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thewayneI was doing OK on the photography side, my main problem was not assembling the pile of photos correctly in Photoshop. Now I know how! Now I also know that I REALLY need to get an intervalometer! I shot these using an infrared remote release to trip the camera to do 30 second exposures (Canon 6D, full-frame 20ish megapixel, 17-40 zoom at 17mm, f4.5 at 30 seconds, ISO 800), but was inconsistent with firing at precise 30 second intervals and that's what causes the little 'dot breaks' in the streaks. Theoretically I can use my laptop as an intervalometer, so that's something that I'll experiment with tomorrow and I'll (maybe) come back to the observatory tomorrow night and try again.
This is my wife's telescope, the 3.5 meter. The structure to the right is the 'arcade' that connects the operations/administrative building to the telescope.
The telescope on the left is the Sloan 2.5 meter, in front you again see the 3.5 meter, the two smaller domes are the NMSU 1 meter and the ARCSAT 0.5. The rightmost building is the dome/barn for the Sloan 2.5: it's on railroad ties and is moved away from the telescope when the telescope is opened.
Getting Polaris almost centered in that shot was sheerest luck.
Another view of the Sloan 2.5.
Unfortunately for the last set I only got 7 images for 3.5 minutes duration before they had to temporarily shut the telescope down for a cartridge swap. The slight blur was because they were slewing the telescope to point to where I was, prior to pointing the telescope straight up for the cartridge change. But all telescopes are always constantly moving, albeit ever so slowly, so getting a perfectly crisp shot of one probably means that it's not tracking and it's a totally staged shot.
Since this was just a test-run, I wanted to go inside and do the post-processing to see how things worked out.
And I was pleased.
This is my wife's telescope, the 3.5 meter. The structure to the right is the 'arcade' that connects the operations/administrative building to the telescope.
The telescope on the left is the Sloan 2.5 meter, in front you again see the 3.5 meter, the two smaller domes are the NMSU 1 meter and the ARCSAT 0.5. The rightmost building is the dome/barn for the Sloan 2.5: it's on railroad ties and is moved away from the telescope when the telescope is opened.
Getting Polaris almost centered in that shot was sheerest luck.
Another view of the Sloan 2.5.
Unfortunately for the last set I only got 7 images for 3.5 minutes duration before they had to temporarily shut the telescope down for a cartridge swap. The slight blur was because they were slewing the telescope to point to where I was, prior to pointing the telescope straight up for the cartridge change. But all telescopes are always constantly moving, albeit ever so slowly, so getting a perfectly crisp shot of one probably means that it's not tracking and it's a totally staged shot.
Since this was just a test-run, I wanted to go inside and do the post-processing to see how things worked out.
And I was pleased.
