John wrote:
Set up for a try on Tuesday Night, but no joy. Heavy overcast, thunderstorms & drenching rain.
My attempts last night were fraught. I got out of class and Santa Cruz was socked in with clouds. I figured that I'd drive home past my standard stargazing spot just in case, but grabbed a bite of dinner on the way. The taqueria is usually very quick, but last night they were rather slow. As I climbed the hill out of town, the sky cleared up. When I got to the clearing I usually use, it turns out that the side of the road with the park that goes to the ocean is facing South rather than West and there were tall trees to the West. As I got there, they were already slipping behind trees, and my camera would not calibrate the accelerometers. By the time I got that done, the planets were obscured. I was able to find spots in the field and kept moving back every few minutes.
I was not able to get any shots that showed details in Jupiter clearly nor the crescent of Venus. A friend got much better results with his equatorial mount than I did with my astrotracer, but I did get a couple of keepers for snapshot values of keeper.
I added them to Monday's set, the shots from last night are after the photos of the moon (or rather the photos with only one moon in them):
https://www.flickr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157654846085830 With exposure info: http://www.fluidr.com/photos/ellarsee/sets/72157654846085830 -- Larry Colen [email protected] (postbox on min4est) -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
