Howdii's report about the GSO 8" f/8 Ritchey-Chrétien which he collimated and tested in November and December 2011. Read his Test Report (in German) about this telescope. This telescope comes with a 2" Monorail focuser that proved inadequate, so Howdii exchanged it for a 2,5" Moonlite focuser. He had some trouble with fine-tuning the collimation of the RC and was delayed by bad weather, so he had no time for photographic tests. The visual performance was quite good after all improvements, especially so when considering the high linear obstruction of 46%.

M52 and NGC 7635 - Bubble Nebula Region is another CCD-image taken during my first night at the Edelweißspitze in August 2011. For the Hα grayscale image, I used my 4.9" Wright-Newtonian and a Hα narrow-band filter to record the many emission nebulae in this area, which also contains the open star cluster Messier 52. The HαRGB image adds exposures taken with the 4.1" TMB APO mounted parallel to the Wright-Newtonian and older DSLR photos of this area for color rendition.

I tried my hand again at a night sky time-lapse movie, this time I used an astronomical color CCD, the QHY8 Pro, coupled to a Nikkor zoom lens set to 18mm focal length for taking the images. The movie shows more than 8 hours compressed to 59 second of the night October 31 / November 1 taken at a good observing site: Night Sky at Steyersberger Schwaig: Time Lapse Movie. View it at vimeo for HD quality.

Howdii's report about the Boren-Simon 8" f/2,8 ED Astrograph which he collimated and tested both visually and with a CCD in November 2011. Read his Test Report (in German) about this telescope which is marketed as "PowerNewt Astrograph". The Boren-Simon is essentially an 8" f/4 GSO Newtonian fitted with carbon tube, Monorail focuser and ASA 0,73x corrector. The variant which Howdii tested sports a Baader Steeltrack focuser instead of the Monorail, a larger 75mm secondary mirror, and wooden tube rings. Howdii found some complaints about the on-tube mechanics and photographic performance, the most serious being the rather limited photographic field due to off-axis radial distorsion and light falloff. Also, this is a rather difficult scope to collimate.

Another image taken with both the 4.9" Wright-Newtonian and the 4.1" TMB refractor during my stay at the Großglockner-Hochalpenstraße in August 2011: M16, the Eagle (or Star Queen) Nebula as Hα narrow-band filter exposure and as HαRGB color composite. This prominent and often-photographed nebula is shown here to great depth which the fine clear mountain sky allowed.

Another image of Jupiter, this one taken by Walter during good seeing conditions on September 25, 2011 at Ebenwaldhöhe, Lower Austria. I used a DBK31 camera at my 9.5" Newtonian to capture the raw data.

An image of Jupiter taken by Howdii during average seeing conditions on October 15, 2011. He used a DBK31 camera at his 8" Maksutov-Newtonian to obtain the raw data.

Howdii wrote a new test report about a Skywatcher Equinox 120/900 ED APO which he used for visual observations and a bit of CCD imaging. He tested it extensively and found a few optical and mechanical quirks. The lens is a doublet and is not, by strict definition, an apochromat (although advertised as such), "Semi-APO" would describe the chromatic performance better. Optically, its optics suffer from stray light, pinching and slight misalignment, although the overall performance is ok for a telescope of this price and class. Mechanically, it would need a better focuser to be usable for serious astrophotography. Read Howdii's Test Report for more information (in German, October 2011).

My first try at a whole-night time-lapse movie. This was taken during my stay at the Großglockner-Hochalpenstraße in August 2011 and is titled Alpine Night: Time Lapse Movie. I took a 10 second exposure every 2 minutes with a zoom lens set to 18mm. The images are somewhat noisy due to the relatively slow lens and short exposure time.

Howdii's report titled "Schönwetterkatastrophe" about a number of observing sessions during the late summer period in September and the beginning of October, when virtually every night featured clear skies. He observed a lot of well-known summer/autumn deep-sky highlights as well as a few difficult Abell planetary nebulae, plus the globular cluster G1 in M31.

Another image taken with both the 4.9" Wright-Newtonian and the 4.1" APO during my stay at the Großglockner-Hochalpenstraße in August 2011: Sharpless 112, Sharpless 115 and Abell 71 as Hα narrow-band filter exposure and as HαRGB color composite. These are faint emission nebulae and a questionable planetary nebula near Deneb, the brightest star in Cygnus. Again, I had to fight strong gusts of wind while taking these exposures, which resulted in slightly elongated stars.

A combined image taken at Edelweißspitze and Hochbärneck: M8, the Lagoon Nebula, as Hα narrow-band filter exposure and as HαRGB color composite. I had to fight strong gusts of wind at the Edelweißspitze, but got lucky here: Almost no trailed stars in the raw exposures. Not bad image depth for an object that low above the horizon. Color data was taken with the TMB refractor on a setup parallel to the Hα images, but also from this Wright-Newtonian image of M8 and M20.

Comet Garradd (C/2009 P1) is the current comet of the sky and looks so promising that I have opened a separate gallery for it. I took an Animation of the comet's movement through a star-rich field in Sagitta, where it was apparently en route to the Coathanger star cluster, on August 29^th. The image series was taken at Hochbärneck during the astro-excursion described by Howdii below. The file size of the animation is 13 MB, so this animation may take a while to load.

My report of this year's Astrophoto-Expedition to the Großglockner-Hochalpenstraße (in German), which was my 12^th astronomy-related stay in this wonderful alpine region. This year I had company by a group of expert astrophotographers from Upper Austria. We had to fight increasingly strong southern winds during the three nights at the Edelweißspitze. Additional deep-sky astrophotos will be added to this report during the comings weeks.

Howdii wrote an observation report about 4 nights during the August 2011 new moon period, when he observed lots of Planetary Nebulae, a few summer highlights, and comet Garradd, at three different locations, all of them in Lower Austria: His observatory in Mistelbach, the Steyerberger Schwaig, and the Hochbärneck. Read his report, written in German, August 2011.

Howdii used three successive nights in June 2011 for visual deep-sky observations with his Skywatcher Equinox 120 ED refractor, which performed well, and wrote a report about his results. He observed standard objects as well as difficult Abell planetary nebulae, and finds his eyesight still satisfactory. Written in German.

Walter's photos of the Total Lunar Eclipse on June 15, 2011. I used the 4.1" TMB refractor for taking a photo every 2 minutes during the whole eclipse as well as a camera on a fixed tripod set to a focal length of 31mm, which captured a photo every 10 minutes. I made a full-field animation from moonrise until the end of the eclipse using the latter series.

Howdii's report about the Total Lunar Eclipse on June 15, 2011, written in German. It was a very dark eclipse, probably due to recent volcanic eruptions. Some clouds passing through sometimes interrupted our observations at our site near Niederleis, Lower Austria, otherwise the conditions were good. Photos and photo animations of the eclipse taken by Walter will follow soon.

The Vixen Super Polaris 102 M is a classical 4" f/10 CF achromatic refractor produced from 1986 onwards, which was usually sold together with the Super Polaris mount. Howdii got this well-used sample for testing, mounted it on his venerable SP-DX, and did a through visual star test using color filters and even a 33% obstruction. Read his Test Report (in German, June 2011). He found acceptable optics and solid mechanics on this scope, typical for a Vixen telescope of this period, with only minor complaints.

Howdii got a Skywatcher NEQ6 Pro SynScan mount for a customer and tested its performance. He subsequently wrote a Test Report (in German, May 2011) about this mount which started some years ago as inexpensive mount for visual use only and became a serious platform for astrophotographers in the meantime. Howdii found superb guiding performance on this sample, which he carefully documented, and generally attributes the NEQ6 good characteristics and handling. He also found a few minor design glitches, and errors in the manual. The NEQ6 is best mounted on a rigid hard-wood tripod.

Howdii made another excursion into the (telescopic) past: He got a Celestar 8" f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope for collimation and visual tests and subsequently wrote a Test Report (in German) about it. The Celestar was produced from 1996 onward, and is in essence a downgraded successor of the Celestron C8+ of the early 1990's. The optics of the telescope are actually quite good, it is free of zonal errors, and spherical aberration is well with the λ/4 criterion, maybe even as good as λ/8. However, Howdii detected signs of a rough optical surface finish, which reduces the visual contrast. The mechanics, i.e. "wedgepod" (wedge and tripod), fork-mount, etc. were made with cost reduction in mind, and are not rigid enough for a telescope of this size, thus reducing it to visual use only. It would deserve a good German Equatorial Mount for better performance.