Astronomy Nightly

I shot the solar eclipse from the south part of Las Vegas, NV.  I set up my old Celestron 80ED refractor (600mm f/7.5) on my CGEM mount.  I shot through that telescope with my Canon 5D Mark II and a Thousand Oaks Optics solar filter.  Most of the shots were taken at 1/125 second and ISO 100.  A few …

I'm still digging through the 1500 photos I took today of the eclipse.  Here's a teaser image... This image was taken by Bryan Duke from Henderson, NV on May 20, 2012 at 6:35PM PDT.  It was taken with a Canon 5D Mark II, Celestron 80ED telescope (600mm, f/7.5), Thousand Oaks Optics solar filter, &am…

Pete Mumbower has an outstanding idea for making a Celestron CGEM mount easier to polar align. He adds "Slick Strips" to the top of the tripod where the mount rests.  This makes tweaking the alignment of the mount much easier.  My Slick Strips are on order! Here's Pete's article about it: http://www…

My old C8 is gone and I have a new Explore Scientific 127ED in its place.  Here's the new scope on my CGEM. A simple moon shot was the first photo target.  I plan on taking more photos through it soon.…

During the trip last weekend to Mahogany Flat Campground, a good friend of mine, Jason Dotter, shot this time lapse sequence of the Milky Way. http://youtu.be/0BjGeYQsZQk?hd=1 He used a Canon XSi with a 15mm fisheye lens. ISO 1600, f/2.8, 30 second exposures spaced 10 seconds apart, starting at 2:43…

For full disclosure, I need to share that I had a photo in the running for the Lion background image. The photo that has that honor is way better than mine. I knew something was up! Like everyone else, when they unveiled the new Andromeda Galaxy (aka Messier 31) image used for the default OS X Lion …

If you are an astrophotographer that uses a digital SLR, I hope your camera has a live view capability.  It's a game changer for quickly focusing your telescope & camera combo and getting great shots.  Here's a great article on using live view for astrophotography focusing: http://www.astropix.c…

I took a trip to Death Valley National Monument a week ago.  You'd think that August in Death Valley would be suicide - and rightly so.  However, the campground I stayed at was up in the mountains on the west side of Death Valley.  Mahogany Flat Campground is up above 8100' elevation and has 10 camp…