Clusters and Star fields from November 27th

 

Dumbbell Nebula from the Driveway

Dumbbell Nebula (M27) 
Pleasant Hill, CA
June 17, 2020

Taken with Celestron Nexstar 8se, Canon T3i, and a bunch of other random crap purchased on Amazon. Single shot, 15 second exposure, ISO 3200

Jupiter Rises in the Early Morning Spring Sky

For much of the month of April, early morning risers (or night owls in my case) have had the pleasure of watching Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars rise from the SE horizon moving towards the western sky. Here is a picture of Jupiter I took on April 28, 2020. This was a stack of about 50 images with some minor adjusting RegiStax 6.

Jupiter and 3 of its moons on 4/28/20. Europa,
Io, and Ganymede.

Saturn on 4/28/20

How to Autoguide for Astrophotography

Using autoguiding enables higher quality and longer exposure images of deep space objects like Nebulae. By aligning your telescope to a star using a guide camera and some software, the telescope with track whatever thing you're looking to image in the night sky. I have yet to perfect this craft as it requires some specific hardware (equatorial mount, guidescope, guiding camera, etc) that I either don't have or don't have setup correctly yet. Hey, its a learning process with the astrophotography stuff. 

I found a fantastic guide of how to prepare to autoguiding from Astrobackhard.com. 

Take a look if you're trying to setup autoguiding for astrophotography. 

If you're using celestron gear like myself (Nexstar 8se telescope), here is a great video tutorial to setup autoguding with the Nexstar series. 

Trip to Livermore for Dark Skies ... and Beer

In attempts to find some darker skies, we took a weekend trip to Livermore, CA. We found a dark spot deep off Tesla Road outside of the gates of a private ranch. While setting up the equipment, a small earthquake hit at about 11:30pm. The quake must have been in the near vicinity as the car swayed back and forth for a few seconds... enough to startle Wiley (our dog) in the trunk of our SUV and awaken the Better Half from her nap in the front seat. The region is extremely active with fault lines, most notably the San Andreas Fault. This little shaker may have come from the Hayward or Calaveras fault line (~35 miles east of the San Andreas fault line). It didn't attract media attention but was definitely an earthquake. As for the sky watching, unfortunately the fog rolled in from the west and obstructed clear viewing. 

We went to one of our favorite breweries, Altamont Beer Works, and visited the redone and much expanded taproom. Fucking awesome place - highly recommend it!