Tag telescopes

Lunar Blueprints

Photonstopper Leave a comment
The northwest quadrant of Earth’s Moon, viewed during morning daylight reveals many wonderful details with an appearance that differs from nighttime views in more than just color. A few points of interest: The crater with impressive ejecta rays at lower left is Kepler; to its right is large, distinctive Crater Copernicus with its central peaks. Just above Copernicus are the peaks of Montes Carpatus. The bright spot at upper left is Crater Aristarchus with Herodotus, just to its left. Finally, at the upper right corner, is the distinctive C-shape of Sinus Iridium.

This morning, before stowing equipment for the duration of upcoming days of cloudy weather, we aimed the 11-inch scope at Earth’s waxing gibbous Moon. Images were captured at about 7:50 AM EDT, after the sky had turned to blue, lending its color to Moon as viewed from Earth.

Celestron 11-inch telescope is shown aimed at Moon — a tiny white dot — in the clear, blue morning sky.

The big Celestron SCT remains in need of adjustment or, possibly, overhaul but does deliver some pleasing results! We’ve been struggling but have not yet achieved best acceptable collimation, so the scope hasn’t spent much time on the permanent pier in the observatory.

The sort of flaw that one will see from telescopes that are out of collimation — alignment of the light path within the telescope — is stars that look a bit like comets, and focus difficulties. After several efforts we are not where we need to be with the C11 to use it as our primary observatory instrument.

Unfortunately, due to lack of space, we can have only one telescope at a time on a permanent mount beneath the dome. We are considering next steps which include acquisition of a new primary telescope, upgrading of the mount, and means of mounting two instruments at a time on the pier.

As mentioned, cloudy, rainy weather is expected to be the rule for the week ahead so the telescope is parked, and accessories stowed. We’ll be working a bit on our meteor camera and thinking about where to go from here.

Our favorite image from the morning’s “Daytime Moon” efforts shows Moon’s heavily-bombarded southwest quadrant: craters, within craters, within craters. As with the other blue sky image shown here, this one is darker and more vivid than its actual appearance; we couldn’t resist giving the picture a bit more “snap” to bring out detail.

A fine day for some solar astronomy and a fond farewell to AR4079

Photonstopper
Our temporary observing setups are assembled on the base/floor of the planned observatory. The light orange bucket, at center, protects an empty electrical conduit that will provide utility power to a permanent pier that will be installed there. In the foreground is a table supporting a light shield for the laptop computer. The large tripod next to the table supports the white light imaging scope. In the background is the Sky-Watcher SolarQuest mount with our Coronado hydrogen-alpha solar scope attached.

We’re still doing open-air astronomy though we have a nice, solid, clean, and level space to set up our gear! This is the setup we were using today to record the sunspot at active region 4079 as it is about to roll over the solar limb/horizon. Fortunately, though it’s a very temporary setup, the portable gear we use for casual solar imaging is fairly easy to set up.

From an unusual vantage point, a picture of the solar setup used today to record the passage of active region 4079 toward Sun’s horizon. The red object is the planetary camera.

We continued experiments to determine what gear will work together for imaging. There were a few surprises and there’s need for more experimentation. What we settled on for today’s solar efforts is pictured above and includes: Askar 103 APO telescope, Meade LXD75 Goto Mount, TeleVue 2X Barlow, Baader Planetarium Safety Herschel Wedge, and ZWO ASI678MM monochrome planetary camera.

The sun as it appeared at 11:32 AM EDT on May 10, 2025. Sunspot/Active Region numbers are labeled in this image with AR4079 very near the solar western limb or edge.

Although the sky was clear, seeing was a bit shaky so once again, sharpness wasn’t what we’d like. Still, in all, we got the shot we wanted and learned a few things about our astronomy equipment. Also, the sky was blue, the air was pleasant, and birds were singing, so not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.

A closeup view of the sunspot at AR4079. There is a bright line splitting the dark central umbra of the sunspot, the gray penumbra radiating in filaments around it. White cloud-like areas surround the sunspot, especially to its north; called plage, they are associated with areas of concentrated magnetic field.