Alignment Stars: Arcturus, Antares
Calibration Stars: Deneb, Alberio

Not the best night for observing, but it has been a long week and I just wanted to get outside, look up, and get a bit lost in the stars. I have not had the Celestron C8 set up in a couple of months and I have been looking forward to trying some of my new eyepieces in it.

I installed Bob’s Knobs on this scope since the last time I set it up so I had to collimate first. Took a little while to do this, but it would have taken a lot longer with the Phillips screws originally installed. I collimated using the 13mm and 9mm Nagler eyepieces.

I did a quick polar alignment – not really spending a lot of time getting a precise polar alignment since I was only planning on visual observing. Even so I had the mount aligned pretty well. Did the two star alignment with a couple of calibration stars and the GOTOs were right on.

The views through the 33mm were very nice. Crisp and bright with a nice wide field of view.

My plan for the night included M27, M29, and M71 before the light from Moon rise washed out most of the fainter objects.

From my observing notes:

Messier 27 (M27) The Dumbbell Nebula – A lot larger that I thought it would be in the 22mm Panoptic. Looked like 2 faint clouds in the 13mm Nagler. Tried the O III filter which produced a bit better contrast that showed more detail to the center. The 33mm SWAN showed the nebula with a nice star field background. This will definitely be a target for my camera in the near future.

Messier 29 (M29) – Open Cluster – In the 22mm Panoptic I observed 7 bright stars and 6 fainter stars. The 13mm revealed a couple more fainter stars. In the 13mm I could count 16 stars that appeared to be part of the cluster.

Messier 71 (M71) – The moon rose about 10:30 and I was not able to find this one in the eye piece. Will try again another night.

After the Moon rose I observed M4, M3, M10, and M12. I was able to observe each of these objects, but I did not make notes.

The Celestron 6″ SCT is considerably lighter and the mount seems to handle the weight of it along with the AT66 better. I am using the Dual Scope Mounting plate and dovetail that I picked up from ScopeStuff.com. The ScopeStuff.com accessories are great quality and very affordable. If you are looking for rings, dovetails, or other mounting accessories be sure to check them out at http://www.scopestuff.com/. I have a couple other things on my wish list that I will be picking up from there.

Had everything setup this past weekend hoping to get a look at Comet McNaught but the skies never cleared. Ended up having to take everything down on Saturday night because of the threat of some severe thunderstorms. Even though I have a TeleGizmos 365 cover, I am not going to leave it out in that kind of weather if I can help it. I am hoping to maybe get another opportunity to get a look at Comet McNaught later this week.

I also have a couple of new TeleVue eyepieces I am looking forward to giving a try. Can’t wait for clear skies…

Have not had a chance to check it out yet, looks like it was designed for a Meade scope but there are options to set it up for a Celestron.

Will let you know when I get a chance to try it out.

Celestron Piggyback Mount for 8", 9.25", 11" and 14" SCT

I have been doing a lot of reading around the ‘net on piggyback astrophotography and I am looking forward to practicing. I have taken some shorter exposures from just the tripod that have turned out OK, but I am guessing with a little practice and a properly aligned scope they will be spectacular.

The nights this week have been cold and clear but the clouds are suppose to roll in today and hang with us for most of the weekend.

From Celestron’s Knowledge Base:

Rough Polar Alignment

Accurate Polar Alignment

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From Sky and Telescope – DIY Accurate Polar Alignment
Sky and Telescope also has a bunch of other great Astronomy DIY articles.

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Observatorio ARVAL – Polar Alignment
This is an article on aligning a Meade LXD55/75 scope, but the general procedure holds true for all equatorial mounted scopes.

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There are many more if you do a quick search on Google, but these are a few that I read and found helpful.  Celestron’s KB is actually a great place to find a lot of good information, not just about Celestron scopes, but about amateur astronomy in general.

If anyone else knows of any good resources for how to polar align your scope, feel free to add them to the comments.

Jupiter 11/01/08 18:43

Not too bad.

I was out from just after sunset till a few minutes ago.  It has been a long day, so I will have a look at the others I got tomorrow.

Lastnight the weather was good and the sky was clear. I set the C8 scope up in the early afternoon and decided that the focus of this session would be getting myself familiar with the Celestron NexImage Solar System Imager.

I spent a couple of hours in the early evening viewing Venus and Jupiter. I also spent a lot of time practicing focusing on the planets while the camera was attached and trying different configuration options in AMCap, which is the capture software that comes with the Celestron NexImage Solar System Imager, to figure out what works best. I did not get any images lastnight and I was not really trying to, but I did learn alot about the camera and the settings.

I also found a great quick set up guide with some basic instructions on configuring AMCap to use with the NexImage and I have stored it locally here Quick Guide to Capturing Images with the Celestron NexImage Solar System Imager. The originial document can be found at http://www.nexstarsite.com/download/ImagingWithNexImage.pdf

If the weather is nice next weekend I hope to get out an actually get a few images of Jupiter.  Then I will be able to have a go at processing them.