24" RC telescope - I was in a complete state of awe

My buddy Wes won an evening on this incredible telescope. The 24" Ritchey-Chrétien telescope is housed in the Meyer Observatory at the Turner Research Station about 2 hours southwest of Dallas, TX, and is operated by the Central Texas Astronomical Society. I, along with several other buddies, had the privilege of accompanying Wes to enjoy an evening of visual observing. Little did I know that it would be more than just the scope and incredible mount that amazed me. I was enlightened by the club's president on the science they are achieving. Their research on white dwarf stars is incredible endeavour. I admire this club of volunteers for their valiant contributions to science.

Cone Nebula - NGC 2264

Captured this in Jan 2009, but have struggled with the processing. I am never happy with my processing results of red emission nebula. I struggle to get the tone and saturation just right. I think maybe this is why I like processing narrowband better...there isn't a standard to achieve. Image captured with Takahashi FSQ-106ED and Apogee Alta U16M.

John Buonomo created an animation recorded on 2-25-09 by guiding on the comet. This animation is comprised of 35 DSLR frames at 6 minutes exposure each:

My buddy Russell and his smooth Comet Lulin image

Russell images with a Canon 450D. He captured this excellent image of Comet Lulin using his Takahashi Sky90 refractor:


Click here for a larger resolution of this photo.

Comet Lulin

I was able to capture Comet Lulin in its colorful form. It is a beautiful comet that has changed its shape several times already.

This image was featured for a day on SpaceWeather.com.

Mr. Yoshida's telescope ranking

Here's the site in Japanese. Over at CloudyNights.com is a translation and some observations in this thread.

Between my astro-buddies and myself, we have quite a few of the scopes listed in his rankings. We also have scopes that are not listed. I wish we could fly Mr. Yoshida to Texas so he could look through what's missing from his list. I would love to learn what criteria he uses and what steps he follows to determine the rankings.

I'm betting that the larger aperture TEC scopes would land pretty high up on the list. I've had the privilege of looking through the TEC160FL, TEC180FL, and TEC200FL. Personally, I would love to own any of those, or even the ED version of the 160 and/or the 200 (sadly, the 200ED is no longer made). I would also like to see more BORG scopes on his list.

APOD - Dec 9, 2008

Having neglected the blog for a while, I decided to revive it with my lucky day. One of my recent images was NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day on December 9. I am deeply honored. Below is the image as formatted by the APOD editors:



Details can be viewed here on my website (VisualUniverse.org).