Monday, October 27, 2014

Astrophotography by the Desert Museum

Lanna and I decided to do an astronomy event with some friends and family(Brek Thompson, Sean Bottai, America, Trevor Clark, Sam Hameroff, Michael Clark)  on October 25th by the Desert museum.

The weather, sunset and company were beautiful. Unfortunately the multitude of cars driving on Kinney road, on their way to and from Nightfall, presented some challenges for deep space astrophotography. Our setup was within 500feet of the road which lead to us receiving a great deal of unwanted light from passing cars and their high beams.

Despite the challenges of passing cars and some early scattered clouds we managed to get some pictures of a few objects. At first I was having technical difficulties with the Equatorial mount. Mostly balancing issues. Eventually we got the mount aligned properly and were taking pictures with Trevor Clark's camera piggybacked on the mount and my camera looking through the main scope.

 Sunset and setup

 Our dog Madison was helping with the telescope setup

 M31, 5 x 90second exposures(cropped). Still need better collimation
NGC253, 10 x 90second exposures(cropped). We were ultimately limited by light pollution

Bubble nebula, single exposure 120seconds (cropped)
Photo by: Trevor Clark 
Photo by: Trevor Clark
Photo by: Trevor Clark