Continuing my binaries series. HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher, very bad seeing.
6 nu1 CMa
HD 55856
My old EQ3 with a new ST4 port
UPDATE 2022: I reimplemented the whole hand controller on an ESP32 micro, from the ground up. See this article.
On cloudy nights astronomers sleep still do some astronomy, or just something, in order to be doing something. What I did last night: take out my old EQ3 mount — motorized but no goto and no autoguider port — and think about it a bit. After some thinking and measuring, I added a standard ST4 autoguider port to it. While I know there are others who have done so before me, I remember reading some articles a few years back, for this project I didn’t bother to google that/those articles again. Cause it’s not rocket science.
And cause I already have my soapbox driving the HEQ5. Actually I have two soapboxes, so let’s rock.
the steppers used for radec
the steppers used for radec
So I opened the black box the hand controller literally is, to see what’s under the hood.
Binaries, second balcony-survey
94 Aqr
After the first „survey”, I did the second one, and in the meanwhile I’ve been improving my photo planner. Cannot really talk about it without some sarcasm, it’s more like a struggle with the city skies, the lack of time and energy to do something more substantial, but hey, life sucks.
Some of the more interesting stars:
As a technical challenge, 12 Aquarii’s separation is under 3 arc seconds. This would not be a problem for bright planets where a few tens of milliseconds are enough to capture a brightly lit frame. The primary, itself a binary is a mere 6m star, and the secondary is 7.5m which means some extra loving is needed to get both the color (difference) and the angular resolution.
51 Eridani’s companion red dot is actually a binary itself, composed of two red dwarfs. The star has a mention in researching exoplanets, so do look it up if you are into such stuff.
91 Aquarii is interesting because of its exoplanet.
Binaries, first balcony-survey
Sirius and Sirius B
The planets season has more or less ended, though even Jupiter can still be tamed, with modest expectations, and Saturn can still yield surprises. But, the planets season has more or less ended. So I thought about putting my evenings/nights and the balcony observatory, while it still exists, to good use and look for targets suitable to the setup: binary stars with small angular separation, on the order of arcseconds.
What I also needed: an easy way to get a selection of suitable stars for my balcony and equipment. While pre-selected lists like this one on the Sky&Telescope site are nice, I needed something more substantial. So I incorporated the Washington Double Star Catalog into my photo planner, filtering out elements fainter than 7m. The link usually works… http://ad.usno.navy.mil/wds/ Let’s see a demo: plot some colored binaries for here-and-now.
Some of the stars are of particular interest.
Sirius B, since Sirius is so damn obvious on the sky, is a frequently visited target. It is now at its maximum apparent separation, at around 10-11″, and after I have gathered experience photographing Mimas and Enceladus near the glare of Saturn, this feat turned out to be a piece of cake.
145 CMa is the Albireo of the southern/winter sky. See my Albireo here, recorded with a much much more modest equipment.
40 Eridani, a ternary system containing a common yellowish K star, and a close pair of an M red dwarf and a white dwarf, the first white dwarf discovered, first observed in 1783 by William Herschel. For fans of the Star Trek universe, this is the star system _\\// is coming from.
Sirius B, μ CMa 2019-10-12
Using my planetary-setup, I imaged two binaries this morning: Sirius and Sirius B (~10″), and a perhaps less known one, μ Canis Majoris with a separation of ~3″. HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher
Sirius and Sirius B
mu CMa
Photoplanner Statistics
As you know, there is this photo planner on my site. So I was curious what are people usually looking for. Here’s the results for the last few month.
| query | notes | count |
| m 42 | Orion Nebula | 145 |
| ngc 2264 | Cone Nebula | 118 |
| m 31 | Andromeda Galaxy | 109 |
| ngc 7000 | North America Nebula | 87 |
| c 13 | Owl Cluster | 72 |
| ngc 7000 | North America Nebula | 87 |
| … |
Jupiter 2019-09-18
HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher
Jupiter family portrait 2019-09-02
Using the data acquired on 2019-09-02, I put together this nice animation.
Jupiter, Io 2019-09-01, another take
This is another image I processed from the set acquired a month ago. The bad weather that’s likely coming and the planets season ending, and some unwanted free time, I am going through my database for images to process.
