One of several Quadrantid meteors I caught on camera.  Meteor was much more impressive to the eyes.

Night started with clouds moving over my place about sunset, I went to bed early. Woke up at 2:45am CDT to clear skies and after getting powered up with coffee  I was observing by 3:30.  Here are my actual notes from the night:

03:20-03:30 3 QUA 1 SPO
03:50-04:05 6 QUA 2 SPO
04:17-04:30 5 QUA
03:20-03:30 3 QUA 1 SPO
04:40-04:50 9 QUA 2 SPO
5.8 lm, 29F
05:03-05:14 1 QUA
05:23-05:34 3 QUA 2 SPO
05:43-05:56 10 QUA 2 SPO
06:05-06:15 5 QUA 2 SPO
06:20-06:27 3 QUA 2 SPO

45 total meteors in 1 hour 40 minutes effective observing time. (there will be an app for this).  Very good show this morning. It helps I was looking either up at the sky to the NE or NW, if one had been watching to the south they’d have missed a bunch of meteors.

Besides having nice clear skies it was only 29°F outside, light wind.  There wasn’t even any dew or frost.  In January!  Amazing.

The best gift for an amateur astronomer is a clear dark sky and thats what mother nature gave me the past days. Add that my weathers been warmer than average, virtually no wind at night and there’s no snow on the ground equals awesome present.

It started Thursday night, the peak of the Ursid meteor shower. Pesky clouds cleared away by 21:00 CST and I saw two Ursid meteors after observing for 40 minutes.  From what I’ve seen reported so far the shower was a bit weak this year.

The clear sky gift just kept on giving with Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights clear. I spent that time photographing NGC 1555, Hind’s Variable Nebula, my second try at this target.

Pictured: Clearfield Observatory glows red late Christmas eve, click for bigger view.

On this day twelve years ago the planet Mercury transited the sun. Visible from North America,  I captured the event from my driveway using a Celestron C8 and a Logitech Quickcam. The picture on the right is one of the better frames. Originally captured in b&w this is a colorized version and it’s shown full size.  Imaging sensors were pretty small back then.

It’s amazing how technology has progressed over the years. My cellphone has a faster processor and more memory than the computer used to capture this image (likely it was a 386 PC running Windows 95).  Also greatly improved over the last decade are my skills. I’d probably get a better image now but I was pretty excited back then.

Planets transiting the sun are relatively rare events. There will not be another visible Mercury transit until 2016!

Phil frames a colorful end to the day October 21st. We were out in the Flint Hills to watch the Orionid meteor shower which was predicted to peak the next morning.  Clouds are not a great start and it took longer than I expected for the skies to clear.  I didn’t see any Orionid meteors until after 2am local time.  Activity was a bit low, I saw a few dozen Orionids before the sky got brighter from the last crescent moon. Then I crashed until almost noon.

Saturday night was clouded out in the area, which is unfortunate. Days later after reading other observer reports it appears the Orionid meteor shower was more active at a later date/time then would be forecast.

Two weeks ago this day I was driving across southern Kansas heading home from the star party. I miss the dark skies and friends, the dusty field full of people waiting for the night sky.  It’s a whole different world there.

From my time under the stars in western Oklahoma I’ve composed this one astrophotograph, a dusty reflection nebula called LBN 534 straddling the border of the constellations Andromeda and Cassiopeia. Click the  thumbnail image for a bigger version.

LBN stands for Lynd’s Bright Nebula, a catalogue of objects compiled from examining the red and blue plates from the Palmer Sky Survey done in the late 1950s. This particular object is not bright, in fact its very dim. I attempted it before  back in 2008 without success, I never had enough exposure time for a good picture then. This year I spent more than  12 hours time over three nights with a  QSI 583 camera. I wish I’d spent even more time imaging this, the seeing was not particularly good on some of the nights and the area around LBN534 appears to be full of dust.

Astrophotography is not a hobby for the impatient. It took me three years to get the picture I wanted.

Over a month ago I started my first LRGB CCD image, target was NGC1555. I’ve run out of time this season to collect more quality imaging data. Alas I found I really need more imaging time on this object from my location.

Nevertheless I decided to post this milestone in my astrophotography adventures despite its shortcomings. Like the terrible light pollution gradient. Click preview for larger version.

The picture is cropped from the original size and was adjusted a bit in Photoshop. This is 2 hours Luminance, 2 hours each RGB with a straight combine. The blue and green images were not of the best quality.

First night of 2011 is crystal clear and cold (avg 12F) here at Clearfield Observatory. Not just the first night of the year, its also first light for a new QSI 583ws camera. So its frickin cold as hell while I’m trying new hardware and techniques. A challenge, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

The night went very well, thank you. Focusing with my homemade Bahtinov mask for the first time: amazingly easy. Testing shows the color filters (AstroDon TruBalance ) have a slight difference in focus among them, not unexpected. Finding and framing target without a camera viewfinder: not as bad as I thought. This is good since I don’t have a goto mount and finding/framing can be tedious.

After the initial test images I did one hour of exposures ( 21 x 3m) on Barnard 33, luminance only (click image for 100% zoom of horse head):

Combined in Maxim DL, just darks and lights, no flats. Minimal photoshop work, no noise reduction.  Very pleased with these results!