When you want to see the stars, find someplace dark
The Pleiades were not my primary target for the night, but that was setting and I was in no hurry to shut the gear down when there was a lot of dark remaining in the night. I glanced around the sky looking for a target appropriate for the field of view of the gear and just chanced to look at the star cluster.
Perfect…
Just sent in my entries.
A contest for local photographers, the Hawaiʻi Photo Expo is a full juried competition. A local contest, but a decent one, the entries will hang in the Wailoa Center gallery for a few weeks.
I sent in three entries, including two of the starscape shots I took over the last month. The third shot is from last year’s expedition from Juneau to Anacortes.
My chances of winning? I think my entries are fairly strong. Looking through the archives of past winners I feel my images are as good as anything there. I should be competitive at least, the rest is up to the standards of the jurors.
There are still a few days left to enter, the deadline is March 16th. Have any really good photos?
Tonight the Moon and Jupiter will be close. The Moon will rise first, at 13:04HST, about ten minutes ahead of Jupiter, placing the two well up in the eastern sky by sunset. The Moon will be quite large, 65% illuminated and about 6° from the bright planet. Tomorrow night the pair will still be seen together, about 11° apart.
With Jupiter this close to the Moon it is an excellent time to see Jupiter in the daytime sky. Look 6° northeast of the Moon for a bright pinpoint of light. 6° is 12 times the size of the Moon seen in the sky, north will be to the left seen as the pair rises above the eastern horizon.
The current astrophoto setup in the driveway… The TeleVue 76mm atop the iOptron ZEQ-25 mount. The camera is currently the Canon 6D, providing a 5.35° x 3.57° field of view with a 3.52 arcsecond per pixel image scale.
Atop the main scope an SBIG STi provides auto-guiding. With a 100mm lens it has a 15 arc-second per pixel image scale. It is mounted with a custom mount machined for this setup.
The setup is intended to provide a high performance astrophoto setup with a minimum of fuss. This is about as far as I can reduce things without giving up performance. It is pretty portable, airline luggable at least. The whole setup fit in two suitcases for the trip to Oregon Star Party last summer.
The only real issue with this setup is the laptop. The big old 17″ HP Pavalion chews a lot of power, requiring an AC outlet to supply. I have my little Asus netbook configured to run the setup, a far more power efficient machine. With the netbook I can setup anywhere and shoot.
Cable management is a bit of a chore. A lot of separate cables must be routed to connect everything together. Much of the time I keep the setup assembled in the garage for deployment in the driveway. The cable tangle can be tamed with a handful of zip ties and velcro strips this way. A wheeled dolly allows the entire setup to be rolled out of the garage.
With this setup I have a capable astrophoto rig, capable of producing very nice material for processing. I just need a chance to get out and use it more often.
I shoveled snow in Hawaiʻi today.
Not the first time I have shoveled snow here. Somehow the novelty of snow in a tropical paradise never grows old. Not that shoveling snow at nearly 14,000ft gets any easier. The weekend storm left a foot of fresh snow on the mountain. As the Monday crew never made it to the summit, it fell to those of us working Tuesday to clear out the snow for access.
It was only a foot of snow? Not too bad? The snow came with 120mph winds, stripping the slopes bare and piling a three foot deep, fifteen foot wide drift in front of our loading dock and main doors. That was going to be a chore.
We needed power. The grader was working to clear the IRTF access road just above us. As the crew moved the vehicles I made a trip up to intercept the grader. At my request the driver joking asked how much cash I had. No. Beer? No. I offered cookies and the deal was made. A few minutes later the grader was clearing much of the snowdrift in our way.
