From: Mark Gaffney <markgaffney@me.com>

Date: December 8, 2010 10:27:59 AM MST

To: "Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com" <Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com>

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] Calgary sky glow..

The weather here has been recurrent heavy rain. I think if the polar ice caps are melting all that extra moisture in the atmosphere is being dumped on us..!

As to my CG-5, advice I've received from various quarters says that it's an almost impossible task attempting to image even with guiding a scope of 2350 mm FL on it. Most reports say that for guided images about 600mm is a safe prescription. 

To this end I'm buying a Skywatcher ED80 Apochromat in early January & will make attempts to save for a CGEM mount in the new year. I can buy one of these a Stellarvue in the US & they'll ship to me. I understand the price is $1399 USD plus shipping of around $400. My understanding is that imports don't even incurr the GST as retailers here are up in arms about foreign imports pricing them out of the market particularly at Christmas. There's been a large upsurge of people buying by Internet here.

I've looked at an EQ6 which is around $1649 here but feel I'd be happier with the Celestron HC software I'm familiar with. The CGEM is reported to be a somewhat superior mount to the EQ6 though it's had teething troubles. I have recourse to Ed Thomas' Hypertune kits which for the CGEM now come with 2 dedicated instructional DVD's.

Buying in the US puts the Warranty out of consideration as Shipping is $400 each way as I've described. CGEM's are $2499 AUD at cheapest here...!

Mark.

Sent from my iPod

On 09/12/2010, at 3:39 AM, Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com> wrote:

Hi Mark;

Calgary looks worse from a distance when overcast than up close on a
clear night and most large cities have a pretty significant glow. It
being nearly nearly Christmas when that was taken, all the Christmas
lights are up and the city is covered with 14 to 18" of white snow,
which bounces light back up.

I'm on the south tip of the city, so as long as the haze / clouds /
humidity is low the sky glow isn't too bad. But I'd love to have a
dark site to image from on a daily basis so I could go after faint
fuzzies.

Last week night the CSK predicted some of the clearest darkest skies I
had seen in months and I hoped to try imaging M74. However it didn't
account for low hanging haze and the measured sky brightness was
36,000 for a 15 minute exposures, where on average it's in 17,000
range for 15 minute exposures. That's with an LPR filter too that cuts
out about 220% of the bad light.

TTYL..

Milton J. Aupperle

On 8-Dec-10, at 1:22 AM, Mark Gaffney wrote:

> Milton,
> I thought you might be interested in seeing this shot taken from the
> hill to the east of Brian Allan`s farm (over 100 kms from you I
> believe)
> I can see what you have to contend with, apart from the weather..!
> http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/2LdZcAgANC56VGW_VPJqOw?feat=directlink
>
> Mark.