Well, I wasn’t able to join the rest of the gang at Binbrook as I was up in Collingwood at Blue Mountain for the week. I did manage to get out for the eclipse though (and despite the extreme cold – managed to convince some of my family to come out of the warmth and watch also). I imaged using a Canon EOS 40D with a 50-500mm zoom lens. I watched the eclipse from the start (before 9:00pm) until just before totality at which time clouds rolled over – as such I wasn’t able to image the complete eclipse – but got fairly close.

I arrived at the Binbrook main gate at 8:00pm – shortly after KerryAnn then Don showed up. I stayed until just after 11:00pm when my camera battery was just about to die – Don and Kerry were still hunting DSO’s when I left.

I imaged using my new Canon 40D and timer remote through my Sigma 50-500 APO lens – I imaged at 191mm so I could leave the setup on auto-pilot (no guiding required) taking series of 2 minutes exposures for the Pleiades and 10 second exposures for the comet. The Pleiades and the comet:

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UPDATE By: KerryLH

As Tim mentioned, I also did some imaging. This time I concentrated on NGC253 Sculptor Galaxy. This almost edge on spiral galaxy looked fairly large and bright in the 6in SCT. Surprising, considering how close it is to the horizon. It is also very cool to be able to see some mottling in the eyepiece. I’m sure larger scopes will show much more.

Don wanted me to get a widefield image of Holmes… so here it is. I stacked a few 3 minute frames. I saw a pic on the web showing a very large and faint tail emanating from the soft edge and fanning out towards Mirfak and Delta Perseus. Pretty interesting eh? Anyway it is really hard to see, but the large fanning tail(extremely faint green hue) is just barely detectable in the image below. I will do another widefield image of this region… but with much longer and many more exposures to see if I can capture it better.

Below is another image which is a composite to try and show the very faint green outer halo and the bright compact inner core. Exposures ranged between 2 minutes and 30 seconds at iso800

Note: I posted a few more pics below in Glenn’s post as well.

Got to Binbrook for a 3:00am gate opening – Jackie was soon to follow. The sky was crystal and calm as predicted (the CSC is going to get it right once in a while – it’s just a matter of odds). The moon had just set – the Pleaides were high in the sky and Orion was just clearing the trees.

After setting up and polar aligning I started testing my new IDAS LPR filter – first with the Pleaides – then with Orion’s belt and dagger.

It was the first time I saw Venus since it crossed over to the morning – it sure is high and bright.

It was a nice calm, quite, and not too cold night. Three of us set up for observing and imaging for a few hours. I tried my 70mm f/2.8 (not an APO though) to see how it would do. It had some CA but it certainly is fast compared to the lenses I normally use. The following is a very bright portion of the Milkyway (including a number of Messier objects). The image has been drastically reduced and compressed.

UPDATE: reposted image – with a little less saturation…

Here is a a widefield composite of the lower south sky containing the Lagoon, Trifid, Swan, and Eagle nebulae and a couple of clusters. Imaged at the HAA picnic – multiple 4 minute exposures stacked and stitched – shot at 135mm f/5 x 4 minutes each @ ISO800.

So I spent 4 late hours imaging the Milkyway using an 18mm-125mm zoom set to 30mm f/4 – 6 frames – each frame is a set of 3 x 10 minutes at ISO 400 stacked. Then spent 2 days rotating, stitching, blending, colour balancing…. to get the following image (reduced to less than 2% original size):

Personally, unless printing large scale, I prefer the single frame 10 minute exposure using my 10mm-20mm ultra-wide zoom set to 10mm f/4 (image posted a few days ago) – it looks as good on small scale, no blend lines, and saves quite a bit of time.

Starfest gave a number of clear skies – no rain (at least it hadn’t hit yet when I packed up and left at 8:00am Sunday morning). A number of us spent Friday night imaging into the wee hours – and then casual observing on Saturday night – walking around and checking out the other equipment – it was quite a pleasure looking through a 25″ telescope! A few very brilliant meteors were spotted – one that lasted about 3 seconds as it flashed and pieces broke off was a treat.

I’m up in Tobermory for a little more observing – tonight’s forcast for the meteor shower is very promising here.

Tim’s Images from Starfest:

Part of the Milkyway

Veil Nebula (or at least the west part – NGC6960)

M31 (Andromeda), M32, and M110

CLEAR SKIES (and so far NO rain)

Greetings from HAA’s Active (pre-registered) members at Starfest: Today’s beautiful skies will be followed by a grand night of observing (we hope – see the attached CSC). We’ve had one great night already – Wednesday was phenomenal with Kerry and Bob getting some nice images, Glenn and Gail getting the last object needed to complete their Messier list (M74), and Steve Germann discovering faint galaxies like NGC 404.
The most moisture we’ve had was the heavy dew on Wednesday night but we know how to cope and didn’t have to pack it in until 2:30am.
According to Alex Tekatch, Starfest is the most wonderful time of the year.
That’s all for now – stay tuned – your fellow observing members: Alex, Tim H., Ann, Bill, Anthony, Steve, Kerry, Glenn, Gail, Bob, Mike J., Cindy, Stewart, Jackie, Jim, Doug B., Doug W., Marg & Bruce.

PS, did we mention there is no sign of rain…

M16 By KerryLH from Wednesday night @ Starfest

The GWS with fancy new shroud (made by Ann) and improvised counterweight system

Update By Kerry
Currently we are expecting good sky conditions through the weekend!!!!!

Update by Bob Christmas
I arrived at Starfest on Wednesday afternoon (August 8, 2007), about 2-ish. I had my digital imaging setup ready to go at dusk that night, and, here’s one of my results from Wednesday night (2007/08/08). This is the Trifid Nebula (M20), as well as open cluster M21 above it. — Photo by Bob Christmas

A number of observers showed up at the alternate site last night and stayed into the early hours of the morning (I was the first to leave at around 1:30am – I had to work today). While Mike, Kerry, and I imaged – others tried to determine just how much detail could be made out on various DSOs just looking through the scopes.

Clear skies, steady and calm after 10:30pm, no bugs, and a half dozen or so fellow observers – a good night.

The Omega (Swan) Nebula:

The moon (at 55.5% illumination):

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Update By KerryLH :

Was a great night out but got pretty chilly near the end. It was fun observing with everyone… we even had two non members join in with their scopes. It’s nice meeting new people that are into the hobby.

I spent most of my night photographing through my Sky-Watcher 80mm Equinox and using the c6-SCT as a guidescope.

M8 Lagoon Nebula By:Kerry
3x4min

M20 Trifid Nebula By:Kerry
3x3min

I’d have to say these are the best nebula shots that I have taken to date… thanks Tim for the motivation to get a couple more manually guided frames. I was a little disappointed in the chromatic aberration in some of the stars since I was using an APO but apparently I can easily get rid of it with processing. I guess not all APOs are equal.

I got two excellent nights and one very good night in a row (last night was still very clear, but there was a slight twinkle to the stars). I tried my hand at imaging the North American Nebula – this one is very faint – I took three 20 minutes exposures as wisps of the nebulae could just barely be made out in the five minute test exposure. Even at 20 minutes I had to adjust the raw image exposure by +1 which made them all that much more grainy. Unfortunately though there was a problem with the tracking – I thought I had tracked all three exposures ok but afterward discovered I hadn’t firmly locked down the guide scope so I still wound up with star trailing. Anyhow, here is a first attempt 3 x 20 minute exposure of the North American Nebula drastically reduced:

Also, the re-attempt at the Lagoon & Trifid resulted in much sharper detail which really shows on the lager image in my gallery (I did lock down the guide scope for this one) – this is 1 x 5, 2 x 10, and 1 x 15. I didn’t get a chance to post it yesterday as the phones (and DSL) went down:

Looks like it was a good weekend of observing for all.