“Spring Guide to the Night Sky” public event.. totally horrible, rainy and windy weather at 5pm. Event starts 6.30pm..

All clear! Plus very clean skies, after all the rain. Looked at 1st magnitude stars as they appeared from the twilight, then observed Orion and Saturn.  

We also saw two great fly-overs of the International Space Station (ISS) – the second pass was particularly bright.

About, 25 Cub Scouts came along with their Cub leaders.. made for a busy event.

Plus, I tried my Canon Digital SLR Camera in the mighty Alan Young 22.5″ telescope.

Fitted well mechanically, but poor images..

Here’s an example of an out-of-focus Betegeuse in Orion.

In Sufficient Focusser In-Travel On Star Betelgeuse

Insufficient in-travel on the focusser… It was not possible to move the camera in close enough, to bring the image to focus.

The difference between the Canon and the Mintron camera that’s usually used with this telescope, is the position of the ccd chip within the camera body. The Mintron has its chip very close to the front of the lens opening. The Canon’s chip however, is much deeper within the body.

However, we were much encouraged by the likely light-gathering power and plan to modify the focusser to move it’s travel inside of the tube. (We did consider moving the mirrors instead, to push the focal plane further outside of the telescope tube, but felt this would be too radical)

Stay tuned!

This will work, one way or another and deliver good results!

Canon 1000D piggy-back on 80ED

 
After months of anticipation, I hope it will deliver the promised kick-start to the appreciation of astronomy, by the wider public. 

To celebrate the first clear night (for me) of 2009, I thought I should do a first thing, too.

So I attached my newly purchased Canon 1000D digital SLR camera, to my Skywatcher refractor.  

The Canon was not actually looking through the telescope – I need to buy a Canon T-thread adaptor before I can do that.  This time it was just “piggy-back” (or afocal as the serious astronomers call it), to take advantage of the telescope’s motor-driven mount.  I was using the 18-55 mm zoom lens, the camera came with.

The weather is freezing (-5 degrees C) tonight and this made it tricky, but I managed to take some images of the constellation Orion (the Hunter).  

Constellation of Orion

It was splendid in the South.

I used a 30 second exposure for this shot (right).  I’m still getting used to all the hundreds of settings on the Canon and I felt it was fighting back, once or twice!  But I’m pleased with the results.

You can see the indication of the Orion nebula M42/43, below the three-star “belt” of Orion.  Also, follow the line of the belt downwards and left to see Sirius, the brightest star in our sky (apart from the Sun).  It’s barely above the horizon (and the hedge!) in the shot.

I will be giving a talk on the Winter night sky next Monday, to my local astronomy society.  I hope to make good use of this image and the others.