The Dutch Observatory

Set the alarm for 4:30 and imaged Jupiter again this morning.  Made three runs, but stopped since I did not see many good frames being recorded.  Here the best of the three.

Two days of work on the observatory and one evening / early morning imaging.  Romaine finished painting and the Observatory looks a lot more finished, now that the trim is on the building and painted.  Also the slip joints on the sides and the front are installed.  Finished this morning the roof.  Still needed some fasteners to hold the top down.  This afternoon we had a lot of rain and it did not leak.  So far so good!   I probably imaged my last Saturn for the season  last Monday and my first  Jupiter for this apparition.  Still need to process them, but I guess after the meeting this weekend I should have time for that again. 

Yesterday, Saturday, was a pretty busy day.  Made a lot of progress although it does not look so in the pictures.  The roof rolled off as far as I need it to clear the trees in the west.  Started on the slip-joint on the side of the roof to keep the bugs out.  Adjusted the openings for the wheels to run throught the track and started the double inside insulation to create the vent channels under the roof, and Romaine started the painting of the outside of the building. 

It has been a few weeks since my last image session.  Various reasons: Clouds, Rain and……. being busy building my observatory.  The goal was to make a transportable building that we could disassemble if needed if we move.  So the construction had several requirements that a normal observatory construction does not have to consider.  I elected the roll-off roof design, which I felt is the easiest to build and operate.  Today is the first time where everything was lined up and ready to checkout how the roof rools off.  Because the rail stops were not installed yet, and it started raining (again), I rolled it only back a foot or so.  I needed only one finger to do this   So I am pretty happy so far.  Still a lot to do, but check out the gallery of what’s done so far.  Click here for “A dream comes true” gallery.

We went to CE tonight and witnessed a strange phenomenan. As it was still light, Frank and I were looking at what we first thought was Mars. but it was almost as bright as Venus, as Frank, who was looking through his scope, detected a pendulum below it that seemed to go from horizontal down and up again to horizontal and back again. I hurried up to try to make an image of it…, but was too late as we saw it explode, Frank in the eye piece and I with the naked eye. Frank was still following it as it came down until it was not recognizable anymore in the sky. wonder what this was…..

Went last night to CE’s Jon Wood Observing Field to image the ISS and Atlantis.  The pass by was still in twilight at 8:50 P.M. and the highest elevation for the pair was 31 degrees, so a lot of turbulence to dig through   The distance at its closest point was 647 km. from my location and the final frame at least double that.  The beginning frames show Atlantis sticking out on the left and than you see how the rotation angle changes as we follow the pair from the North to the SSE and its gets smaller.  I now have two animated captures of the ISS with two Space Shuttles: Endeavour and Atlantis.  Click on the image below for the movie and give it some time to load:

The concrete footing of the pier had time to cure during the rain we have had over the last few days.  So yesterday was the first time I could try it out.  It is a little high to lift the scope onto the wedge, but I am going to have a raised floor around the pier and scope, so that will be a lot better when finished.  Here some pictures of the pier with and without Scope.

Beside having been busy with outreach programs and my pier project, I’ve been imaging Saturn this apparation since early March, but the quality has not been good.  Finally I took the time to process some of them and did the best I could.  Remember conditions in March/April were not that great.  Here four images starting with March 7th and ending with April 30th.

Well, I started my new pier for observing at home.  The nightly ordeal of setting up is taking its toll!  I ordered a 6  7/8″ diameter steel pipe and a top and bottom steel plate all 1/4″ thick.  They did arrive on March 26th.  I took them to S&K in Covington for holes to be drilled and tapped and fo be welded together.  They did a fantastic job and yesterday Dan an I picked it up and dropped it off at the powdercoat paint shop.  On Monday it should be ready!   Can’t wait to bring it home and start digging the 2′x2′x2′ hole for the concrete base.

I did setup after we came home from visiting a friend and decided to make a series of images of Mars. The weather was nice, and seeing was not too bad, although it went bad at the end.  I ended up making 13 images seperated 10 minutes from each other, so it spans 2hours.  Click on the thumbnail below for the best image of the series and click here for a two hour Mars rotation animation.  You can see the conditions getting bad at the end.  Clouds over Aethiopsis and clouds or mist extending beyond Aeria at the preceding limb.