The first night out was July 5th at Indian Trail Springs (ITS) in the Ochocco Mountains; this was a great night with the only real negative being the pesky flying insects that resulted in me batting furiously at my face as often as I was paying attention to doing my imaging. I resolved to add mosquito netting to my accessories. There were beautiful skies that night and I managed a fairly nice picture of M16 (2x480” exposures), the Eagle Nebula, shown below. My setup, until later in the summer, was the same one I had used last year in Arizona, sporting my new SXVR-M25C camera on an 80mm Orion EON refractor, with a separate 80mm guide-scope mounted in parallel on a cross-bar. I also imaged M31 (Pinwheel galaxy), M33 (Andromeda galaxy), NGC7000 (North American Nebula), M20 (Triffid Nebula), M22 (Globular cluster), M101 (spiral galaxy), and the Pacman nebula. It was a very productive night, with many images coming out fairly nice… but, with so many targets, it’s clear that I didn’t have a lot of exposure time on any single one of them. Here are a few of the better ones:
M16, the Eagle Nebula from ITS 7/5/11
M22 - Globular Cluster
M33 - The Pinwheel Galaxy
M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy
On July 28th I started out again for ITS, but when I got to Madras I saw the smoke of a forest fire to the south that seemed to be blowing in that direction; as a result, I changed my mind and headed up to RCA’s Trout Lake Star Party. It was early (a Thursday) and only a few people were there. That night was very good and I managed to get a picture of Comet Garrad (below) that, though not great, was published in the next RCA publication of the Rosette Gazette. That night I also imaged NGC6990 (Western Veil), NGC1499 (California Nebula), the Heart Nebula, and M8 (Lagoon Nebula). The Lagoon, a favorite target, wasn’t great because it was low on the horion and I had trouble guiding. The Heart and California Nebula were new targets for me and the Western Veil was one that I had been wanting to get back to because the bright star in it was always problematic for my old ST-402 camera because it always bloomed. Though I planned to stay for the duration of the star party, the second night opened with what appeared to be a disaster: my mount failed. The power light flashed and the mount, instead of slewing to one of my alignment stars, sat there and made the unnerving sound of grinding gears. I’m not into debugging things in the night using nothing but a weak red light, so I packed up and went to bed. I left the next morning, motivated by the opportunity to both see my daughter (home for a visit from her camp counselor job) and attend a family picnic scheduled for that Sunday. While I had thought the problem might have been a bad cable, the cables checked out fine at home. The problem repeated itself and I then tried re-programming the firmware in my hand-controller; this failed, but not before erasing the original firmware. Just before I was about to send the hand-controller back to Orion, I had the idea that the firmware programming may have failed because of my conversion to Windows 7/64-bit on my new laptop; I tried it on my wife’s 32 bit computer and was successful. The mount seemed to work again, but until I gave it a full workout, I couldn’t be sure. I went to a friend’s house Sept. 23rd to experiment with my setup in his backyard. When I tried to power up my mount, it didn’t work at all. When I plugged it into his battery, it worked, leading me to believe that my battery had failed. I took it to the battery store and found that the battery was fine, it was just that the positive terminal was very corroded and I was not making good contact. A wire brush is now in my tool-kit for cleaning the terminal and I now ritually give the terminal clamp a little twist when I hook it up.
The California Nebula
The Veil Nebula (Western)
The Heart Nebula
My mount problems had led to me canceling my Oregon Star Party registration for late August (I was close to the last day to cancel). While I could have re-registered, I didn’t, thinking that I would wait to see what the weather and fire-season held in store for that period. There were fires potentially affecting OSP and there were fires affecting the Steens Mountains, which was what I had first designated as a primary backup. Instead, my wife and I went on a hunt for a new place to image under dark, clear skies. This led us (Aug. 28-30) to Cascade Meadows RV Park, just north of La Pine and also to Joseph Smith State Park, northeast of Eagle Point, in southern Oregon. Both were pretty good sites for imaging and it brought my total for the summer to five. On this trip I got two images of the supernova in M101 to compare to older pictures I had taken (pre-supernova). The comparison is shown below. I’ve since imaged it again (Sept. 28th trip, to be discussed) and it was still blazing brightly.
At J. Stewart State Park, I was putting my equipment away one night when I looked over towards the restroom and saw two big yellow eyes glowing back at me; I don’t know what it was, but the next day I heard that someone was telling the park host that they had heard a mountain lion snarling the previous night. Based upon the size of the eyes and their distance off the ground, it indeed could have been a mountain lion I had seen. Yikes! At least it had the good sense not to attack me!
Other than the supernova, at Cascade Meadows I imaged M33 again, M51 (Whirlpool galaxy, the home of another supernova), and M27 (the Dumbell nebula). In the first night at J. Stewart I added another image of M101 and my first ever look at Neptune. Upon studying this closely, I realized that the image picked up (barely) the moon Triton at the very edge of the planet (see below). The second night at J. Stewart, I imaged M51 and M31 again, plus M11 (the Wild Duck cluster), IC1318 (Sadr region nebula in Cygnus), and NGC6992 (the Eastern Veil). I was pleased with the star color in M11 (see below, along with a few others).
M101 Supernova
Neptune (the bluish orb) with Triton the spot at about 8 '0 clock
M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy again (it never gets old)
Upon returning from Southern Oregon, there were still some dark nights left and I spend the eveings of Sept. 1st and 2nd at Stubb Stewart State Park, a local site where the day-use area is made available to those who apply for Star Gazing permits. I made a new friend the first night, C.K. (who is from Malaysia) and the second night C.K. returned and my friend Curtis came as well. The first night I imaged the nebulae… the Bubble, Crescent, Pelican and Veil. The second night I imaged M101, the Sadr region, and M45 (Pleiades) and then switched to a barlow lens to image smaller objects including M27 (the Dumbell), IC 348, M76 (the Little Dumbell), and NGC 7331 (galaxy). The M45 image was the best I’ve ever taken of the Pleiades (see below). The images taken with the barlow lens were not very satisfying.
The Veil Nebula (Eastern)
Interacting with my friends was great. C.K. told me of a 50mm guide scope that Orion offered and I later decided to order it as a way of making my set-up easier to balance. I would no longer have to go with the cross-bar and I found that I could go down to one 10 pound counter-weight. Curtis gave me other suggestions that I’ll talk about later.
I used this new setup on what was likely my final night of imaging, Sept. 28th . Weather reports for the period of the late-September new moon were marginal. The forecast for the Maupin Star Party (later that week) was not good, however Sept. 28th stood out as the best day. Since it was a bit early to go to the Maupin site, I chose to check out a new site, Prineville Reservoir State Park (PRSP), with the idea of going to ITS again if the site didn’t have a decent horizon. Since the main goal of the trip was to image nebulae in the constellation Orion (not visible earlier in the summer and now rising above 30 degrees after about 3am), I needed to find a good view of the eastern horizon. PRSP turned out to be very good. I had camp site with electrical hookup that was perched right on the edge of the reservoir with a great view of the eastern horizon. The reservoir was very scenic and the weather was nice. The night of imaging that followed was probably the best I’ve ever had. Having an electrical hook-up was great because I didn’t have to resort to my inverter to run my laptop off of the 12V battery. Being there alone and being able to go in and out of the RV as much as I wanted (no concern over waking up my wife) made the night much more tolerable. Though I had built dew heaters and was ready to use them, I had no dew all night. Best of all, the new setup with the 50mm guide-scope worked out very well. Guiding seemed to be very good except for two episodes that I believe were related to some imbalance on the declination axis (and I think I can easily correct that next time). I was able to take exposures as long as twenty minutes without any significant issues and I got 2Hrs and 40 minutes of exposure time on one object, which was a record for me. Before Orion came up, I spent my time on the Pelican nebula (2Hrs 40 minutes exposure time) and the Western Veil. When I saw the reflection of Orion in the reservoir as it rose, I found the sight pretty stunning and I wished I had a tripod with me for my Nikon D-40 so I could have photographed it. Orion is, to me, the most beautiful northern constellation. The objects I imaged there were all nebulae: NGC 2175, M78, IC 434 (the Horsehead Nebula), and a few shots of the M42 (the Great Nebula in Orion) at the end. IC 434 was the primary objective because I think that it is one of the most stunning and because I didn’t get to spend enough time on it in Arizona last year; I ended up getting six ten minute exposures (a full hour). I was also pleased with NGC 2175 and, after processing it, wishing that I had spent more time on M78; both of these were new objects for me and I found them both to be photogenic. You’ll find pictures of each of these objects below. With the little time remaining a got a few quick images of M42, but it wasn’t a prime target (did it last year); it is always beautiful though, even with a burned-out core.
The Veil Nebula (Eastern, again)
NGC 2175
M78 - One 20' exposure
IC 434 (The Horsehead Nebula) - My #1 Favorite 6x60" exposure
Though I didn’t have a lot of nights imaging, it was a great summer. I learned a lot and improved my setup. I also have a lot of things to pursue in the future. Curtis encouraged me to utilize my old C8 SCT more and to use off-axis guiding (OAG) and we started looking into this. As it turned out, I needed some new equipment (a better OAG than the Meade I already had) and some T-thread spacers to make it work. I may also need to use a more sensitive camera to find guide stars more consistently, but time will tell on that. I have the equipment now and will test it at the next opportunity. Curtis also made some other suggestions for improvement of my set-up and motivated me to look again at direct computer control of the mount (using EQMOD and ASCOM). I tried it for awhile in his backyard and, while it seemed to be working okay, I did have some disturbing unintended movements of the mount during alignment that influenced me to go back to using the hand controller. This is definitely worth pursuing though, because it opens up the possibility of remote-control from the confines of a warm and bug-free RV. One thing that I didn’t get to this summer was learning drift-alignment, however I got information from Curtis and C.K. that should make it easier and quicker when I do get to it.
This season I updated my version of the PHD guiding program, such that it has the capability of giving me data on the quality of my guiding. This has allowed me to both benchmark my guiding (compare one night to another and compare set-ups) and to gain some insight into what kind of guiding problems I am having. I can also now watch a graph of the guiding error real-time and know when to abort and re-start.
With Curtis's prodding, I finally got around to ordering a noise reduction program (Noise Ninja) and I'm SO glad I did! I also realized that I should use dark frames (though originally I was told I shouldn't have to with this camera), at least until I figure out another way to get rid of the bad (hot) pixels that I have finally established as the cause of those pure-color "stars" in some of my photos. The set from PRSP all used dark frames.
Imaging may be over for the year, but with my home-built dew heaters, I may actually try to do some imaging on some cold, but clear, winter night. We'll see. I REALLY hate being cold!
My new set-up (with 50mm guide scope) at Prineville Reservoir
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