Astroham.com Blog

Lightning Images

August 15th, 2008

On the evening of August 7th we had an intense thunderstorm come through southern Brevard county. Since it is a fairly rare event for us to get such an intense storm after sunset, I rushed to position my DSLR on a tripod on my house’s north-facing deck and took a series of wide-angle, long exposures. Two of the images are shown below. Both images were taken with my Olympus E-500 digital SLR fitted with a manual-focus 28mm f/3.5 Zuiko lens. (Click on the image to view the full-sized photo.)

The image above is a 25 second exposure at ISO 100 and f/8. It is fairly well focused and captures a primary cloud-to-ground strike and a secondary cloud-to-cloud strike.

The image above is a 20 second exposure at ISO 100 and f/3.5. Although this shot was not well focused (either the focus ring was not set to infinity or the tripod was blown around by the strong winds) and somewhat overexposed due to a wide open aperture, it captures a stunning, multi-branched, cloud-to-ground strike.

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ARRL DX Century Club Award

March 30th, 2008

On March 29, 2008, I received the ARRL DXCC Certificate for confirmed contacts with at least 100 DXCC entities in Mixed Mode. All QSLs were submitted via the ARRL’s Logbook of the World (LOTW) electronic QSL system. In all, I submitted 106 mixed mode contacts for this award. A scan of the certificate is shown below:

Posted in Radio Equipment | No Comments »

Fantasy of Flight

December 14th, 2007

Here’s a link to some photos taken at the Fantasy of Flight museum on November 23, 2007. This collection of aircraft is the largest privately owned collection in the world and is based near Lakeland, FL. Clicking on the link below each image brings up a larger representation of the framed photo.

http://www.astroham.com/fantasy_of_flight.html

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11″ f/5.4 Starmaster Telescope

November 12th, 2007

During my November 7-10 trip to Chiefland, I received and started working with the 11″ Starmaster telescope that I purchased from another CAV member, Dave Gracey. Below is a photograph of the scope (click on the image to view a larger presentation):

This telescope has a full-thickness Carl Zambuto 11″ f/5.4 primary mirror. It also comes with the Sky Commander digital setting circle encoders and computer, Astro Systems secondary mirror heater, 2-speed 2″ JMI Crayford collimatable focuser, 2″-to-1.25″ eyepiece adapter, 12-volt 3.3 amp-hour gel cell battery, and Telrad finder. In addition to the scope, I also purchased three Televue eyepieces: 27mm Panoptic, 16mm Type 5 Nagler, 9mm Type 6 Nagler. More purchases of eyepieces and collimation tools to follow…

Posted in Astro Observing | No Comments »

October New Moon Weekend - Chiefland

October 31st, 2007

After a rather dismal spell of Florida weather in September, the skies cleared for a great three night stay in Chiefland around the October New Moon. I arrived on Thursday, October 11 and stayed until Sunday, October 14. During these three nights I was able to collect data for the objects shown below. This was my first outing with my new SBIG ST-402ME camera and E-finder lens that I ‘m using as an external guide camera. Upon examination of the subframes, I found that I have a slight drift problem that I believe to be a differential flexure problem. I believe the bulk of this problem is coming from the imaging scope being too loose in the Parallax rings and slipping as the scope tracks toward the zenith. I will correct this particular problem by the next New Moon weekend and then re-evaluate the subframes for any additional flexure issues.

M1 - The Crab Nebula:

This shot is composed of eight 10-minute luminance frames plus five 10-minute (each filter) RGB frames. Below is the link to the image information page:

http://www.astroham.com/m1_02.html

M33 - The Triangulum Galaxy:

This shot is composed of thirteen 10-minute luminance frames plus five 10-minute (each filter) RGB frames. Below is the link to the image information page:

http://www.astroham.com/m33_01.html

IC-405 - The Flaming Star Nebula (Hydrogen-Alpha):

This shot is composed of twelve 15-minute H-Alpha frames. Below is the link to the image information page:

http://www.astroham.com/ic405_01.html

NGC 7293- The Helix Nebula:

This shot is composed of nine 10-minute luminance frames plus five 10-minute (each filter) RGB frames. Below is the link to the image information page:

http://www.astroham.com/ngc7293_01.html

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August 28 Total Lunar Eclipse

August 28th, 2007

Here are a few images I collected during the early morning total lunar eclipse of August 28. Here in central Florida only the first half of the eclipse was visible with the Moon setting during the total phase. All images were taken with my Olympus E-500 DSLR using the Olympus 40 mm to 150 mm zoom lens.

The first image is a montage (assembled using Photoshop) of 12 images taken at 5-minute intervals. Each image was taken at ISO 200 and f/11 at a focal length of 150 mm. The first nine images were taken at a shutter speed of 1/200 second, the tenth and eleventh images were taken at 1/100 second, and the last image was taken at 1/60 second.

Click here to view full-size image.

The second image is of the totally eclipsed Moon. This image is taken at ISO 200, f/5.6, 2 second exposure, at 150 mm. This image is a section of the full image cropped with Photoshop.

Click here view the full-size image.

The third image is a wide-field shot of the totally eclipsed Moon taken from the north side of the Melbourne Causeway. This image is taken at ISO 200, f/5.6, 4 second exposure, at 57 mm.

Click here to view the full-size image.

Posted in Astrophotography, Digital Photography | No Comments »

Earthshine Using Olympus E-500 DSLR

August 17th, 2007

The following images of the crescent Moon were taken using my Olympus E-500 DSLR and Olympus Zuiko 40mm to 150mm zoom lens stabilized using a tripod.

Image 1:

ISO: 400
F-stop: 5.6
Exposure: 4 sec.
Focal Length: 150mm
Exposure Value: 1

Click Here for a Larger Presentation of this Image.

Image 2:

ISO: 400
F-stop: 5.6
Exposure: 4 sec.
Focal Length: 46mm
Exposure Value: 1

Click Here for a Larger Presentation of this Image.

Image 3:

ISO: 400
F-stop: 5.6
Exposure: 1/100 sec.
Focal Length: 150mm
Exposure Value: 10

Click Here for a Larger Presentation of this Image.

Posted in Astrophotography, Digital Photography | No Comments »

First Olympus E-500 Widefield Image

August 15th, 2007

After purchasing a used copy of Jerry Lodriguss’ “A Guide to Astrophotography with Digital SLR Cameras” off of Astromart, I began looking into the possibilities of using my Olympus E-500 camera for some wide field imaging. The following image is my first attempt. This image captures the Pleiades area of the constellation Taurus with the planet Mars to the lower right of the “Seven Sisters”. This image is one 60 second shot at ISO 400 and f/5.6. The lens used was my Olympus Zuiko 25mm to 45mm zoom set at 35mm. The camera was piggyback mounted on my Takahashi TSA-102 refractor riding on the Takahashi EM200 Temma II German equatorial mount. All processing was done in Photoshop including the subtraction of one 60 second dark frame along with levels, curves, saturation, and brightness/contrast adjustments. This image was not very well focused and doesn’t show much detail (still working on the focusing procedure) so the image presented is 25% of the original.

Click Here to view a larger presentation of this image.

Posted in Astrophotography, Digital Photography | No Comments »

Computer Upgrade Memory Problem Resolved

August 11th, 2007

Almost immediately after posting the blog entry describing the upgrade of my radio computer (http://www.astroham.com/wordpress/?p=50), I started getting random reboots of the computer accompanied by System Errors. From analysis of the reported errors, I soon suspected that I was seeing failures in the Corsair 512MB DRAM module. As a check, I removed the new 512MB module and installed a compatible 256MB module that I had lying around from when I increased the memory in my Dell desktop from 256MB to 1GB. This switch completely resolved the System Errors/rebooting issue.

After making sure the problem didn’t return for three or four days, I called newegg.com and requested a replacement module. Two days later, the new module arrived but before installing the new module, I replaced the suspected failing module and ran the Windows Memory Diagnostic (http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asptest) off a bootable 3.5″ disk. Sure enough, the module eventually began to fail - just a few failures at first but it later started failing almost every test. Eventually, I racked up over 2000 failures during 21 passes of the memory test and all failures were showing up in the high byte of the 32-bit memory words.

Having determined that the original 512MB memory stick was bad for sure, I installed the replacement 512MB memory stick and reran the Windows Memory Diagnostic test. After running 36 passes of the test with no failures, I then allowed the computer to boot normally and now, days later, have not seen a repeat of the System Error failure.

Posted in Computers | No Comments »

STS-118 Exhaust Plume at sunset

August 9th, 2007

The following image of the remnants from the Space Shuttle (STS-118) exhaust plume was taken from my house using an Olympus E-500 DSLR. This photo is a composite of two images stitched together in Photoshop. The two photos were taken at 8:20pm or about 1 hour and 45 minutes after launch (6:36pm). The launchpad is due north of my location and the center of this image is slightly north of due west. The particulars of this image are:

Camera: Olympus E-500
Lens: Olympus Zuiko 40 - 150mm f/3.5 - f/4.5 zoom
Focal Length: 40mm
Aperture: f/3.5
Shutter Speed: 1/125 sec.
ISO: 400
Auto Focus: On

STS-118 Exhaust Plume at Sunset

Click here to view a larger image (warning - file size is 401kb)

Posted in Digital Photography | No Comments »

Astroham.com Blog

Lightning Images

ARRL DX Century Club Award

Fantasy of Flight

11″ f/5.4 Starmaster Telescope

October New Moon Weekend - Chiefland

August 28 Total Lunar Eclipse

Earthshine Using Olympus E-500 DSLR

First Olympus E-500 Widefield Image

Computer Upgrade Memory Problem Resolved

STS-118 Exhaust Plume at sunset

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