Sigh! Wishing for clear skies but photographing SNOW instead ~ lol

How does the saying go?  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  lol
Hoping for clear skies early next week ;-)

November 6 Sunlab

Yesterday I got the telescopes out for a Sunlab.  The lab was scheduled from 11:30 AM to 12:30.  It was cloudy right up to a bit after 11 and then it turned partly cloudy.

It was EXTREMELY windy ~ wind blowing from the NW about 24 mph made the actual temperature, 43 F, feel like 33 F!  I was sort of wondering how the mount for my 6" Celestron Advanced VX would handle that nearly gale force wind ~ lol  As Scotty would say "Aye, Capt'n! She handled beautifully."  Hah!

The other large scope is the school's 8" Celstron reflector.

Took a few pictures of the Sun while I was set up.....

And made this short video using the movie feature on the Rebel:

Happy Going-Off-Daylight-Savings-Time morning :-)

What better way to celebrate going off DST than to spend it outside under the stars!  Here's (another) video of the Moon <3  Hope you can find your favorite crater along the terminator.

I struggled tonight with trying to figure out how the AutoGuider works so I can take long exposure photographs.  I'll get there.....  In the mean time ~ the Moon's an AWESOME target!

M42 Raw and Processed

So ~ this morning I set up my 6" Celestron out on our porch.... StarSense did an OUTSTANDING job calibrating.  Within a few minutes of powering up I was going to whatever I wanted to. :-)

I focused on Orion's Nebula, M42.  For the first time took a set of dark, bias, and flat frames to use for processing.  For lights I went with 30 pics at a single exposure of 1.3"  (I was bumping up against dawn ;)

Raw Pic:

Processed using (FREE) DeepSkyStacker then reduced so it could be uploaded to Blogger:

To me ~ think that they're both pretty :-)

Finally...  Here's the video of Jupiter with an assortment of ISO's  Still a work in progress.

The Moon Through the Clark ~ a 12" Refractor

So a favorite place of mine to be is out at the Witte Observatory Complex.  Last night (for the first time) I took a series of photos through this Clark 12" Refracting Telescope ~ prime focus:

And used Photostitch to make this composite photo of the Moon<3

There are worse hobbies to have ~ lol :-)

A Bit of Sunrise in MS

First "stab" at creating a time-lapse video of a sunrise....  It's harder than I thought :-)
Fog is sooooo cool anyway ~

Solar Eclipse October 23, 2014 (?)

Fighting viewing the Sun through clouds.... at least we got to see part of the eclipse today :-)

The clouds provided a natural filter....