Well my cable modem seems to have died so there is no internet service at my house (or in the dome).
It's interesting how dependent I have become on having access to the internet. No e-mail, no web browsing...unfortunately that means no access while I'm observing, and therefore no real-time posting to my blog. I'm posting this from my office right now. Hopefully I will fix the problem at home today.
One might say that you really don't need the internet to observe, and that would be quite true. However I've found it to be very useful when I'm out in the dome. A few things I have found useful:
-I can update my software, for example TheSky, with the latest comet elements;
-I can look up information about the objects I'm observing, either with a google search or on several bookmarked research sites;
-I can easily identify the moons of Saturn using Sky & Telescope's Java utility;
-I can download various astronomy-related mp3's to listen to, such as Let's Talk Stars;
-And of course, I can post my log directly from within DeepSky Astronomy Software.
So basically the net provides an enhancement in some ways to my observing experience. That does not mean that I don't still enjoy the quiet evenings with nothing but a scope at a dark sky site, but it's nice to have it some of the time.
I did get out for a couple of hours on Saturday night as we had a break in the clouds, which seems to be rare these days. I've also been rather exhausted because I'm working many hours during these last few weeks of tax season, so there is not a lot of energy left for astronomy when I finally get home after a long day. On Saturday night, I mostly played around with imaging using a digital camera attached at prime focus to the scope. Tracking was poor, I really need to spend some time on that. I think the balancing is part of the problem. I observed numerous objects such as:
- M3 Globular Cluster in Canes Venatici
- M51 Whirlpool Galaxy
- M104 Sombrero Galaxy
- NGC 4038 and 4039 Antennae
- Jupiter
The picture above is of M3, a single 20 second shot with almost no processing.
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