Howards Astronomical Adventures

: Tales From The Night Sky

  • A Full Moon

    Last night was a full moon, the Harvest Moon to be precise. And this year it appeared bigger than normal being at perigee. The sky was very clear and? the moon seemed brighter than usual, a very pretty sight. No pictures, just a visual? experience.

  • Okie-Tex Star Party 2006

    The Okie-Tex Star Party (OTSP) was a mix of clear skies and disastrous weather. In summary I give it three out of five stars. My criteria in evaluating the OTSP always revolves around astrophotography YMMV. Although I love observing the night sky I drive the distance for the chance to photograph in truly dark skies.…

  • Flint Hills: Mini Star Party

    New image: M8 Lagoon Nebula, imaged Saturday night, July 22 in the Flint Hills. A group of us got together and enjoyed a good night of observing and astrophotography. Phil and I were doing astrophotography. Chuck brought his trusty 13 inch dob while Fred and Richard had a new truss tube dob with them. Dan?…

  • Website Updates

    Several website updates over the past week. First I completely updated the Field of View calculator. Now displays in degrees-minutes-seconds by default. Cleaned up the code and enhanced the chart generator. Second, I added code to detect Internet Explorer on the front page and suggest you switch. Ideas and code fragments from the website Kill…

  • IRIS Tutorial

    Jim Solomon has revised and updated his Astrophotography Cookbook. Jim walks you through acquiring and processing your DSLR images using IRIS. I do not always agree with Jims steps but he has done an excellent job documenting the whole process. I use IRIS to process the RAW images from my camera. IRIS is not the…