New image: From my April 9th trip to the Flint Hills, click image for bigger version.

My favorite picture from the night. The wind at the time was strong and this part of the grass fire is raging. Its hard to get a sense of how much area is on fire in this picture. Miles and miles. Look in the lower right corner where you make out a couple of  horses, these are about a quarter of a mile away from me.

There is always a risk they’ll be burning the Flint Hills this time of year, its usually just a smoky annoyance.  I never intended to end up surrounded by fire but it was a  cool sight.

Today is the Vernal Equinox and I have four fresh inches of snow on the ground. One week ago today I setup at Monument Rocks under clear skies. Wild weather.

New image: Markarian’s Chain. Click thumbnail on the right for larger version.

Last trip was not only a new location but the first using different pieces, parts and techniques in the field:  ST80 guidescope w/SSAG and a new perl script to control PHD dithering and camera exposures.  In addition, this week I used DeepSkyStacker (DSS) to stack the exposures. Highly recommended.

Monument Rocks Kansas: an interesting trip this last Saturday.  I’ve been considering this dark sky location for months and the weather appeared good for the 13th.  Things worked out pretty well, weather was acceptable and I managed to image a few things. I’ll post something soon.

Update 03.17.2010: Picture of the Zodiacal light taken about an hour after sunset Saturday evening. Click for larger version.

The Zodiacal light was a big reason I wanted to go somewhere dark.  Somewhere free from light pollution in the west. This time of year, from about February to April, the evening Zodiacal light is at its best.  The view last Saturday was nice, very nice.  An even better view will be the week of April 5th:  the planets Mercury and Venus will be highest in the cone of light.

Daylight savings time kicked in while I was out under the stars,  2am became 3am right before my eyes.

Location and timing are everything when observing meteors. This years Leonids were predicted to have higher than normal activity at peak, which unfortunately for me would occurred over Asia. However, one never knows what might happen with this infamous shower so I was intent on observing it. After monitoring weather conditions for days it was obvious I had to head west to find clear skies.

The image on the right (click for larger version) is looking south from my observing location at ‘Point of Rocks’ in Cimarron National Grassland . A Leonid meteor streaks through the sword of Orion over the town of Elkhart, Kansas. I directly observed this meteor and stopped the camera shooting sequence after seeing it. Whats amazing is that  I observed a fairly bright meteor streak across the sky and what the camera caught was this small streak. Capturing meteors is difficult!

My count of Leonid meteors was small, less than 10 per hour, which is about normal for this annual shower. As predicted a peak occurred over Asia and I bet it was a nice show. Below is a graph adapted from the IMO Leonid 2009 live data with my observing time frame highlighted. Timing is everything.

All things wear out and fade away. My trusty ST4 autoguider, while still functional, is nearing that time. While I love its simplicity it suffers from poor sensitivity. Many of its critical parts are no longer available, repair would be difficult. Its better to have a new system ready than have the old fail in the middle of nowhere.

Friday I received my new Orion Star Shooter Autoguider (SSAG) and last night was its first light. Right out of the box it worked, the latest version of PHD Guiding works very well. Last nights 50 minute test was done using PHD’s default configuration and my G11 was setup like I was using the ST4 (2x guide rate).  The guide rate maybe too high. While tracking was good (+/- 1 pixel) there was some RA overshoot on corrections.  So I need to spend some time tweaking the software and finding the proper drive rate for this setup. Overall I am extremely pleased with the SSAG plus it weighs 80% less than the ST4/flipmate setup.

Oh, and sorry everyone in the midwest. I’m sure it will be cloudy for a week now!

Four years ago the Okie-Tex Star Party was having the Saturday night great give-away. At the end of the event I had my first digital SLR (300D) setup to capture the crowd. After an exchange with Ann, a fellow OTSP and NSP amateur I revisited this forgotten image.  Ouch! Bad color and noisy – it needed serious improvement.  Tonight almost exactly four year later I think the image is much improved. Click here or the image on the right!

Picture on left taken Monday night at the Nebraska Star Party, click here or image for larger view.  The Milky Way was fantastic that night and I think the picture represents closely what the sky looked like.  I noticed a tiny meteor captured in the middle left side. Just recently processed the image, still have another widefield for NSP to finish as well.  Amazing how usable ISO 3200 is on the 5D.