Playing with Camera from Jeff Henline on Vimeo.

Last night, after resetting the Autostar controller to faculty defaults, my scope can now track objects in the sky automatically! This has made using more powerful eyepieces a possibility. Tracking Saturn by manually controlling the motors has been difficult. As soon as you take your eye off the planet to swap out an eyepiece, the planet disappears and finding it again is challenging, especially when decreasing the field of view dramatically with more powerful eyepieces.

Here is a picture of Saturn with using a 2x barlow lens in front of the webcam. Image has been adjusted for exposure.

(click here for source video)

Allison and I got to see Dredg again for the 2nd time in less than a year last friday! They must like making tour stops at the Varsity Theatre in Minneapolis. We like it too. We weren't able to get a comfy couch this time around (bummer) but it was all good as it has been 10 years since I was belly up to the stage, close enough to acquire a little band sweat from Torche. Wow, talk about a HEAVY, HEAVY band. Not so much our taste in music. From Monument To Masses (FMTM) opened as well and we all took a liking, especially Chris. Anyway, enough of my review, I met a cool guy who was taking pictures at the show who agreed to send me some of the pics. He is a link to his blog, and excellent review: MindInversion. A big thank you to Ryan at MindInversion!

Elliot Coloring from Jeff Henline on Vimeo.

So, a couple months ago, I got my first telescope, a 125mm (5") Meade ETX-125. I was fortunate enough to find one used on craigslist and thrilled to get such a nice scope for my first!

With the exception of a couple fluke warm days, I haven't been able to use it much. And for those of you in California, I don't want to hear about it! Yes, I know...it's cold here but at least the skies are clear and clean. ;-) Anyway, in the past couple days, I've been able to take some better shots of the moon and Saturn and thought I'd post them. And as long as you haven't ever opened a book or done an image search online, you'll think these pictures are impressive.

Moon, March 8th, 2009. (click image for more info/detail)

Saturn, April 8th, 2009. (click image for more info/detail and here for source video)

Saturn and its biggest moon, Titan, April 7th, 2009. (click image for more info)

 As the weather gets warmer and I get a better feel for what I'm doing, I'll post some better pictures.