Project Catch Up

Time to post some of the ongoing projects.

We had a great run of cold clear nights in Jan - March which gave us some time to capture a few nice images.

Lynx Galaxy Field - 2016-Feb 27th -- 118 minutes total exposure time

Center (RA, Dec)L (107.635, 50.124) Over thirteen galaxies are very easy to spot (anything blurry), but close examine reveals a total more than sixty. Many are on edge, others barred, some blue, white, and yellow.

M81 - 2016-April - May -- 284 minutes total exposure

 

Taken over 4 weeks, this is M81 in Ursa Major. Next year I'd like to add another 400 minutes of exposure. Even at that shorter time the detail is the arms is pretty good.

M33 -2015 January 6th - 117 minutes total exposure

 A fairly short exposure of M33 I did at the end of the night as a test before closing up. It lacks a lot of color and definition, but I thought it was a good quick image. It is a massive galaxy and I was most interested to see it's size on my SX-HV35.

Orion Mosaic - Feb - March 2016 - 298 minutes total exposure

Over 7 nights I took three separate images of NGC 2034, NGC 2024, and IC 432 all around the most eastern star in Orion's belt.. These were processed in PixInsight to create a mosaic of the three images, seamlessly adding them together to create one image. Because of the bright star in the area (Alnitak) I did get some lenses flares from my optical system. Even with that, I do like the results.

Progress - NGC 2024 - The Flame Nebula

A few nights of alignment work have passed. Alignment is wrench work getting the scope properly aligned with the night sky. The telescope has an altitude equal to it's geographic latitude and an azimuth of due north. In this position one axis spins around the celestial pole, called right ascension, and the other selects north and south from the celestial equator, called declination. When well aligned there is no declination adjustment required to track the stars in the sky. Alignment is important because the better the scope is aligned the less movement of stars in the field of view, and the clearer images during long exposures.

I hate aligning because I want a good alignment for good pictures, making me very picky. With portable scopes I always spent the first 90 minutes aligning but with a permanently mounted telescope there is no reason not to have a fine tuned alignment. Then on start you just tell the telescope to find home and it's aligned. Sweet! We've accomplished that here at Agatha Observatory.

On Feb 5th we had crystal clear steady cold air. Perfect for telescope work. As the sun went down I grabbed twilight flats for all four filters and set the scope on Canopus. After dinner I headed out with NGC 2024, the Flame Nebula, in mind. This is a diffuse nebula in Orion just east of Alnitak the most eastern star in Orion's belt (the left most on the belt). I decided to keep Alnitak on the image even though such a bright star often causes lens artifacts.

The components of the photo were 12 2 minute exposures for each filter LRGB. I started with luminosity because that way I at least get a good monochrome image if something fails or the clouds roll in. All went well until about 21:30 when it came time for the meridian flip. The scope moved, reacquired but I didn't trust it and moved it after the slew. Unfortunately I mistook a lens flare for the nebula and moved the scope the wrong way. Two of the blue exposures occurred during the slew due to a software glitch and the rest  were too far east. The good news is, there is little blue in the nebula, it's mostly in Alnitak. This meant I only had two good blue images before the meridian flip and eight with mostly of  Alnitak after. But the result were still good.

The monochrome:

The color:

There are many lens artifacts including the multiple colored rings around Alnitak but I've decide I like them and did minimal processing to remove them.

Second Light, First Image

Been a long time, I know. That's the way it goes with kids. Suffice to say the observatory is done and the equipment is in. The telescope is a Meade 12" ACF LX-850 on a German polar mount with the StarTrack auto-guider. It is mounted permanently on the pier. I'll get some pictures of all that.

After receiving it last year I mounted it up and began the process of fine tuning the alignment so I wouldn't have to align every time. I had just achieved that, programmed the PEC, etc. when there was some electrical failure and the DEC motor stopped working. I had to ship it back to Meade and it took them five months to return it. That's five months out of my warranty. Sheeesh!

The camera is a StarLight XPress HX-35 full frame monochrome camera with a 5 position filter wheel mounting red, green, blue, lumiance, and an opaque to act as a shutter. No problems with the camera.

Monday night, after months of clouds and rain we had a good clear night and I managed to rough align the scope. PEC is still unprogrammed and the alignment is not fine tuned but I grabbed a 2 minute exposure of M42 with just the lumiance filter. Just wanted to share the results.

So there's the first light image, second time around.

More later.

Rolling Roof

Instead of a dome this is called a roll-off roof observatory. The roof is on wheels and rolls off the building onto to set of rails made of 4x4 posts. This exposes the whole sky to the scope without need of a rotating dome.

Since the roof is actually a separate structure that has to be light enough to move but heavy enough to withstand the weather. I'm using a lot of "hurricane brackets" for the top.

First 

The building sill is 2 2x6 on the rolling sides. The roof frame is a 2x6 with a 2x4 on the outside edge for the rolling sides. On the non-rolling sides it's two 2x4s, the top one interlocking on the 2x6 from the rolling edges.

Here's the one corner of the roof frame with the steel corner bracket and the truss bracket. Notice the top 2x4 of the frame is longer than the bottom to allow it to connect to the extra width of the 2x6 underneath.

The other corner, showing the building sill underneath with corner brackets and a nail late. On top is the 2x6 with the wheel and castor. The top 2x4 from the non-rolling sides locks into the 2x6 and behind is a corner bracket long enough to connect the 2x4s to the 2x6.

 The ridge pole sits in s cradle made by 3 two roofs, the center one shorter to provide a gap from half the width of the ridge pole which is a 2x6. The whole assembly of the ridge connectors has steel angle brackets and 10 screws on each side. This shows the gap between the roof and the building. The roof will roll along he direction of the ridge pole on this side where a frame of 4x4 and 2x6 will be to accept it.

 One of the roll off sides with the wheels, four per side with a 300lb weight  limit per wheel. Behind in the field is mustard greens and diakon radish.

Here's the pier from the SW corner. Four threaded rods are embedded 3 feet down the pier. A steel plate that matches these bolts will be mounted to the scope and the plate bolted to the pier. Four self locking nuts below the plate will allow it to be leveled. This also shows the complete floor.

The large steel brackets on the ridge pole assembly which is 3 2x4 with lots of 3.5 inch screws.

Work in Progress

Continued work - Floor joists and planked floor

The four corner posts and the rebar and wire mesh for the pier.

Jena's hand print in the SE corner.

The pier anchor and foot is poured. About 1 cubic meter total,

The view SE with the flock in the back.

Next day the joists in hangers.

First floor plank.

Jena's hand now set in man-made stone.

Hurricane brackets for the studs.

Floor done up to the pier and the first horizontal strip for the sheeting.

We like the look.

Breaking Ground

Time to build the observatory. We decided on a 10' x 10' (reduced from 12' x 12'). Today we dug the pier hole 2' x 2' x 3' deep and the foot which is a 12" circle that is another 5' deep.

 Yesterday Noah and Mick loaded 960 lbs of cement 80lbs at a time into the truck, the framing four-by-fours, two-by-fours, and the two-by-sixes for the floor joists.

 It took 3 bags to fill the 5' deep circular anchor.

 Then 9 more bags didn't quite fill it, even with the helpers.

Twelve more bags since we need some for the posts, and we finally got it done. A wire mesh and rebar has been added to anchor the pier to the foot.

Noah, Nala, and Jena joined later to help square out the building foot print and Mick dug three of the four corner post holes 3' deep (he's feeling every bit of his years and days today).