Life can be pretty rough when attending a star party during good weather. Okay, I’m being sarcastic; actually attending a star party is great way to spend some quality time under the stars assuming the weather at night cooperates. If you live in the mid-Atlantic region of the East coast, Read more
Unfortunately the Supermoon Eclipse was almost completely obscured by cloud cover here in the Raleigh area of North Carolina. However at times the cloud cover was thin enough to get a glimpse of the eclipse. Using my Astro-Video Systems MK-IV video astronomy camera, mounted on Explore Scientific AR102 refractor on Read more
On Thursday October 23, 2014, most of North America was treated to a partial solar eclipse. A partial eclipse is when the moon’s alignment between the earth and sun only blocks a portion of the sun from the view point of an observer on Earth. For those of us along Read more
M16 – The Eagle Nebula My MK-III camera was recently upgraded (for free) by the manufacture of the AVS camera to the MK-IV. From the Almost Heaven Star Party in West Virginia, I shot M16, The Eagle Nebula, with my Astro Video Systems MKIV video camera at f/2.8 with my Read more
Several Raleigh Astronomy Club members, including myself, supported the International Sun-Day events at the North of Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. At the start of the event (12 noon) the weather was not at all cooperative with almost 100% cloud cover. However holes in the clouds began to appear by 2pm and by Read more
recently purchased a color video-astronomy camera from Astro Video Systems (AVS), the Avanced Cam MKIII. First light for the camera happened to coincide with the Morehead Planetarium’s SkyWatching session for May. If I could get it working, it would be a great way to show off views of deep space objects Read more
There was quite a bit of “Venus Transit Fever” on the Internet during the few days leading up to the transit as well as several days afterwards. The plethora of pictures, videos and articles was quite impressive. However there are 2 videos that stand out in my mind…. The first Read more
On the afternoon of June 5th, 2012 (the morning of June 6th on other parts of the planet) the black silhouette of Venus was observed crossing the face of the sun. This passing in front of the sun is what astronomers call a transit. The next time Venus will Read more
On my list of objects to view from my own telescope (a 1994 Celestron 8” SCT), has been Quasar 3C 273. Aesthetically speaking, this object has zero value, it looks like a very faint star. However what makes this object so interesting is its origin and its distance. Quasars are Read more
Thursday night I spent some time with fellow RAC members Mark L.and Ian H. (separately) while at the Staunton River Star Party. We were looking through my 8” SCT for the super nova SN2012aw that had been detected last week in the Leo galaxy, M95. After much back and forth Read more