ASSNE.ORG

There's a really nice article that's been published this week in the UMass D campus newspaper about the observing session we did a little while ago. Lots of good pictures! https://umassdtorch.com/2023/05/15/university-of-massachusetts-dartmouth-hosts-first-star-party-after-observatory-repairs/ - Mark

I much prefer the image with the GHS processing (I saved it as wallpaper on one of my computers).

I think the little tiny background galaxies are really cool!

- Mark M

My number one goal for 2023 is to get the UMass-D observatory back into action. I hope we can re-establish a regular outreach program there and also start integrating their telescope into the school's physics/astronomy curriculum. -7060552912448410774.jpg There's great opportunities for more people ...

Pete:
The AAVSO has a spectroscopy program. They've got specific target stars and observing guidelines. You can even find links on their website to videos that talk about the value of amateur monitoring of spectra.

Check it out at https://www.aavso.org/spectroscopy-observing-section

- Mark

When I started writing my astronomy software a couple decades ago, one of the first things that I needed was software to find the centers of star images. To my surprise, star centers are easily established to an accuracy of about 0.01 pixels; the whole idea of fixing a star location to something so ...

Roger:
One of the things I see when I zoom in really close on your two images is that the BX image seems to have less residual color around the stars. Is this to be expected? Do you run BX on each color channel separately? Or does it run on the blended RGB image?
- Mark

Cool! I also imaged last night, but overall image quality was pretty poor due to the wind. I probably threw away 20% of my images; luckily, up to a limit poor image quality doesn't cause much of a reduction in quality of brightness measurement (since all the stars are being "damaged" in th...

Okay, time for an update. I replaced the simple "visual back with compression ring" with a Baader ClickLock adapter (from Agena Astro -- great place for adapters and accessories), and it made a big difference. The Baader device provides a much stronger grip to the camera/reducer/filterwhee...

Ah, thank you all. I rotated the camera 180 degrees. (Actually, I rotated the entire imaging chain from the focal reducer back to the camera.) It made a big difference in the image: The image center shifted by a little more than 4 arcmin, The "coma center" moved almost exactly to the cente...

One of the things that I'm struggling with is residual coma in my images. (I'm using a Starizona Focal Reducer and Coma Corrector for all my images.) For example, notice the top left corner of this image: TypicalImage.jpg If I take that image, and draw straight lines through some of the stars that s...