12/30/2018 Camper has a Door

And now the camper has a door. The start of a door at least. The hard part, the hanging, is done. I’ll put aluminum angle around the door frame for strength and weather resistance. This might well be the only place where there is plywood on the outside, not counting the underneath. The walls and roof will be rigid foam covered by paint soaked canvas. A technique referred to as “poor man’s fiberglass”. Back to the door, when the latch arrives I will take the door down again and install it and then I’ll put the opposite stud in at the best location.

The Orion Nebula 12/28/2018

On what might be the final clear night of the year, I set up my C11 (Elf) and used my Canon EOS t5 to take this picture. I used BackyardEOS to control the camera. This is 21 30 second images combined. I haven’t done deepsky other than with the stock lens of my camera in a long time and I’ve forgotten the techniques I once knew. The seeing Friday was not as bad as predicted but not great and focus was hard to come by. Once I worked through the details of acquisition, I got my images. After acquisition I remembered my focal reducer/corrector which would have helped, this is prime focus at f/10. Saturday morning I auto aligned in Photoshop and switched back to Lightroom for processing. Click image for a larger view.

12/23/2018 Comet P46/Wirtanen

I had my first opportunity to try to image the comet tonight. With a small window of opportunity before the Moon rose I traveled light and just set the DSLR on a tripod. This is a 30 second shot at ISO 6400. Maybe in a few days it will be clear again and I can use the SCT. The bright star at the top is Capella, the comet is a little lower and to the left.

Comet P46 Wirtanen in Aurigae
LinkedIn
LinkedIn
Share