Category Archives: Imaging

Posts regarding imaging and image processing

What a lunar eclipse! (too bad it was cloudy)

Posted on December 23, 2010 by rbuchwald

As you might know, the weather did not cooperate for our planned observing session of the total lunar eclipse. What was also unusual was that this eclipse occurred on the night of the winter solstice (the longest night of the … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Imaging, Sky Events, Solar System | Comments Off

Geminid Meteor Shower – a warmer method to observe!

Posted on December 19, 2010 by rbuchwald

The Geminid meteor shower is about as good of a meteor show as the Perseids are but happens in the cold of winter. It peaked this year at about 2 AM on December 14th while the temperature was sub-zero. Being … Continue reading →

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HT Cassiopeia – Light Curve (Part 2)

Posted on November 16, 2010 by rbuchwald

The 600 images collected during the observing session were analyzed photometrically using the capabilities of the MAXIM DL5 software. There are numerous reference/comparison stars available for the analysis as shown on an AAVSO finder chart obtained at http://www.aavso.org/vsp/chart under the … Continue reading →

Posted in Deep Sky, Imaging, Stars | Comments Off

HT Cassiopeia – an Amazing Binary Star System (Part 1)

Posted on November 7, 2010 by rbuchwald

On November 2nd, a new AAVSO Special Notice (#221) arrived in my email inbox. HT Cas is a dwarf nova star in the constellation of Cassiopeia (the one that looks like a “W” and is currently well placed in our … Continue reading →

Posted in Deep Sky, Imaging, Stars | 1 Comment

Say Goodbye to Comet Hartley

Posted on October 24, 2010 by rbuchwald

As some of you may know, there has been another comet passing near the Earth on its periodic orbital path. It is known as a “short period” comet because it completes one orbit around the sun about every 6 years. … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Imaging, Sky Events, Solar System | 1 Comment

A Whirlwind Tour of the Solar System

Posted on August 1, 2010 by rbuchwald

I received a phone call from Mike Paquette on Saturday July 24th. He told me that he thought that it might be possible to observe all of the planets in the solar system all in a few hours in one … Continue reading →

Posted in Imaging, Solar System | 2 Comments

Fun with Astrometrics! and a Near Earth Object

Posted on April 24, 2010 by rbuchwald

As some of you may know, I have recently been experimenting with the capability of our observatory equipment to accurately measure the position of objects in the telescope camera images. Things outside of our solar system don’t change position much, … Continue reading →

Posted in Cameras, Equipment, Imaging, Software, Solar System, Telescope | 2 Comments

Eclipses! Saturday Presentation

Posted on March 9, 2010 by twalkowski

This Saturday, March 13 at 7 PM Greg Buchwald will give a talk entitled “A Dozen Years of Chasing the Shadow: Observing Solar Eclipses”  As always, the event is free and open to the public — please join us!  Greg … Continue reading →

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Observations of an Exoplanet!

Posted on January 16, 2010 by rbuchwald

Last Wednesday night we lucked out with clear sky conditions and relatively good seeing to observe something amazing: the transit of an exoplanet! HD80606b is a planet that is four times larger than Jupiter, orbiting one star of a binary … Continue reading →

Posted in General, Imaging, Stars | 4 Comments

Another Nova in Scutum

Posted on November 11, 2009 by rbuchwald

Another nova was tentitively discovered by H. Nishimura in Japan and I went to the observatory Tues night to see if I could confirm it. Yup – its there! I took an AAVSO finder chart wit me, but it was … Continue reading →

Posted in Imaging, Sky Events, Stars | 4 Comments