It’s been nearly a month since I added a post, so here are a few lines and pictures. In my last post, I went over my woes with the Celestron NexStar telescope mount. I’m happy to report the Sky Watcher HEQ5 Pro I replaced it with has been great. It’s a little harder to set up, but it tracks targets nicely and is very sturdy. I found a buyer for my old mount and shipped it off.

I used the Sky Watcher with the Celestron 8SE SCT telescope to image Jupiter. Jupiter is a harder target than I thought it would be. In fact, astrophotography as a whole is a lot harder to learn than I thought it would be. I’m not getting the detail I would like. There are many steps involved to capture a succesful image.

First you need to achieve focus on a distant object – hundreds of thousands of miles away. Then you have to find the right combination of gain and exposure time for your camera – kind of like setting aperture and shutter speed on a conventional camera. The rotation of the earth and the orbit of the object come into play – the target doesn’t just sit in the center of the frame. What we do is basically shoot a video recording where we can adjust the frame rate of the video and set the number of frames we want to record. I control the camera with a small laptop running a program called SharpCap, developed by a British astronomer.

Once you have accomplished that, the raw image needs to processed. There are some really smart guys that have developed software specifically for this. They are astronomy enthusiasts and many offer their programs as free-ware for amateur, non-commercial use. I use three of these programs to process my images.

The first is called PIPP – planetary image pre-processor. This program takes the individual frames and aligns them so the image is centered in every frame. I typically shoot 2,500 frames or so at a time.

Next I use AutoStakkert – a program written by a Dutch astronomer – to sort each frame by quality of the image. Then I choose how many frames I want to keep by rejecting all below a certain quality threshold. Autostakkert then “stacks” or combines these frames into an image. This is called “lucky imaging,” because we are lucky to get a percentage of frames with a sharp image, largely unaffected by atmospheric conditions.

The output from Autostakkert is then opened in RegiStax 6 for sharpening, de-noise and color adjustment. I may use Photoshop for a final touch up. Here are few pictures – crude compared to professional and many amateur results, but I’m learning and will get better at it.

I bought a another telescope – I found it on the classified ad section of a site called CloudyNights. This is a completely different approach than my Celestron 8SE Schmidt-Cassegrain reflector. This one is a refractor type telescope – one of the oldest telescope designs. It’s simple and well-made with high-quality optics.

It’s from a company called William Optics and it’s model is ZenithStar 73. It has a 73mm objective lens, 430mm focal length and it’s relatively fast at f5.9. I mentioned quality optics – the objective lens in this telescope is ground from a material called FPL 53 optical glass. FPL 53 is made from a synthetic fluorite crystal grown in a lab by a Japanese company called Ohara. FPL 53 is a desirable material for telescope lenses.

When used visually with an eyepiece I can see the entire surface of the moon with this ‘scope and it is less affected by atmospheric conditions than the larger Celestron. More magnification requires a stable atmosphere for sharp images. The astrophotography camera I use increases the magnification of the image with this ‘scope though. Here’s a moon shot I took Saturday night.

I described this astrophotography session as a near disaster on Facebook. I think considering the real disaster that was hurricane Ian, my description is a bit of an over-reach. Here’s what happened.

I set up my mount and telescope behind our back deck, adjacent to the golf course behind our place. I use a small card table for a couple of small cases with some of the gear I use and also place a small notebook computer on it to record the image. My plan was to take a shot of the moon, then move to Saturn and finish the night with Jupiter. I wanted to try the Z73 ‘scope on the planets just to see what I could get with it.

After I captured the image above, I programmed the mount for Saturn. While the ‘scope was slewing toward Saturn, I heard water sprinklers start up. Oh no! The golf course decided to start watering at 8:30pm – I’d never seen them water much past 7pm before. I closed the notebook computer and ran it over to our deck, then went back for the rest of the gear. Donna was out and she started grabbing things as well. We weren’t quick enough – the sprinklers got us and my gear briefly before we could get everything out of range.

I’ll have to rethink my telescope set-up position for future sessions. This is not so easy – I thought I found the perfect spot to get clear views of most of the sky. Well, that’s probably more about astronomy than you ever wanted to know.

Donna went to Vermont for eight days, beginning on September 13th, to visit her parents. While she was away I decided to make another change. We’ve been using our 2015 Nissan Frontier for daily transportation. When I bought this truck, it was intended to be towed behind our motorhome as we traveled about. For this reason, I bought a used work truck with a manual transmission and no frills.

We won’t be towing behind a motorhome now, so why drive a beater and shift gears manually? I looked around for something more comfortable that we could live with. The best solution would be a company lease car – as a Volkswagen retiree, I have lease car privileges that allow me to select a new VW on a very favorable 12-month lease. However, in the current state of things, new cars are in very short supply and lease car choices are extremely limited.

I found a nearly showroom condition 2019 Jeep Compass with all of the bells and whistles and only 36,000 miles on the clock. So, we went from a manual transmission, noisy truck with manual roll-up windows to a loaded compact SUV with power everything. Of course, this means electronic control modules galore and lots of potential for things to malfunction, but you only live once. I traded our truck and put a dent in my savings as I don’t like to finance anything – we are debt-free other than the lease on our park model home lot at Viewpoint Golf Resort.

Donna returned from Vermont on the 20th, so I’m back to eating like a king. Here’s a dinner plate she made. The main dish is parmesan crusted tilapia with cauliflower penne pasta and steamed spinach on the side.

We’re past the monsoon season and humidity levels are back to a more normal range of 10-25%. The triple-digit heat is behind us as well with the forecast calling for low 90s and mid-to-high 80s for the rest of the month.