Approximately 150 citizens of all ages enjoyed views of the heavens supplied by members of the Astronomical Society of Eastern Missouri and the St. Louis Astronomical Society Saturday night at the Star Gazing Event held at Quail Ridge Park in Wentzville. Some dozen telescopes provided eye-popping views of the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn and other celestial objects to the crowd of astronomy enthusiasts.
Regular Monthly meeting of Astronomical Society of Eastern Missouri, June 11, 2005
6:00 pm to 7:00 pm - Telescope Clinic - One member brought telescope for help
7:00 pm to 9:00 pm - Eighteen members attended for a varied program
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Still working on Mars.
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| 29/900 stacked. 2540 mm focal length. | 35/900 stacked. ~5000 mm focal length ( 2X Barlow ). |
The Digital Imaging SIG is a new activity of the Astronomical Society of Eastern Missouri designed to bring together those interested in pursuing an astronomical interest through digital techniques. Digital technology is, perhaps, the third great wave to pass through amateur astronomy; the first such wave was the telescope-making era started in the 1930s by the likes of Albert Ingalls and Russell Porter; the second wave was the large, thin mirror developments instigated by John Dobson in the 1960s with his simple, easy to build and use alt-az mounting scheme. Now, digital technology in both imaging chips and the computer power (both hardware and software) to handle it have amateurs creating astronomical images that were the province of professionals only a few years ago. Among the many virtues and advantages of digital technology is the ability to produce striking images even in the presence of severe light pollution.
The meetings are free and open to the public and we hope to have them every fourth Saturday of the month. The first meeting had 9 participants and the discussion was mostly led by Jim Roe who presented some background theory and then gave a demonstration of how to control a ToUcam web camera using the free computer program K3CCDtools and how to process the resulting video files using the free computer program Registax. Doug Kniffen described some of his experiences while Jim set up his telescope for hands-on demonstrations of the whole process.
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