Sunrise from the Balcony

Arrived at Mesa Verde National Park yesterday - spent the day seeing the sights. Today I got a very special treat - no not that (well that too) - one of the rangers here had arranged for a special permit to get into one of the more spectacular cliff dwellings - Balcony House - at sunrise - something only rangers and VIPs can do. I was able to worm my way into the special event. Below are views of Balcony House rarely seen by mere mortals like me.









Thank you again for the opportunity Ellyse, Brooke, Pete, Jeff, Kevin and Gwen.

In the Momument

Day 1 - I arrived at Momument Valley in the early afternoon today after a 7.5 hour drive from Tucson. Didn't have much time to do anything but unload the car and take a few quick snaps of the hotel environs. "The View" hotel here on the Monument grounds is spectacular. A bit pricey but well worth the cost as all rooms have private balconys that look out over the Mittens - check out the view from my porch below! Got one more day here - plan on spending it driving through the Monument and takin' pics - then off to Mesa Verde to see my Honey.

GUFI First Light

My first night playing with the new VATT GUFI science camera. Just a few bright objects I used as test subjects. None of the images were processed. All are single exposures with only contrast/levels adjustment.



NGC6543 in V band - 1 second exposure.



M57 in V band - 5 second exposure



Jupiter in I band - 0.01 second expsoure.

All images obtained using the VATT 1.8m telescope @ f/6.7 atop Mt. Graham, AZ using the Galway Ultra Fast Imager (GUFI) L3CCD science camera. All images are full frame - @ 3' x 3'. Seeing was poor ( > 1.2 arcseconds).

Southern Exposure redux

OK. Adding a little color to the visible universe - here is the same Rho Ophiuchi region of the sky seen in the previous post - albeit done a little more properly. 66 one minute exposures with a Canon 5D MKII through an 85mm lens at f/1.8 and ISO 800. Tracked, standard astro post processed with flats, biases and darks, and finally gaudified with photoshop. Ha!

Southern Exposure

Up here at the VATT again on mount graham - working with a new instrument. Had a few seconds to get the old (new really) 5D Mark II on the sky for a couple of test exposures. Taken at ISO 6400 | 85mm | f/1.2 | unguided and untracked | 6 seconds.