Hi All, A quick report on my excursion to the Wedge Friday night. I drove around searching for Kim and the Grahns, but couldn't find them when I was looking. I did come across Kim's sister and her family and she thought they would be around somewhere. I looked again but couldn't find them. So I set up not far from his sister's family. Shortly afterward, Kim walked over -- he and his family and the Grahns had been camping in an area I had not checked. By then I had my 'scope up in Polar mode and it was too heavy to take down and move again, so I decided to stay there. But I walked over to their camp and I was able to meet some really nice folks. Back at my camp, my trouble was just beginning. A huge dark cloud mass obscured much of the sky, including the Big Dipper and Polaris, making it impossible for me to make my final checks. So I just went ahead and pretended I could see Polaris, and did the other alignments. It turned out that, because I had used a compass (propery offset) to set up, I was close to the correct setting. After the clouds cleared the night was glorious, with nice, steady viewing. But my main goal was to take photos, and I tried to get my Meade LPI system to track a start so I could make a long exposure. That was impossible. I succeeded in getting the LPI camer and a 26-mm lens to be parafocal to each other, but I couldn't get a star to show up that I could track with. I suspect the parafocus wasn't point on so the star images weren't sharp enough to show up. I will need to work on that some more. This took most of the night. But I managed to get a glimpse of M-51, which was extraordinary, and the stars around it were especially bright. Also the Orion Nebula was bright, early in the evening. I gave up on using the LPI as an autoguider and decided to take some Jupiter pictures with it. I didn't spend much time or effort on this, as the image began to blur and bobble around, I suspect because predawn high-level breezes were snorting through. But a couple were surprising to me, in the amount of detail they show. I have posted two of them to my gallery (see the link at the very bottom of this note). So the night was sort of a failure and sort of successful. Best wishes, Joe

Joe I looked for your jupiter moon shot but didn't see it. I will look again in a bit. Dave Bennett I love the animation gif file you posted of the moons of Jupiter rotating around. Good job! http://www.utahastronomy.com/album12 Jim Joe Bauman <bau@desnews.com> wrote: Hi All, A quick report on my excursion to the Wedge Friday night. I drove around searching for Kim and the Grahns, but couldn't find them when I was looking. I did come across Kim's sister and her family and she thought they would be around somewhere. I looked again but couldn't find them. So I set up not far from his sister's family. Shortly afterward, Kim walked over -- he and his family and the Grahns had been camping in an area I had not checked. By then I had my 'scope up in Polar mode and it was too heavy to take down and move again, so I decided to stay there. But I walked over to their camp and I was able to meet some really nice folks. Back at my camp, my trouble was just beginning. A huge dark cloud mass obscured much of the sky, including the Big Dipper and Polaris, making it impossible for me to make my final checks. So I just went ahead and pretended I could see Polaris, and did the other alignments. It turned out that, because I had used a compass (propery offset) to set up, I was close to the correct setting. After the clouds cleared the night was glorious, with nice, steady viewing. But my main goal was to take photos, and I tried to get my Meade LPI system to track a start so I could make a long exposure. That was impossible. I succeeded in getting the LPI camer and a 26-mm lens to be parafocal to each other, but I couldn't get a star to show up that I could track with. I suspect the parafocus wasn't point on so the star images weren't sharp enough to show up. I will need to work on that some more. This took most of the night. But I managed to get a glimpse of M-51, which was extraordinary, and the stars around it were especially bright. Also the Orion Nebula was bright, early in the evening. I gave up on using the LPI as an autoguider and decided to take some Jupiter pictures with it. I didn't spend much time or effort on this, as the image began to blur and bobble around, I suspect because predawn high-level breezes were snorting through. But a couple were surprising to me, in the amount of detail they show. I have posted two of them to my gallery (see the link at the very bottom of this note). So the night was sort of a failure and sort of successful. Best wishes, Joe _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.

Jim, Can you find my album on the photo gallery maintained by Cyn for this newsgroup? The gallery is at: http://www.utahastronomy.com -- Just click on my album, then go to the second page. Thanks, Joe

Great, that's it. Just wanted to show a couple of views. Thanks, Joe

Nice color Joe. How long was your exposure and did you stack images? Jim Joe Bauman <bau@desnews.com> wrote: Oops, I see what you were referring to -- I accidentally put the wrong date on them. It's March 20, Saturday morning. I've corrected that. Thanks! -- Joe _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance Tax Center - File online. File on time.