OH MY GOD! This was the first I spoke out after I sticked my eyeball near to the Meade Series 4000 26mm eyepiece. You totally couldn’t imagine how did the Saturn present. It’s totally stunning!
Monthly Archive for March, 2007
Wow man, this video is definitely a must-watch for either professional or amateur astronomers. This video tells you how powerful is a convex lens but it’s quite hyperbolic… Amazing huh?
Holyshit… The cable bundled with the LPI is totally a shit. Just after using several times (How many times? I forgot…), the computer told me that the USB device is unable to be recognised. This made me extremely frustrated because I was planning to do the collimation the Monday night. I plug in, plug out, reinstall the driver, uninstall the driver and reinstall again. None of them helped. My experience told me it might be the cable problem so I replaced it with a spare USB cable stored in my drawer. The new cable works.
Why can’t Meade choose better cable for their cameras? Astronomical stuffs are so expensive but they included such a lousy cable in the box. Please, every manufacturer please make everything bundled with your product up to the standard. I just recalled, the diagonal bundled with my Meade 8″ LX90 was down.
Are you going to join International Sidewalk Astronomy Night? The objective of this event is to show the public the fun that we (the amateur astronomers) have with our telescopes. The easiet way is to show the public the most interesting (or second) planet in our Solar System, the Saturn.
Did I mention the date? It’s 19 March 2007. For US, it hasn’t passed. For me, I had done it in my residential area. I was planning to go to the town but I forgot to ask for permission from the police. The public were truly amazed by what the telescope can show. If you haven’t prepared, act now!
You may locate the main force who push this event at Sidewalk Astronomers. Their objective is to bring astronomy to the public.
Before anything starts, I want to explain AA. AA is my own abbreviation, it’s Amateur Astronomer in full.
What’s the common requirement of an AA’s scope? Unless you are a serious AA with deep pocket, you won’t have an observatory that allows you to mount a gigantic telescope inside. Some AA travels to the dark site with his scope or just move his scope from his house to the backyard. It can’t be too heavy. So, portability comes into one of the major considerations. We want to get the largest aperture within the portability.
8″ SCT has it all. For example, my fork mounted LX90 has an aperture of 203.2mm, 2000mm focal length and weights about 24kg. I can carry it around easily. (Not for a marathorn though)
Left: 8″ LX90 of Edwin Kats from Netherlands.
Phew! I attended a camp especially for the leaders of the clubs in my school. As the president of CHHS Astronomy Club, I had to go. It’s really tough but fun. I learned how to manage the club, to lead and to be led. Disipline must always be born in mind during the camp or you were going to be punished.
I will continue to write tomorrow. I need a good sleep now. 
I took the photos since the Moon entered penumbra and umbra to nearly total lunar eclipse. The atmospheric condition was not good this morning as the Moon was setting. In other words, the Moon was near the horizon.
To ease your hunger a little, I post a full Moon photo first. 
The lunar eclipse sequence is expected to be released tomorrow. Hope so…
Finally the photo is up. I didn’t photo the full lunar eclipse as I was just too sleepy to continue. I don’t want to fall on the road. 
If you want to take the photo of the red hue Moon during the total eclipse, you have to expose the photo for seconds.
It’s going to happen on 2016UT 3 March 2007. The great Total Lunar Eclipse! Yes, I have the luck this time but the sky now is so heavily covered by clouds. 
At 2016UT, it is entering penumbra. At this time, it’s not observable yet. At 2130UT, the partial lunar eclipse begins and it’s entering umbra. At 2244UT, the Total Lunar Eclipse begins! The mid-eclipse happens at 2321UT, it must be the climax of this event. The total lunar eclipse ends at 2358UT and the partial eclipse ends at 0112UT, entirely out of penumbra.
Ok, so what do you need for this event? Naked eye is more than enough. If you have a long focal length lens that can be mounted on a DSLR or a camera with high optical zoom (Don’t use digital zoom please.) or even a planetary CMOS camera capable mounting onto the back cell of your telescope doing prime focus astrophotography, they will help you a lot to extend the memory of the event later.
Where is the skymap as usual? No, no skymap this time. Just find the Moon. I am going to take the sequence photo this time. I failed to do so last time. I’ll test my equipments later.
For the defination of penumbra and umbra, please look at Umbra & Penumbra
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