Weather, Field Rotation, Stacked Plates, and Bears

Friday night and into early Saturday morning, we had almost an inch and a half of cold rain.  Saturday morning was foggy and then the wind picked up with some strong gusts.  The house's gutters hummed in resonance when the wind hit just right.  Hummmm!

That doesn't sound very auspicious for astronomy this weekend, does it?

The sky teased with some periods of sunshine, so I staged the equipment just in case, but that seemed certain for naught.

Throughout the day, I watched this weather chart from a nearby weather station on the Weather Underground.

Weather data is fun!

Around 1930, it looked like the wind was finally dying.  I peered out at the sky, and I could see stars!

By 2030, I had everything outside for a night of astronomy.  Of course, at the time I didn't know how breazy it was going to be, but it turns out the the CPC 1100 isn't as easily buffeted by wind as my Dob.

Wheels

The Wheels on the Bus go round and round . . .

It's not a bus, but it needs wheels anyway.

My new Celestron CPC 1100 is big and heavy.  With its optical tube assembly (OTA) weight approaching 75 lbs (includes focal reducer, focus motor, and 2" diagonal) and its tripod another 36 lbs,  it's not as big and heavy as some of the other choices that I had considered, but it is marginal in terms of me being able to set up and take down without assistance.

I can carry the OTA assembly from the house, through the garage, and across the driveway to my preferred observation spot and get it mounted on the tripod without too much difficulty as long as I don't have to lower the OTA to the ground and lift it again.  That is the troublesome part of the procedure as it is necessary to remove the OTA from the tripod and carry the tripod out first.

But, what if I could just keep the tripod and OTA together and just move the complete assembly?

It turns out that there are a number of "Scope Buggies" choices that one can purchase to perform that task.  Oh, my.  They are expensive.

I decided to try a DIY approach.

It took a while, but a plan coalesced.  

Thoughts captured in my notebook.  Artsy, huh!?

First Light

What does an amature astronomer first do with a new telescope?

Point it at out the window and see if he can see anything, of course.  In my case, I used it to 

peer at the neighbor's much studied chimney.  It's much studied because I frequently use it to test new astro-gadgets and align the optical paths of anything that needs aligned.

So, technically, first light on the new telescope came from the neighbor's chimney.

How does Santa fit?

But that doesn't really count as first light, does it?

Coffee First and a Nap Later

There is a nap in my future, I'm sure.

Three cups of coffee for the morning, but that will not be sufficient to make it through the day.

Love this mug!

It was a really good astronomy session last night.  The sky transparency was merely average, but the evil clouds stayed away, and the moon had already set.  A couple of the objects that I wanted to see were mired in the light dome of the nearby city, but I was able to use SharpCap and my ZWO ASI294MC imager to tease out some details!

Not Mars, But a Conjunction

Beautiful sunset last night.

It was too windy to bring out the Dob, but I did see and capture an image of the sunset.

Featured prominently in the Northeastern sky was the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus.

Venus is the brighter of the two.

Venus and Jupiter at Sunset

Calmer winds are predicted for tonight and I've already staged the equipment for a night of astronomy.

How exciting!

Wakawakawakawaka...

Wakawakawakawaka?

What's that?

The video arcade games Pacman and Ms Pacman were very popular when I was in college.  Alas, I was a poor college student.  Quarters were precious to me so I didn't actually get to play games in the arcade often.  

I had friends who were hooked on them and they could often be found in the student union basement recreation center spending their coins and developing their arcade skills instead of studying.  Who knows how that turned out for them?  Last Starfighter, perhaps?

Wakawakawakawaka!

Why the Pacman reference in this blog?

I was finally able to image NGC 281 last weekend and its results are recognisable as its "also known as" name, the Pacman Nebula.

Yep, there is a Pacman Nebula.

NGC 281, Aka the Pacman Nebula

This is the image as it first appeared.  Not much there and pretty disappointing.  If you squint and hold your tongue just right, you might see it.

Pacman Nebula, almost invisible

I almost didn't try to capture an image.  I couldn't see anything, at first.  I figured that perhaps the scope's alignment was off.

But, just in case, I had SharpCap capture and stack a bunch of frames while I went into the house for more coffee.

Here is what I saw when I came back to the laptop.

ARP

Arp?

It turns out that there is a catalog of peculiar galaxies!  This is my type of catalog!

The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies is a catalog of peculiar galaxies.  It was produced by Halton Arp in 1966 and was originally published by the California Institute of Technology in the same year. 

The primary purpose of the catalog was to present photographs of examples of the different kinds of peculiar structures found among galaxies.

There are a total of 338 galaxies presented in the atlas.

This is one of them.  I captured it last night shortly after moonset.

Arp 28

Arp 28.  It's a peculiar galaxy. Click for the bigger version.

The Arp 28, magnified, is below.