Observing Log for Mike Durkin
11/28-29/2025 about 9:30PM-2:30AM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 8-9/10, Seeing 2/5
Temperature: 35-40 degrees
Equipment: Seestar S50
The evening seemed a bit windy, especiallyat first and I wasn't sure if the evening was going
to be a bust, but the wind died down a little bit as the night progressed.
I wanted to either do the galaxy cluster around Perseus A or the reflection part of the
Flaming Star Nebula. After polar alignment, the sky seemd to be set up better for the
nebula.
After struggling a little with the wind and not being happy with the elongated stars for the
first attempts, I took some images and videos of the moon. I also looked a little bit at
Saturn. I could just barely make out the rings in the image and after decreasing the exposure
or gain to cut down the brightness.
After that I decided to stick with the Flaming Star nebula despite the wind. I would hope that
over the long run any defects due to the wind would be stacked out. I looked at the final image
and saw there was some jumping around of the stars, which did get smoothed over a little bit, but
not entirely. I also think I should have used the nebula filter to make the red stand out a little
better, although I don't know if that would decrease the blue reflection part too much.
After that, just for fun I tried to quickly image M42 and M43. They were much brighter than I
expected. The core and Trapezium section were effectively overexposed, even with the 10s subframes.
Then I also did some very quick images of the Monkey Head Nebula and part of the Seagull Nebula I
was always interested in imaging. Both of those were a bit too faint and would require much more time
to image, although the Monkey Head seemed a litle brighter.
I also tried a quick image of the Clown Face Nebula. Although when looking at the image, the nebula is
too small to get a good image with the Seestar.
I did try to image everything in 4K mode. I was not entirely happy with the tracking. Again, I don't know
if it is a problem with polar alignment or is the tracking motion of my S50 just not steady enough? I also
missed using the larger adapter screw on the bottom of the Seestar to the tripod wedge, although I
doubt that would have had much impact on the elongated stars.
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11/28-29/2025 about 9:30PM-2:30AM Long Island, NY Transparency: 8-9/10, Seeing 2/5 Temperature: 35-40 degrees Equipment: Seestar S50 Exposure: 720*10s (2 hours) Processed in PixInsight and GIMP The night was very windy, so some of the light frames had significant star trails |
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11/28-29/2025 about 9:30PM-2:30AM Long Island, NY Transparency: 8-9/10, Seeing 2/5 Temperature: 35-40 degrees Equipment: Seestar S50 Exposure: 20*10s (200 seconds) Processed in PixInsight and GIMP This was after the wind may have died down a little and it was more of a test than a thourogh long exposure image |
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11/28-29/2025 about 9:30PM-2:30AM Long Island, NY Transparency: 8-9/10, Seeing 2/5 Temperature: 35-40 degrees Equipment: Seestar S50 Exposure: 2*10s (20 seconds) You can see the nebula as the green object in the middle of the image. Only cropped. No real processing since the nebula is so small in the image. |
11/23/2025 about 6:30-8:30PM
Locust Valley, NY
Transparency: 6-7/10, Seeing 3/5
Temperature: 35-45 degrees
Equipment: Hutech modified Canon T3i DSLR
DSLR photometry of P Cyg and CH Cyg.
I also thought of doing δ Cep, but I eventually remembered that there is a slightly
dimmer star right next to it and it would be blended in my DSLR image.
After that I thought of doing SU Cas or γ Cas, but there was too much scattered
clouds, so I wrapped it up.
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