Posts Made By: Don Spencer

Hi All,
I just got around to processing this one as best I could. Not an easy object to process as the center of the nebula tends to get blown out during the stretching...now, you may want to ask..."Why did you/would you, shoot this at f/3.3?" I had just finished shooting something else and just didn't want to stop for the night... :-) Anyway, here it is...certainly not the best, but hey, with all the rain we have had, it gave me something to do (processing it..).
Don Spencer

Hi all,
Jim, Tom, Alan, et al....You all are producing some wonderful images. I'm looking at all these and am getting very jealous. The rain has stopped here in So. Cal, but we are getting the marine layer every night with fog and the predictions for this weekend are even less promissing... :S
I could head to darker skies Sat. night but, alas, youth baseball has me tied up until late that afternoon.
So, for the mean time, I'll just keep my eye on all you and enjoy your images....
Keep up the good work fella's..
Don Spencer

Just stay home and go to bed! :S Yesterday morning, I decided that I would make the 45 minute trip to my darksky site, so I packed up the gear, headed east at 9am, setup my equipment, headed back home so I could attend my sons baseball game at 3pm. As soon as the game finished (his team won.. ), I made a beeline back to the site, noticing on the way that the skies had turned hazy and it looked like heavy fog to the south...ignoring these warnings, I arrived at the site just before dark. The skies were transparent and steady, but you could feel the moisture in the air. polar alignment and drift alignments done,dew heater set to medium, I took off to shoot M65...no guide star! Spent an hour working on finding one...When I finally found one, the galaxy was shifted to the left of the chip, but the galaxy was still there. Noticing that each test image seemed to get a little less clearer, I checked the corrector...MAJOR DEW! Out came the blow dryer...with the corrector cleared, I went back to M65...Guiding in RA was horrible...I would run at sub arc second for a few itterations, then make huge jumps...It seemed to settle down, so off to shoot I went..After 5 15 minute sub exposures, the fog had rolled in and here is the result... Turns out, dew had formed again, even with the heater running at full force...oh, did I mention I forgot to bring the dew shield?
Some nights, one should just stay in bed.... :S
Don Spencer
Almost forgot...I also forgot to turn the cooler on on the camera..DOAH!

Hi All,
I finally got a chance to head out to really dark skies this past weekend..unfortunatly, the weather did not cooperate...High winds and poor seeing were the theme for the weekend, although the last night was, for the most part, just bad seeing. And, just my luck, my scope died right after completing the subs for this image...oh well, atleast I got one..not quite as good as I hoped it would be, but okay..
Don Spencer
Almost forgot...Meade 12" LX200 @f/5, ST-7ME 7x10 minute subframes...

Hi All,
After learning some new processing techniques in Photoshop CS, I decided to reprocess my M51 image from last year. Below is the result and you can see the original image here:
http://www.members.cox.net/ecdon/m51.jpg

As you can see, there is a much greater amount of data in this newest version.
Comments/suggestions welcomed.
Don Spencer

Hi All,
As with the M51 image, I went back and reprocessed an image from last year. This image was 3 x 15 minutes shot through an AP Traveler with my ST-7ME
Thanks,
Don Spencer

Just click on the link....no further explanation needed...
http://aisig.sdaa.org/astroblogDetail.asp?imgID=541&UserID=67

Don Spencer

Hi All,
Well, I spent 2 nights over this past weekend attempting to resolve some guiding/mount issues. As for the mount? It's an 12" LX200, so we don't expect too much from it..I did regrease both the RA and Dec drives which have seem to help. But the major difference was adding a 2 1/2lb weight to the left fork arm. I can now get good balance in both axis's.
As for the guiding issues?? They are still present, but quite a bit improved..well, at least I have it down to the point were it WON'T move off the guide chip!

Here is 1 image I've been trying to get for almost 2 years...Not the best, but I thought it was okay, considering the poor trans and less than average seeing, and a 1/2 full moon about 4 degrees to the west of where I was imaging.
Details can be found here:
http://members.cox.net/ecdon/m16.html
Thanks for looking,
Don

Here is the other one I captured this past weekend...details can be found here:
http://members.cox.net/ecdon/m20.html
Thanks again for looking,
Don

Nice job Sam...cool how you also caught Andromeda...