Built an observatory!

Since the last time I was active with this blog, I have dragged my family out into the country and had an observatory built! This was almost seven years ago. We moved to some land about 30 miles north of Austin, where the skies are excellent. When we moved here it was Bortle 3, but now in Bortle 4 territory thanks to ongoing growth and development in the area. Still, the Milky Way is quite noticeable at night, and I've been having fun with imaging and visual astronomy here.

The observatory with the roof open

The observatory that I had built is a 10-foot by 12-foot roll-off roof design. It has a central concrete pier with vibration dampeners, upon which my Celestron CGEM is mounted to. The walls are six feet tall, giving protection from the neighbor's lights, although they all know what I do and keep night lights to a minimum. It's powered by a solar system and marine battery, which gives me enough energy to run the mount, a laptop and other accessories all night long. Works well! 

I have a few different OTAs including a William Optics Zenithstar 61mm, a William Optics 66mm Petzval refractor, an AstroTelescopes 80mm ED refractor and Celestron 8" Schmidt Cassegrain. The observatory also houses my 12" Meade Lightbridge and 6" Orion Dobsonian scopes. I also use my Dwarf3 smart telescope from inside it as well. The gear is pretty-well protected inside, and with the mount in hibernation mode, it doesn't take long to start my imaging runs.

A view inside

The roof is secured down with four eyehooks on each corner. This was the result of a very strong straight-line wind that flung the roof completely off the observatory shortly after I had it built. It landed about 50' away in my neighbor's yard! Luckily, nobody was hurt and it just cost me a little to get it replaced. 

It's called the "Windmill Observatory" as our little subdivision out here is called Windmill Acres, and my grandfather, who was an artist, sketched a local windmill in the town where I grew up in the UK. So, his sketch now sits on the observatory which is a nice link to him - he also got me into astronomy as a kid, showing me the moon through the scope he had.

So, it's great fun and feel quite spoiled with it. I may automate it further down the road, but it does just fine as is!

Star trails taken from inside the observatory

I've neglected this blog. :-(

Long story short, I haven't been here for quite a while. With the advent of other popular platforms, it was easier just to quick post on those than make further efforts here. Additionally, family and work life kept me away. Thus, it remained a stale corner of the interwebs, gathering dust and gathering not too much attention.

...or so I thought.

On whim, I logged back into Blogger, which seems to now be part of Google, and to my surprise, this blog was getting a LOT of views. Almost 10k per month. I was a little stunned! There were some unmoderated comments that had been left as well, which I was ashamed to see sitting in the unmoderated folder ignored and unanswered. 

So, with my apologies to the blog itself, and to those who came and found stale thoughts, older images and stagnant advice and thoughts, I'm resurrecting this long format medium and re-engaging.

I sat down tonight and gave this blog site a facelift, including a new fresh look that doesn't look like it's still lives in the noughties, updated links down the side and a connection to my existing photography site, philostroffimages.com (Link at upper right!). It looks like other folks who I was linking to killed their blogs, so I removed those links. Hopefully those that are still active can return here and reconnect, as I have done with some of them.

! Important to not that I have changed the URL for this blog. It is now Phil's Astronomy Blog. (or centexastrophoto.blogspot.com). This is to realign this blog with my upcoming project. 

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll post some updates on my astronomical adventures, as well as talk about a (hopefully) brilliant new program I am working to build. 

Anyway, for those who have been visiting - my thanks. I'll be keeping it more active and current which will hopefully help others engage in this great pursuit of the night skies that we all love. 

Cheers, and more soon...

Hello out there?

 Anybody still coming here?

Markarian's Chain in Virgo

My own Hubble View! These galaxies lie between 10 to 50 million light years away. How many galaxies do you see?

A pretty tricky part of the sky to image, really. You're utilizing almost your entire field of view with an 80mm scope, so dealing with all that comes with wide-field. This is the best iteration I have processed to date from two night's of imaging. Learned a lot, but have a way to go to get this the way I want it.

Image Details:

* Imaging Scope: Astrotelescopes 80mm ED Refractor

* Imaging Camera: Nikon D7000

* Guiding Scope: William Optics 66mm Petzval Refractor

* Guiding Camera: Orion Starshoot AutoGuider

* Mount: Celestron CGEM

* Exposures: 32 * 8 minute lights, 21 * 8 minute darks, 40 bias frames

* ISO 1000

* Aligned and Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker

* Post-Processing Dynamic Photo HDR, LightRoom and Photoshop.

M51 Whirlpool Galaxy

A nice clear night last night until around 12:30 when clouds rolled in. Managed to get this image of the lovely M51 Whirlpool galaxy. It lies around 23 million light years away and it is interacting with a smaller galaxy (yellow~ish bulge to the left). Three supernova (star explosions) have been detected in this galaxy since 1994. There's more detail here but I think I'm pushing things with an 80mm scope.

Image Details:

* Imaging Scope: Astrotelescopes 80mm ED Refractor

* Imaging Camera: Nikon D7000

* Guiding Scope: William Optics 66mm Petzval Refractor

* Guiding Camera: Orion Starshoot AutoGuider

* Mount: Celestron CGEM

* Exposures: 15 * 8 minute lights, 9 * 8 minute darks, 30 bias frames

* ISO 1250

* Aligned and Stacked in Deep Sky Stacker

* Post-Processing Dynamic Photo HDR, LightRoom and Photoshop.