Great Orion Nebula Rises
Winter is upon us as the Great Orion Nebula rises around sunset and is favorably placed in the East for this astroimaging result. M42 looks good in practically any telescope but the large ones show color and breathtaking views.
Going into color mode yields the result below. Which is preferred?
Above: Otis primary telescope mirrors just keep getting bigger and bigger with no end in sight.
Telescope Builder Power - Construction by Mike Otis
World Class 2,400-Inch Telescope & Observatory
A new big telescope and observatory are now in the planning stages for construction. Before Amping, the optical base of 24" uses a glass primary and secondary set at the Newtonian focus and will have a resultant deep ended RFT focal length in the F3 range.
Such telescopes are very expensive and challenging to create due to the deepened parabola... with a 2-inch focuser and 2" FL lens, the telescope can produce 3.3x24/2 = 39.6 magnification at very wide field, ideal for deep sky. At the other range, projection with a sole 6mm ocular (.23622" focus) FL will yield 335x. Given the high concentration of light from the Orion Nebula, or massive Jupiter, just short of burning holes in the film's emulsion, a sensitive digital camera detector should saturate in a fractional second of exposed time.
When completed, Otis Amping software will transform this telescope into apertures of 240" diameter and 2,400" diameter. This will become the largest (Amped) ground based telescope in the world when located near Singularity Observatory. The latter power modus will exceed the aperture of the James Webb Space Telescope by 2,144 inches and the Hubble Space Telescope by 2,306 inches. Currently the largest Amped telescope in the world is located at Singularity Observatory and is 1,400-inches diameter. The new telescope will be 1,000-inches larger in diameter. Important new research and discoveries are inevitable - made possible by these world class telescopes.
It has been shown that a large telescope, when focused on deep sky, can penetrate far deeper than smaller scopes in a light polluted location and then extract a huge amount of detail through proper processing. The observatory, if all checks out, will be several thousand feet higher in elevation than the current complex and possibly situated on top of the roof expanse depending on the deal struck - atop one of the tallest skyscrapers in the region! Stay tuned for more details and developments about this ongoing project.
New Telescope Build
https://space1usa.blogspot.com/2022/12/new-gold-hexagonal-telescope.html
Moon Mars Occultation
Heavily processed and amplified Moon Mars occultation image shot through heavy random upper ionic atmospheric pollution. Shooting through a blanket layer of total sky obscuration is an art within itself. Subtracting off light pollution and balancing a view through ionic obscura requires numerous software packages programmed to resurrect the latent digital image. Background sky is a contentious variable dealt with by using multiple iterations of software processing.
The winter rain season is in full swing, with temperatures falling by approximately ten degrees every two weeks. Skies are overcast and therefore work will continue indoors on previous collected data and special projects.
Telescopes are in hibernation and various degrees of work on the new observatory are temporarily suspended until conditions improve. Several heaters are used 24/7 along with a dehumidifier to take the edge off the cold dampness. By Sunday, temps will fall another ten degrees and the next level, if reached, will produce snow although that would be a rare and relatively short term experience. Indoors, the observatory and all rooms are composed of no insulation, with concrete walls and glass ceramic floors, all constructed in the local region style. The indoor environment easily reaches and matches the outdoor temperature conditions if left unchecked.
Jupiter Mars conjunction on the morning of June 6th, 2022, and compared with a planetarium program, Celestron's SkyPortal, at approximately the same time.
Shot with iPhone 6 Plus and NightCap Camera at 1 second exposure. Visually, through intense and massive urban light pollution, only Jupiter and Mars were visible.
The Apple iPhone NightCap app brings out more stars in Aquarius, Pisces and Pegasus constellations.
A W47 filter allows violet light to pass but also allows a small amount of Infrared light right at the other end of the spectrum to pass.
The spectral transmission curve for the Wratten 47 deep blue filter.
Here are imaging examples with a Nexstar 6SE. (Nexstar 6se, ASI1600mm, UVenus filter, no Barlow. Used 1291 out of 4400 frames. Second out of five consecutive attempts. Others were a bit worse, mainly tracking pushing Venus out of the small capture window I was using to maximize framerate at about 80/second.)
https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/562488-small-bore-challenge-venus-w-6-or-less/page-2
Parts are slated for ordering to increase the resolution and capacity of Sun Baked Observatory. Improvements are being made to the mounting, guiding, and tracking system. Solar prominences along the sun's limb are being tuned to spectral wavelengths and numerous tests are being performed.
At first glance, and for the impatient, it would seem the Celestron Nexyz mobile phone mount was not going to work for the Acuter Maksy 60 telescope.
The ten ounces added significant weight to the light 1-lb Acuter Maksy 60 OTA and would appear to burden the tiny tripod. To make matters worse, the rack mechanism appeared to ram into the OTA when the phone was positioned back over and above the OTA to gain some semblance of balance.
The Acuter has a permanent balance point over the tiny tripod and is not adjustable. In some positions, the weight of the mount and phone can tip over the telescope and tiny tripod.
However, all these points are fixable by positioning the mount and phone camera as seen in the photo at the top of this page.
A small amount of experimenting and various adjustments by trial and error will bring the mobile phone and its mount to the correct position, with no tube interference and no telescope tippage. Top photos show one correct way to position the cell phone and mobile phone holder, for no tube interference and the best weight balancing. At left, the knob is ramming into the tube.
The Celestron NexYZ is well constructed, easy to use, and the cell phone clamp has a perfect amount of grip - not too heavy and not too loose. The grip does not press on the buttons at the side of the iPhone. The Celestron NexYZ has become the mobile phone holder for astro imaging, by choice. The holder currently sells for about $80.95. Note: the best balance position may vary depending on the telescope's orientation for the object which is being viewed.
The idea is to use a wireless bluetooth operated mobile phone camera remote control for the shutter. This will not introduce vibrations and taking a photo does not require tapping on the touchscreen. The device is so small, it can be worn on a necklace strap or bracelet so as not to become lost and also to remain handy for quick use.
Left: the backside of the Acuter stock phone mount should look like this for positioning the camera with the proper tension. The use of only one band is needed.
The reason for this unusual design is there are no phone side grippers. I tried several different phone mounts with side grippers and they all interfered with the side buttons on the phone and could not be used.
This applies to the Apple iPhone 6 Plus and Xs Max.
The designers at Acuter Optics knew what they were doing when they designed this mobile phone holder. It does not pinch the sides of the phone and does not interfere with the side buttons or the operation of the iPhone. Read about bad phone mounts:
https://otisastro.blogspot.com/2022/05/bad-phone-camera-mounts.html
In this experiment, a battery of telescopes will attach to the Celestron Nexstar 6SE and mount.
The primary concern is not to overrun the mount's payload capacity which is quoted as 12 pounds.
As can be seen, the small area is not clear or an actual hole, because it contains a large amount of obscuration. This would interfere with telescope observations and create distortions in the final image. The next step is to optically polarize the region, then introduce a series of physical and optical spectroscopic filtering for water vapor.