheld LazyFocus encoder kit and assembled it. Should allow the Meade Zero-Image-Shift focus motor to autofocus. We might get a chance to try it out in a night or two.
•20050620•
Re-collimated the LX200 10" and used the ToUcam to image Mars, Uranus and Neptune...all were very tiny but Mars showed some detail.
Still haven't used the Burgess BinoViewer much...and we haven't even tried the DSI-PRO yet.
•20050530•
New equipment arrived: couple of weeks ago-Burgess BinoViewer with 20mm and 12mm eyepieces - and on the 27th-the Meade DSI-PRO imager with filter slider and filters.
Leo is still recovering at home and the weather has been uncooperative on the rare times since January we've had the extra time to image.
•20050116•
No new efforts since mid-December. Leo has been in hospital and has been scheduled to be released in two weeks. We have put astronomy on hold...and picked up an education in peripheral neuropathy. GET WELL SOON LEO!!
•20041210•
Tested the PST today using ToUcam/DSI/LPI/Nikon 5400. Visually, with the provided Cemax 12.5mm eyepiece, the PST looks great...prominences stand out and surface details can be picked out.
Imaging is tougher than anticipated:
The only way to image with the ToUcam (with all our accessories on hand) seems to be using it with the ScopeTronix MaxPower 1-1/4" screw-on magnifier (x2 barlow)...necessary to bring the ToUcam into focus. The DSI and the LPI seem to work better with the PST. We are evaluating the images now...more to follow...
•20041209•
Ordered the Coronado PST (Personal Solar Telescope) two days ago from Sarah at McAlister Camera & Imaging in Westerville Ohio and it arrived today. We will be playing with it tomorrow as soon as the sun comes up!
•20041204•
Finally had a chance to give the Meade DSI "first light". Played around with settings and techniques...then braved the chill and took some test shots of M42. Not too pleased with the DSI's included image manipulation program...but processing was a breeze with ImagesPlus. Overall the DSI seems to live up to it's advertising. I'm afraid more serious efforts at imaging will have to wait until the Howie Glatter Holographic Collimator arrives.
•20041122•
Not much to report other than unfavorable seeing conditions including clouds, storms, fog, haze, humidity, etc... Our Meade Deep Space Imager (DSI) arrived and is awaiting a clear view. Also ImagesPlus V2.10 (image acquisition/processing program with full Nikon D70 control) and a SAC f/5 -f/3 focal reducer (screws into bottom of 1.25" nosepiece or eyepiece) should be here this week. Still waiting on the backordered (8-15-04) Howie Glatter 1.25" / 2" Holographic Collimator from ScopeTronix.
•20041017•
It's been cloudy all week except for Thursday night and tonight Saturday. Tested our narrowband filters Thursday and tonight we imaged M57 and IC434 nebulas in H-alpha. This is amazing!!! Our suburban light pollution doesn't bother us now! It sure is nice
to get back in the dome in our own backyard. Speaking of the dome...Leo brought up the fact that it's time for another coat of paint before winter arrives....oh well - something else to do in the daytime while the sun remains virtually spotless.
•20040929•
We are preparing to switch our immediate efforts towards narrowband imaging. After consulting several sources we decided to add a trio of Schuler filters to start with: H-Alpha 656nm/10nm, Oxygen III 500nm/15nm and Sulphur II 673nm/10nm. Also ordered the Astronomik H-Beta 480nm/13nm filter. These filters will allow us to hopefully eliminate most of our suburban light pollution problems. The Astronomik Filter Drawer seems to be an appropriate mechanism for holding/changing filters in the photographic train so an order has been placed for one with 1.25" and 2" holders.
•20040912•
We went out to the club's site in Mounds a couple of times this week and imaged M42-Orion..M45-Pleides..M16-Eagle and IC434-Horsehead. The later two needed much more exposure time than we achieved and much better tracking (balance was inadvertently off-forgot to re-position the weights). The ToUcam through the Meade 60AZ-T at 350mm needs a barlow to increase the f-ratio. A 2x barlow would make it 700mm and we have a good barlow to use, but we will need a 1.25" eyepiece extension to accommodate the barlowed ToUcam. ScopeStuff has one and an order has been placed. We'll try some more at our dome till then.
Leo tried some 1600 speed film in one of his Miranda's but we found that the camera must have a light leaking back. We'll have to see what we can do to repair it.
We also placed an order for the yet-to-be-released Meade DSI (Deep Space Imager).
•20040827•
Ordered Hap Griffin's Nikon D70 IR remote parallel port cable (ships Monday) and upgrade to ImagesPlus 2.0 (shipped within an hour!!). This will allow us to control the Nikon D70 camera and shoot a sequence of long exposures automatically.
•20040821•
Gladys, Leo and Gary went out to Tulsa Astronomy Club's grounds in Mounds, OK (The Ronald McDonald Observatory) to wait on the clouds to clear and try some more astro photographs. All went well except the clouds decided not to cooperate, so we came back home early.
•20040718•
Gladys, Leo and Gary went back out to Tulsa Astronomy Club's grounds in Mounds, OK on a pretty clear night to try out the full portable rig (only forgot one extension cord !!).
Took a few shots of the Milky Way...it was a beautiful sight.
Successfully configured the ToUcam to autoguide through the Meade 60AZ-T after much trial and error and was able to image M27 with a few 5 minute guided exposures. It was, however, a bit of a surprise to find the sky lightening up around 5:15am (could have used another 30-45 minutes of exposures).
Waited around for the sun to rise and took some solar shots.
•20040621•
Still cloudy and rainy with thunderstorms throughout the area.
•20040614•
Went portable out at the Astronomy Club of Tulsa's site. Partly cloudy but the only chance we've had since the SVP goto conversion. Forgot the camera's IR remote so exposures were limited to 30 sec max. Got some images but due to the clouds/haze/fog none were really useful to post but the goto conversion worked well.
We're going to add an adjustable 1/4" tripod mount for the piggybacked Meade 60AZ-T refractor for auto-guiding. That will allow us to grab a guidestar easily since we can then point independently from the main scope.
•20040608•
Clouds on the Eastern horizon this morning for the Venus transit. We pretty much gave up yesterday after continuous cloudy/rainy/foggy weather over the past several days. And it looks like it won't let up for another week at least.
•20040601•
The Orion SkyView Pro mount has been successfully converted to Meade Autostar Goto capability. Works great and we're anxious to get out to a dark sky site and put it to work.
We have yet to decide on a viewing location for the upcoming Venus transit of the sun at sunrise June 8. We'll be on the end of the transit here in Tulsa when the sun rises, so a location that's up high would be the best we could manage. At least, at this point, the weather looks favorable for that day unlike the upcoming weekend which harbors rain chances.
•20040525•
Cloudy weather prevails.
We have ordered Goto4All brackets and Meade's 497 Autostar..we'll cannibalize the DS motors off the Meade 4.5" DS-114 reflector and add it all to the SVP mount turning it into a hopefully workable portable goto mount for the Orion 80mm ED APO.
•20040523•
Seeing wasn't very good this morning and the wind was S at 10-20mph. A few gusts were quite strong and one actually blew one of the dome's shutters off.
Setup the Orion 80mm ED APO on our new Orion SkyView Pro mount and easily leveled and polar-aligned it with the polar alignment scope. Took several test shots using the Meade Off-Axis Guider.
This rig now gives us portability without having to break down and haul the 10" around. We'll have to forgo the fancy CCD autoguiding and rely on ourselves to hand guide the scope with the off-axis guider out in the field (for now anyway)...but this test shows it can easily be accomplished.
•20040508•
IDAS LPS arrived on the 1st..seems to help quite a bit with our light pollution.
Ordered an Orion SkyView Pro mount for the 80mm ED APO for portability..arrived today. This will allow us to take the 80mm ED APO out to a dark-sky sight without having to break down and lug the 10" LX200..less equipment..less back strain and it will be able to setup much quicker.
•20040421•
Ordered the IDAS LPS filter from Hutech. This is the best filter for light pollution available and we welcome all the help we can get!
•20040419•
GladysLeo Observatory is located in a suburban backyard site which is rated 8 (9=worst) on the Bortle Scale. When it was built the rating was around 5. The city has grown up around us and so has the light pollution. Nevertheless, we are finding that we can still image (with the help of modern tools) many objects. We are learning that under such severe light pollution, many more shorter length exposures stacked together provide better images.
We hope to make an outing to a darker sky sight in a couple weeks to try out our equipment without so much city light pollution.
•20040328•
At last..fairly clear skies! Took several test shots with Nikon D70 piggybacked on the Meade Pictor 201XT guided 10".
•20040326•
William Optics 2" diagonal arrived. Still cloudy with storms on the way next couple of days.
•20040324•
The Nikon D70 arrived!
Which has of course caused cloudiness for several coming days.
•20040321•
The Milburn Ring/Rail set came in and holds the Orion 80mm ED APO atop the LX200 10". We re-balanced the mount and aligned everything to point at the same spot.
The Nikon D70 shipped the 19th and should arrive this week! Still waiting on the William Optics 2" (slip-in..non-SCT) diagonal which will ship from Anacartes when available.
Captured a double shadow event on Jupiter and tried to image M51 and M20...but the Nikon 5400 afocal setup just can't quite get much when limited to 30sec shots in our suburban setting.
•20040310•
The TeleVue SCT to 2" arrived last week and we've been putting it to use as often as the atmosphere cooperates. Still waiting on the Milburn Ring/Rail set. We fabricated a 2D weight balancing system for the Meade LX200 10" to help it handle the increased weight we are placing on it.
Captured DSO's M3, M27, M42, M45, and M57.
We have signed up on the waiting list for the new Nikon D70...possibly shipping next week.
•20040229•
Leap Day!
Waiting for the Milburn Ring/Rail set to arrive to secure the Orion 80mm ED APO to the LX200 10". Also waiting on the TeleVue SCT to 2" adapter and a William Optics 2" (slip-in..non-SCT) diagonal.
•20040215•
Seeing wasn't very good tonight, but good enough to test some things. First pix of Comet LINEAR (C/2002-T7)..Fuzzball..no discernable tail. Was imaging through the 10" though..will try on the Orion 80 ED APO next time..should give faster f-ratio to capture the faint short tail.
Skyfog limit won't allow our camera to shoot 3 minute exposures. We can shoot 1 minute exposures OK with about 1/3 of the exposure being skyfog. 3 minutes is way too long for our location in the city. We'll have to use DigiSnap 2000 to control the shutter and try 1.5 and 2 minute exposures to see how far we can push it here.
We're almost ready to go portable at a darker-sky location. We're curious to see how the cameras perform without so much skyfog.
•20040210•
Hooked up the Nikon 5400 with ScopeTronix MaxViewII 2" to the Orion 80mm ED APO using a 2" eyepiece extension...and that was still not long enough to achieve focus! We had to pull the eyepiece extender out some and then we could focus.
We also hooked up our new ScopeTronix STDT4 37mm Digi-T adapter to the Sony TRV87 camcorder..took some amazing video of Saturn, Jupiter, Moon!
We shot several more M42 exposures on the Miranda 35mm and Leo's getting his roll of film developed today so we'll get to check out our hard work.
ClearSky Clock looks bad for several coming nights
•20040208•
Leo's 35mm Miranda mated nicely to the Orion ED..with no need for the extra 2" extension or a diagonal to gain focus. Took pix in 30sec increments from :30 to 3:00 for his test.
Gary's 2" MaxViewII however could not reach focus and will have to wait for the 2" eyepiece extender on order....pulled out the 1.25" MaxView40 and was able to take a few test shots (Results can be seen on the DeepSpace and Lunar pages.)
Since we were testing our new equipment, we didn't much feel like taking too much more of the 20-degree weather, so we knocked off around midnight...and the ClearSky Clock doesn't look promising for tonight.
•20040207•
Finally..somewhat clear skies tonight. We'll be trying out several new systems for imaging.
•20040128•
We have ordered some new equipment and software to capture nebulas, galaxies and comets:
- Orion 80mm ED APO (will piggyback on the LX200 for photography and auto-guiding) - arrived 20040207
- ImagesPlus 1.72 (to manipulate our digital photos) - arrived 20040202
- ScopeTronix MaxView II (2" 40mm eyepiece for the Nikon 5400) - arrived 20040202