Astronomy
Preparing for a lunar eclipse, polishing brass. . .
March 3. People who actually read the captions here will have noticed that a few pages back the parts bench held pieces of a Meade SN10 and a 3-inch F16 Unitron refractor (formerly Ed Szcepanski's).
Long ago, I turned brass adapters to put the Unitron lens cell and focusser on an old brass tube. I no longer remember why I wanted to do this -- something wouldn't focus? -- but with a total lunar eclipse this evening and the possibility of friends coming by to watch it, I plunged ahead and finished mounting the parts.
The Unitron rides nicely enough on top of the A-P 5-inch F6 in the rings I set up to carry the Orion short-tube guide scope. The Unitron was the guidescope I used during the old stare at the red cross hairs and drink a pot of coffee days, days of Technidol and Rapid Fixer, hypered TechPan, and... and... oh, how I do not miss chemical photography.
I took aim at the Sun to make sure the rebuilt Unitron would focus at infinity. Now, if the weather will be unexpectedly hospitable at sunset this evening...
It was! Amy and I drove up to the Catawba River overlook at the community lot where we were joined by the Yambors and the Bevinses for the eclipse. Here's the best of the take.
March 4. Back to the overlook to find the lost eyecup from the 35mm Panoptic. Found. When I got home, I put in some time with Brasso -- the 3-inch now looks like a piece of naval ordinance. Some stains and spots refuse to yield. They add character. I set it up solo on the G11 for its beauty shot. Still need to install some baffles and apply flocking paper inside that long, thin tube.
I wired up an ultra-portable battery pack for the G11. Last night's heavy-packing foray convinced me that I need a way to power just the mount (not the CCD, not the computer, just the mount) for stargazing and for unguided DSLR photography. This aftrernoon, I dug out the 7AH battery stashed with the barndoor mount, charged it, hard-wired an appropriate plug to its leads, stuffed it into a shoulder pouch made for a Walkman CD player, and took off to shoot Venus from a distant cul de sac. Five minutes from parked to shooting, half an hour of shooting, five minutes to take the kit down to come home. Everything worked like a charm. The G11 only draws 500mA, so even this small battery should hold enough juice to run it for several hours.
March 7. (37th anniversary, Perry, Florida.) The G11 carrying the 200mm F2.0 and the Canon are set up in the backyard. It's the simplest rig available: line it up on the pole, attach small battery, use the camera's batteries and its remote control, and just rack off 30s after 30s exposure. The short focal length and short duration makes tracking very forgiving. Combining the raws in Maxim takes just under one minute per frame (align by star matching, combine with sigma sum). Did 30+ exposures of M42 etc, 49 of M45.
Sky was 19.96-20.05 on the SQM. I was tracking limited, not sky-limited.
. 
Waiting for moonrise,
looking a little too far left.
First glimpse of the Moon rising in
eclipse
to the right of the lights of Granite Falls.
(You'll never see the Moon at this scale.)