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We Do It at Night

Entry 740, on 2008-04-11 at 14:01:49 (Rating 1, Activities)

Last night was a fairly clear night and the temperature was quite pleasant (this is Dunedin so what do you expect) so I dragged the old 'scope out and had a bit of a look around the sky. My telescope is a Celestron C8 on a Polaris equatorial mount which is a good compromise between optical power and portability, and it only takes a few minutes to get my "observatory" (which consists of the 'scope and mount, a power supply, my Canon digital SLR camera, my Mac laptop connected through wireless, and a few miscellaneous pieces of furniture) up and running.

Unfortunately I still don't have everything aligned properly so astrophotography is a bit limited, but I have included a picture with this blog entry. I concentrated on the area of the sky around Orion, Canis Major, Carina, and Puppis and located a few nice open clusters and nebulae, including the rather bizarrely named "Mexican Jumping Star" which is actually a cluster in Canis Major with a brighter central star. Nothing was jumping but it was a nice little cluster anyway.

Living in a city doesn't allow the best possible views of the sky because of light pollution from street lights, but its still possible to see thousands of objects with a decent telescope. When I visit a remote location with a genuinely dark sky I find it just stunning how good the sky looks. That's why I bought a smaller telescope which was fairly easy to transport (even the "smaller" C8 cost over $3000 second-hand).

It can be difficult to get motivated enough to set up the equipment and spend an hour or two outside - especially on the colder winter nights (and winter is the best time because it never gets really dark in summer) but if I strike some good seeing conditions (with clear, still skies) its all worth it. After all, as the old bumper sticker I used to have said, astronomers do it at night!

Comment 1 (1394) by Andy on 2008-04-11 at 14:16:12:

You need to get your tracking working a bit better because your stars don't look very round in this photo!

Comment 2 (1402) by OJB on 2008-04-14 at 10:18:57:

Ah yes, I had noticed that. That's why I said "I still don't have everything aligned properly so astrophotography is a bit limited".

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