Thursday, July 30, 2015

#5 - Thursday, July 30, 2015 - ISS, more photo attempts

We watched the ISS flyover!  It was pretty high in the sky, and transitted for like 6 minutes.  I almost caught a glimpse in the telescope as it dipped below the trees – it was hard to keep up with.  Anton caught a few glimpses.  I also got a long-exposure photo of it flying across the frame.  
Overhead passage of the International Space Station!
Nikon D3100, 55mm @ f/6.3, 30s, ISO-400

The moon was nearly full, so we could only really look at planets and stars.  We also looked at:
  • ·         The Double Cluster
  • ·         Double star Mizar – its twin was very close, but resolvable at not too high of magnification, and pretty bright as well. [Mizar/Alcor is the second star from the end of the handle of the Big Dipper.]
  • ·         M7, Ptolemy's Cluster – very pretty arrangement of stars with the 25 mm eyepiece.  You can see some of the star colors with the telescope, and more colors with a 10 second exposure on the camera.
Single exposure on M7, Ptolemy's Cluster.
Nikon D3100 on my C8 (shorthand for the 8-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain), 5s, ISO-1600

We also set up the camera on my tripod to look down through the eyepiece, and had some success getting higher magnification photos of Saturn this way.  I’ll try using the camera attachment Anton got for me sometime in the future so that I can take long-exposure shots that will move with the telescope.  It’s just really hard to set up.  The photos are still pretty blurry, though.  I now have a 7 Ah lead-acid battery as the power source, and that seems to have solved the problem of the telescope ‘getting lost.’  It performs perfectly all evening now.  Yay!

A rather blurry attempt at Saturn, aiming down through an eyepiece (I didn't specify which one in my original log).
Nikon D3100 on the C8, 30mm @ f/5, 1s, ISO-800




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