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Sunsets; DSLR imaging: Moon, Earthshine;
iPhone imaging: Moon on Dome

Posted: 10 October 2016

A band of clouds from the west coast began arriving at Cassiopeia Observatory late Wednesday afternoon, 5 October 2016, making the sky overcast by sunset. Cloudy skies continued on Thursday, 6 October, but the clouds made for a pretty sunset that evening, as seen in this webcam photo:

photo

Friday, 7 October, dawned mostly cloudy but the sky cleared mid-morning. Unfortunately, clouds began returning mid-afternoon. As sunset approached the sky was mostly cloudy with another pretty sunset (and bird):

photo

Cloudy skies continued until Sunday, 9 October.

Open: Sunday, 9 October 2016, 2052 MST
Temperature: 74°F
Session: 1019
Conditions: Clear

Equipment Used:
12" f/8 LX600 w/StarLock
Wireless AutoStar II handset
2" 24mm UWA eyepiece
2" 9mm 100° eyepiece
1.25" 26mm eyepiece

Camera:
D7200 DSLR
iPhone 6s Plus

2058 MST: LX600 ON, StarLock and High Precision OFF.

2101 MST: viewed the Moon, 102X. Nice view. Earthshine still visible even though the illuminated portion of the Moon was very bright.

Then began setting up to image the Moon. Mounted the D7200 DSLR at prime focus + focal reducer. This is a 1/500sec, ISO 400, image of the Moon. The image saturation was increased to bring out colors on the Moon.


photo

This 1/2sec, ISO 400, exposure shows the Earthshine:

photo

2112 MST: completed lunar imaging. Did some lunar observing, 271X. There were many nice sights this night.

With the 24mm eyepiece (102X) the Moon was projected on to the observatory dome. I had previously imaged the "Moon on Dome" using a DSLR. This night I used my iPhone 6s Plus with a clip-on wide-angle lens, mounted on a GorillaPod, for this image using NightCap Pro (Long Exposure, ISO 2000, 20 seconds):

photo

This is how the camera view looked live on the Apple Watch, which was used as a remote shutter release:

photo

I then did some brief lunar observing using a 1.25" 26mm eyepiece (94X). The Moon's disk was too large to fully fit in the eyepiece field-of-view.

Some clouds were coming in from the west so decided to close for the night.

Close: Sunday, 9 October 2016, 2216 MST
Temperature: 69°F
Session Length: 1h 24m
Conditions: Mostly clear


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Copyright ©2016 Michael L. Weasner / mweasner@me.com
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