Petri Kehusmaa Astroblog

Tänään valmistui tornin sähkötyöt ja sisällä on nyt kaksi 16 A:n sekä kaksi 10 A:n pistoketta. Koko viime talven tornin laitteet saivat sähköt roikalla, mutta nyt se on kelattu rullalle.

Partial Solar Eclipse

Here are nine images from the first half of the partial solar eclipse. Images taken during an hour (11:48 - 12:48 LT).

M16

This nebula is very hard to image at these latitudes where it rise only about 15 degrees above horizon and summer night skies are still very pale. Anyway, I gave it a try and somehow succeeded to have even colors. The blue channel images were almost unusable but I managed to get something out of them. Imaged with 8″ SCT and STL-11000. Total exposure 160 minutes.

With Mr. Paul Boltwood’s kind help, I was able to repair the cloud sensor myself. There was a tiny piece of insulator which had failed and replacing it with a new one solved the issue I will add a more detailed story later.

This morning the Cloud Sensor adaptor box went dead without warning. I’m investigating the reason and have already contacted Cyanogen about my problem. Cloud Sensor II graphics will be off-line too until this issue is solved

Update: I ran all the tests suggested in Cloud Sensor manual and found the root cause. Unfortunately it seem to be the sensor itself and that means sending it over to Canada It’s going to take a loooong time before I’m back online with it.

I combined my latest image with earlier M42 image and was able to get total of 3.5 hours of exposure. This is the result and will be my final for season 2007-2008. Next time I will return to this on November.

M42

Rainy days might be rewarding after all. I had some time to browse through my image directories and found 1 minute sub exposures taken on January. I put them together (HaRGB) and here is the result. Total exposure time is 50 minutes. More details in my image gallery (click image).

M42

Summer has taken over and night skies are lightening up again. So, it’s time to take this mandatory break and continue again on august.

721 Tabora

Marked in image is minor planet (721) Tabora. I found it with Visual PinPoint and actually there were three minor planets in a same field of view with Leo trio!

On 19./20.03.2008 I observed several main belt asteroids to report astrometry to Minor Planet Center (MPC). Obviously the data was good enough because MPC rewarded me with my own observatory code (B64)! Here are few animations from that night.

451 Patientia

369 Aeria

739 Mandeville