Yearly Archives: 2016

Image of the Week Winner

 in Blog  tagged california nebula / Image of the Week / ngc1499 / TAIC

The Astro Imaging Channel is a Google+ group and YouTube channel that conducts weekly tutorials, presentations, and discussions on various aspects of astro-photography (https://plus.google.com/+TheAstroImagingChannel).  Each week, they select an “Image of the Week” from member submissions and make it the banner image for their home pages on Google and Facebook.  This week they selected my image of the California Nebula! You have probably seen this image as the banner on MY Facebook page.  Here’s a little more information about the object and the image:  The California Nebula (NGC1499) is an emission nebula in the constellation Perseus.  It is about 1,000 […]

Where Does It Go?

 in Blog  tagged iOptron / Lunt / ShutterBoss / SkyTracker / solar

It’s a phrase we hear a lot this time of year – “where did the time go?”, and it certainly does feel like 2016 flew by much too quickly, but what I’m really referring to here is that since I’m all done with holiday bazaars and other sales events for the year, I thought I’d tell you where the profits from my business go. First I am thrilled to report that sales were great this year.  I had set a goal of a 30% increase over last year, but as of this moment it is close to a 70% increase!  […]

One More Time!

 in Blog  tagged bazaar / Hockinson High School

Yesterday’s event at Prairie High School was fantastic.  It was my first time at this Holiday Bazaar and although I knew it would be busy, I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught of shoppers.  Not that my booth was the destination for many shoppers, but I was located next to what must have been the most popular vendor there.  When the doors opened at 9AM there was a long line of people waiting to enter and it seemed that half of them headed straight to my neighbor’s booth!  The area was filled with shoppers for hours. I’m sure that the popularity […]

Week 3 of Holiday Bazaars

 in Blog  tagged bazaar / Grout

Grout Elementary School is the only elementary school bazaar I go to.  I went last year for the first time only because other plans I had made for that weekend fell apart, but it was such a good event that I expect I’ll be going back every year, even though it is small and short (it runs from 9AM to 1PM).  There are lots of kids, great live music, a good selection of handmade crafts, and a bake sale.  The neighborhood seems to support the school well, so the shoppers are serious!  Please come join us if you can. Last […]

The “Super Moon”

 in Blog  tagged Super Moon

You may have heard that tomorrow’s Full Moon will be the largest “Super Moon” since 1948.  Wile this is an interesting factoid, and astronomers generally love to get any kind of attention in the press, the case for “Super Moons” is a little over-stated. The apparent size of the Moon varies over time because the distance between Earth and the Moon varies slightly – from 221,500 miles to 238,900 miles.  The way that this distance changes is quite complicated, due to the strong influence of the Sun and the fact that there is not an integral relationship between the orbital […]

Next Up: West Linn

 in Blog  tagged holiday bazaar / West Linn

Yesterday’s event at Baker Prairie Middle School in Canby was a great success.  We used to live in Canby, but I think this school was built after we left, and I was surprised at how big and nice it is.  The staff was also very nice – at least the people I met (thanks, Jim and Kim!).  It was not hectic, like some of the big holiday bazaars coming up, but there was a pretty steady stream of shoppers, and a very pleasant atmosphere. Note the sign at the top right about the solar eclipse coming next year.  This was […]

Art to Art Holiday Bazaar

 in Blog  tagged Art 2 Art / Canby / holiday bazaar

The first holiday bazaar of the season is this Saturday – already!  Nov. 5, 9AM to 4PM, at Baker Prairie Middle School in Canby, OR.  I’ll be there with a huge collection of astro-photos in traditional prints, backlit film prints, digital images, and calendars.  I’ll also be showing samples of (and, hopefully, taking orders for) backlit prints of customer images.  And with the newly reduced price for my “Space Windows” I expect they will sell very well, just as they did at the Oregon Star Party. I know it seems very early to be shopping for Christmas, but the schools […]

More 6D Wide-Field Shots

 in Blog  tagged canon 6d / Dark Horse / Milky Way / wide field

Eventually, I’ll have to get serious about using the Canon 6D for astro-photography.  Specifically, I’ve only done exposures up to 30 seconds, the maximum the camera will do by itself (without a computer or other device controlling the camera).  The results have been mixed (I’m only showing you the ones that worked out well), but with longer exposures and lower ISO settings I think it can produce some spectacular results, both with wide angle lenses and telescopes. But until then (and “then” could be a while, given the usual weather patterns here this time of year), I’ll share a couple […]

Cygnus Wide Field

 in Blog  tagged canon 6d / cygnus / wide field

I mentioned in a previous post that I still had some unprocessed images from last Summer.  Honestly, I still haven’t had a chance to do much with them, but here is one example, a wide field shot of the center of the constellation Cygnus.  This was captured with a Canon 6D full-frame DSLR, with an 85mm f/1.8 lens.  It consists of just 8 frames of 30 seconds each (at ISO 6400).  The camera was modified for Hydrogen-alpha sensitivity, which is why we can see an abundance of red.  The brown regions are primarily dust and the grey is just a […]

The New Face of Mr. T

 in Blog  tagged Canon DSLR / EOS / Mister T / mrt

“Mister T” is the simplest and most popular of my products.  Most amateur astro-photography is done with DSLR cameras, and most of them are Canon EOS type (EF or EF-S mount).  To attach such a camera to a telescope requires some kind of adapter and for that we turn to the old concept of the “T ring”.  The T ring was developed long ago as a way for 3rd party lens manufacturers to produce lenses that could be used on many different kinds of cameras by standardizing on a simple threaded connection on the lens (“T threads”), and reducing the […]