A little over a week ago I was getting ready for a week-long camping trip under the Arkansas skies near Mammoth Springs. In the past this has been primarily a camping/fishing trip for some men (and some of their sons) from our church and any others who wish to attend what has come over the years to be known as the annual Knucklehead Family Reunion. Since I had not had much luck with fly fishing, I had not been in a few years. I found out there was a good open sky area on a hill in a field right across the road from some of the cabins at the location they have used for the last 3 years. And I learned it also has good dark skies there (Bortle class 3!). Hmmm, I said to myself. Maybe it is time for this to become a camping/fishing/video astronomy trip. As I discussed it with some of the guys, they encouraged me to come and bring along my astronomy gear. And that’s what I did.
I was limited on packing space in my Jeep Cherokee, so I took my basic portable video astronomy setup. I carried my small Celestron Alt-Az SkyProdigy mount with built-in StarSense AutoAlign Camera, my Mallincam 80mm refractor telescope and Mallincam DS10c camera. Here is a daytime picture of my setup with my laptop inside a bin turned on its side on the table.
I was limited on packing space in my Jeep Cherokee, so I took my basic portable video astronomy setup. I carried my small Celestron Alt-Az SkyProdigy mount with built-in StarSense AutoAlign Camera, my Mallincam 80mm refractor telescope and Mallincam DS10c camera. Here is a daytime picture of my setup with my laptop inside a bin turned on its side on the table.
Starry Night Viewing Site in process of being set up in field across from cabins. Battery power used for telescope, laptop and viewing monitor.
This refractor telescope and camera work great together without the need for a focal reducer and are well balanced when mounted on the small SkyProdigy mount.
MC DS10c on Mallincam 80MM Telescope using Celestron SkyProdigy Mount with built in StarSense AutoAlign
Here is a night picture with an external monitor connected to my laptop and set up on the table so everyone could easily see the “near real time” live image from the video astronomy camera “looking” at the sky through the telescope. The telescope was pointed at the Andromeda Galaxy when this picture was taken.
KFR 2023 Starry Night Viewing Site with telescope in background, viewing monitor on table, Laptop control inside bin also on table
I had 4 straight nights (Oct 7-8) of clear dark skies with various interested men and boys watching my monitor, discussing what we saw and asking questions. Some really good questions were asked like “can we see stars outside our galaxy?” (Basic answer - all stars that we see are in our own galaxy, unless you have a Hubble or Web telescope and a gravity lens handy). For the first time some saw the Dumbbell Nebula, the Hercules Cluster, the Ring Nebula, Andromeda galaxy, etc. appear on the screen shortly after slewing to it. Then after making a few adjustments and just a little stacking they were amazed at what they saw. We discussed distances to objects inside our own galaxy, and galaxies far, far away – millions of light years away. I decided afterwards the trip was a success.
I kept my exposures to a max of 5 seconds and used the histogram to keep the background dark and quickly bring out features using LHDR stacking. Due to the Alt-Az mount you can see some field rotation at the edges of an image when the target was high in the sky, but the centered object is the main attraction. As I went from one target to another, they quickly got the idea that this is more like looking at objects in the sky through a telescope rather than taking pictures. In fact, I sometimes forgot to do screen captures before jumping to show them something else. When I said “I think there is a galaxy here on the screen... I’ll zoom in and make some adjustments to see what we can see”, they really got the idea it's near real time viewing.
The following are some of the images that I did capture. Most of these images are zoomed in with the target centered to show the detail like I do on the monitor. For reference, the first image is the Dumbbell Nebula shown in the full field of view for the DS10c camera on the refractor telescope before I zoom in. It is followed by its “zoomed in” image of the Dumbbell Nebula. I have found that captured images sometimes don’t show up as well on the web, so I take a couple of minutes of post-processing per image later on using the Microsoft Photos adjustment sliders before posting them here.
The name of the target object is listed beneath the image along with its distance in light years from Earth (ly = light years, Kly = 1,000 ly, Mly = 1 million ly). For example, light from the Dumbbell nebula at a distance of 1.4 Kly takes 1400 years to travel to Earth. So, what we see now is the Dumbbell nebula as it looked 1,400 years ago!
I kept my exposures to a max of 5 seconds and used the histogram to keep the background dark and quickly bring out features using LHDR stacking. Due to the Alt-Az mount you can see some field rotation at the edges of an image when the target was high in the sky, but the centered object is the main attraction. As I went from one target to another, they quickly got the idea that this is more like looking at objects in the sky through a telescope rather than taking pictures. In fact, I sometimes forgot to do screen captures before jumping to show them something else. When I said “I think there is a galaxy here on the screen... I’ll zoom in and make some adjustments to see what we can see”, they really got the idea it's near real time viewing.
The following are some of the images that I did capture. Most of these images are zoomed in with the target centered to show the detail like I do on the monitor. For reference, the first image is the Dumbbell Nebula shown in the full field of view for the DS10c camera on the refractor telescope before I zoom in. It is followed by its “zoomed in” image of the Dumbbell Nebula. I have found that captured images sometimes don’t show up as well on the web, so I take a couple of minutes of post-processing per image later on using the Microsoft Photos adjustment sliders before posting them here.
The name of the target object is listed beneath the image along with its distance in light years from Earth (ly = light years, Kly = 1,000 ly, Mly = 1 million ly). For example, light from the Dumbbell nebula at a distance of 1.4 Kly takes 1400 years to travel to Earth. So, what we see now is the Dumbbell nebula as it looked 1,400 years ago!
M27 - Dumbbell/Apple Core Nebula - 1.4 Kly - Full Field of View using MC DS10c on Mallincam 80MM Telescope Stacked 5 sec exposures
M27 - Dumbbell/Apple Core Nebula - 1.4 Kly – “Zoomed” image from MC DS10c on Mallincam 80MM Telescope Stacked 5 sec exposures
M13 - Hercules Cluster - 2.3 Kly
NGC891 - Edge on Spiral Galaxy – 32 Mly ... what we see now is how it looked 32 million years ago!
Note: Targets that are millions of light years away are outside our own Galaxy.
Note: Targets that are millions of light years away are outside our own Galaxy.
M45 - Pleiades/Seven Sisters - 430 ly
M31 - Andromeda Galaxy - 2.5 Mly
M110 (upper right) - Elliptical Galaxy - 2.7 Mly
M110 (upper right) - Elliptical Galaxy - 2.7 Mly
M103 - Open Cluster (micro-dipper) in Cassiopeia - 7.2 Kly
NGC7293 - Helix Nebula - 790 ly
As a backup telescope I brought the 5” f/5 Newtonian telescope shown below that came with the SkyProdigy. It provided a slightly larger field of view than the refractor, and I used it the last couple of nights.
MC DS10c on 5" Newtonian Telescope Celestron SkyProdigy Mount with built in StarSense AutoAlign
Here are some images using this camera/telescope combination.
NGC253 - Sculptor/Silver Dollar Galaxy - 12 Mly
M76 - Little Dumbbell/Cork Nebula - 5.8 Kly
NGC6946 - Fireworks Galaxy - 22 Mly
M82 - Cigar Galaxy - 12 Mly
M57 - Ring Nebula - 1.4 Kly
There were a little over 20 campers including the boys. Over those 4 nights many of them came up a hill in small groups to gather around the monitor and telescope. Below is a picture of the KFR Starry Night Viewing Site with a few gathered around in the viewing area in the glow from red led lights I had on the ground.
Campers gathered around monitor and telescope setup in open field
I bought a red led string the day before I left and also grabbed my Christmas tree extension cord containing a foot switch. I put the string of red leds around the telescope which effectively kept everyone outside the “red ring of fire”. I would tap the foot switch to turn the red leds on when I slewed to a new target so they could watch the telescope as it moved and stopped. It was fun for them to watch it slewing to its target, and it also allowed them to see which way the telescope was pointing when it stopped. I would then tap the foot switch to turn the red led string off so they could focus on watching the image beginning to show up on the second monitor I had set up on the table. I was able to show how I could control the mount and slew to targets using the telescope hand controller, the laptop connected to the hand controller, or my phone (with SkyFi).
Laptop inside bin on table to protect from dew. "Ring of Fire" red led string around telescope area to protect against accidental bumps.
Below are a couple of photos of my favorite daytime viewing site next to the Spring River in a recliner with my Kindle and lunch at hand.
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