“Oh my god, it’s full of stars!”

January 3, 2014February 13, 2014Leave a comment

I’ve looked into telescopes a bit now and again, spurred by some new cool astronomical event but never actually took the plunge until just recently, near the end of 2013, with the approach and subsequent demise of comet ISON. This time I was committed to doing the research and actually ordering some gear… and, given my love of photography, astrophotographic gear too! Oh my, what a deep hole I’ve found here… what have I got myself into?!?

Things started out a little rough as my mount arrived in November with a manufacturing defect that I didn’t know enough to figure out immediately and required some back and forth with Celestron’s tech support to narrow down. Then I had to package it all back up and send it back and wait for a replacement.

But here it is, it’s an 8″ Celestron EdgeHD 800 on an Advanced VX mount – lovely! (It’s a Schimdt-Cassegrain on a German equatorial mount.)

My Celestron EdgeHD 800 telescope set up on my upstairs deck

I’ve long wanted to get a telescope, as in a real telescope, not that silly cheap thing I got as a kid in the 70’s. I’ve tinkered on and off with desktop and mobile apps for exploring the night sky, explored a bit with a nice pair of image-stabilized binoculars and attended the occasional star party here and there. (The one held on the slopes of Mauna Kea was pretty cool!)

And I wanted to take advantage of the somewhat darker skies I now have here in the hills above Santa Cruz – at least darker compared to my old condo in San Jose – that swath of light from Silicon Valley and the Bay Area is at least somewhat shielded by the coastal mountains here. I’ve got a nice, super-convenient, south-facing deck off of my upstairs master bedroom with an open view of most of the sky (except to the north, beneath the celestial pole). And once I get a little more experienced, it’ll be fun to pack up the gear and take it to some remote dark locations.

It’s pretty overwhelming how much there is to learn, particularly when you get into astronomical imaging, but I am certainly enjoying the endeavor. As such, I’ve decided to put together a little newbie’s guide to backyard astronomy to summarize all the information I’ve been gathering and the choices I’ve been making as to gear and setup: A Newbie’s Guide to Telescopic Adventures

So here’s a bit of first light through it – imaging a portion of the Orion nebula. Mind you, I’m just starting to get into this and this is just a newbie’s single, 16-second exposure to catch a bit of color:

Orion Nebula (M42), Nikon D7000, 16 seconds @ ISO 6400, 8″ EdgeHD, .7x reducer lens

Pan the Poser

January 2, 2014January 23, 2014Leave a comment

A few more recent pics of Pan mostly posing for the camera:

Pretty Kitties

December 21, 2013December 15, 2016Leave a comment

Just a few pictures of Pan and Hera from over the past year:

Resi & Troy’s Baby Shower

December 18, 2013February 18, 2014Leave a comment

Click on through for pictures from Resi & Troy’s baby shower this past weekend:

Gorgeous Traffic Jam

December 18, 2013December 30, 2013Leave a comment

Gorgeous sky while sitting in traffic on highway 17 (at 85 interchange)…

My Landscaping, A Year Later

November 14, 2013August 26, 20161 Comment

It’s been over a year since Terra Nova started work on my landscaping, replacing my traditional lawn with this no mow meadow garden. It’s come along nicely and I think it suits this property well, blending in much better with the surrounding wild landscape:

Ride to Monterey

November 11, 2013April 19, 2019Leave a comment

Earlier this week, Darlene and I made a little two-day, round-trip bike excursion to Monterey and back from Santa Cruz. It worked out to about 101 miles round trip from my place in the hills near Scotts Valley. We had actually intended to go down on Monday, hang out on Tuesday and return Wednesday but as we weren’t really ready to go until late Monday afternoon, with two hours of sunlight left…. oops! So, Tuesday morning we finally headed out.

It’s a common route and except for a couple of miles around Moss Landing, you stay off of Highway 1. And in fact, there’s a great bike trail that runs from Castroville all the way into Monterey which we didn’t know about until we stumbled on to it en route.

We had great weather both days and a lovely ride and stayed overnight at the inexpensive but nice Cannery Row Inn – across from San Carlos Beach and The Breakwater (a popular SCUBA diving spot).