Posts Made By: Michael A. Barlow

I built a plywood dome observatory in my back yard in 2003. I might have two or three years "maximum" left to live here which means I'll have to go back to setting up in some field. I love the convenience of an observatory so I thought I'd look into the feasibility of a mobile observatory. Could I get some links and other information on strategies, problems, options, ect.. ect...?

I'm sure there are better places to post this question but since I don't subscribe to any forums related to astrophography, this is my best choice...

I have just taken my best image yet, meaning: "In-Focus". Unfortunately I have a reflection from Phad (big dipper star) and I only took a few images (54minutes at 4 minutes each). It still looks great to me :-)

Any case, I'd like to compare this and all my other images to images in the S&T and/or Astronomy magazines of the 70's and 80's and/or other magazines. I went to the S&T web site but best I could do is to download a CVS archive which has no listing for M109. So now I'm clueless where to search for older images from the bigger and well known observatories preferably in a digital format

Suggestions

I have a Canon 350D, an old Meade LX90, and a guide scope with an old web cam for guide everything with, an Observatory with a PC. The Web cam is hooked up directly to the PC through a USB port. The LX90 is also hooked up to the PC through it's 9(?) pin serial port. The 350D is hooked up to the PC through a home built parallel port interface. Then from here I use PHD guiding for web cam and telescope control and DSLRshutter for the 350D for long exposure imaging.

Before loosing my job last year I picked up a "mini" laptop, which I'm using for this forum post. Soon I will be moving away and naturally loosing my observatory and moving into an appartment. So, I'll be out in the fields to do my imaging which eliminates my PC. I'd like to run everything off of my mini laptop but this thing only has USB ports. I believe I can buy a converter for the LX90 to go from serial port to USB. What I don't know is converting the DSLR.

First, does anybody have experiance running a complete system such as the above with a mini laptop? Second, I remember there being a do-it-yourself schematic to building a USB shutter control system for the Canon Rebel XT 350D but danged if I can even think of where to start looking.

This is something I've always been fascinated with, movement of stars, planets, asteroids. I don't have a blink comparator, nor a computer with enough ram to blink between images quickly enough, so I do this all by simple glances from one "print to another and compare for differences.

Two(?) years ago I attended a lecture where the Rochester Institute of Technology (head or only) astronomer talked about his time doing exactly this using the Subaru telescope (California?). Had I known he was going to do this I would have begged to go with him!

Yes, a lot more fun than watching NASCAR but you're still only turning Left and can't count higher then 4! :-)

Here's a challenge for you: come up with a better two-word name than "death panel" for this bit of government "assistance".

Cost cutting
Down sizing