Hahnenberg Observatory in Michigan presents information for those interested in building a domed observatory, learning about the different kinds of telescopes and CCD cameras available. Sample astrophotographs, and types of CCD software, are also included in the presentation.

1. Ed Hahnenberg, BA, MA, MA, Ed.S.

3.  80 mm tracking scope
 14” Meade LX200 ACF
TELESCOPE

6.  There were two
choices to achieve a
place for a permanent
pier
 1. Use of slide-off roof
 2. Use of a dome

7.  I could not see myself
sitting in freezing
weather without a
roof over my head.
 I chose the dome with
a heater inside.
 Cutting hole for
pier…

8.  Tracking DSOs
 No setup time
 Parking the scope
 Use of CCD camera
 (Charge-coupled
Device)

9.  Photography of astronomical objects  When we add to this problems
brings many difficult problems as with light pollution, quality of
compared to the photography as optics (even smallest
most people know. The exposure imperfections are clearly visible
times can be very long (even tens of in case of photographing stars)
minutes) and the lenses, or telescopes and the
used, typically characterized with big weather, astrophotography
focal lengths (thousands of appears to be very difficult.
millimeters). This means that the  What is more, there are the
photographed objects must be well same problems as in the
guided during the exposure and that "normal" photography. One of
the noise (that increases with the them is the high dynamic range
exposure time) can spoil the efforts. of the photographed objects.

10. PolyDome, headquartered in Minnesota, ships the Exploradome anywhere in the US for
$350. The dome cost $1414. Roof panels $418.

11. Dome is 8’ in diameter and revolves manually. Notice the permanent pier in the
4’ X 12” Sonotube.

12. Note the Schaub crew beginning the building process. Look carefully at the
permanent pier with the pier plate atop.

13. The Schaub crew took exactly 1 ½ days to complete the entire project.

14.  The Explora-Dome will
mount on top of the add-
on room.
 Angled framing was
necessary for roof
panels.

15. Scope is inside dome, mounted on permanent pier, pier plate,
and Meade Ultrawedge.

16. A 10’ 6” X 36” piece of aluminum flashing was cut to drain west to prevent rain and
melting snow from leaking into the original shed. No leaks yet…

17. A specially cut steel door with padlock and chain added later provide security for the two
room observatory.

18.  SXVF M25
single-shot
color camera
The new SBIG STL11000MCC2
Camera – March, 2010

19.  The color camera DFK
21 has an ultra-fast 60
frames per second for
planetary or lunar
imaging.

20. SBIG PRODUCES HIGH END
CAMERAS. HAHNENBERG
OBSERVATORY ACQUIRED
AN SBIG ST-4000XCM 2 CCD
CAMERA IN JAN. 2009.
STARLIGHT EXPRESS – MX
716…MONOCHROME CAMERA
ONCE OWNED BY
HAHNENBERG OBSERVATORY

21. SBIG STL 11000M STL 11000CM
 SBIG STL-11000CM
Color CCD Camera is
self-guiding, as is the
monochrome version.

22.  In recent years, webcam imaging has become
increasingly popular among amateur
astronomers. It is easy to see why: they are
inexpensive (< $100) and it is possible, with
practice, to produce some truly amazing images.
 Keep in mind that webcams cannot be used "out
of the box" for astro-imaging. You'll have to do
some tinkering before you can use a webcam on
your telescope.

23.  Meade engineers have
 The user-friendly
invented a remarkable new
astrophotography
way to reduce noise without
revolution continued
with the introduction of a cooling fan. This means
you can stack exposures for
the new DSI III. It
hours at a time. The thermal
combines ease-of-use
with a 1.4 megapixel monitoring sensors
automatically match your
chip, higher resolution,
dark frames to ambient
wider field of view and
temperature.
lower thermal noise.

24.  The software includes a
zoom feature for easier
focusing and the square
pixels of the new larger
chip make processing
simpler and images more
beautiful than ever. The
camera is difficult to
purchase today.

25.  Autoguiding has revolutionized  Problem solved. The
the capture of deep-sky images by StarShoot AutoGuider
mechanizing the tedious and tiring provides a user-friendly,
method of "manually" guiding an dedicated autoguiding
exposure, which involved staring system for long-exposure
endlessly into an illuminated astrophotography. It's
reticle eyepiece while tweaking compatible with virtually
your mount's electronic drive any mount equipped with
controls by hand to keep the stars an autoguider port and
pinpoint sharp. Until now, the comes with the software
problem has always been the lack and cables needed to work
of a simple, affordable autoguider right out of the box!
camera to do the job.

26.  The Autoguider is
inserted into an 80
mm telescope
mounted to the main
scope.

27.  The Guider tracks a
target star to keep the
scope dead-on for the
Meade DSI III CCD
camera to image the
desired planet or
DSO.

28. MY ORION 8” NEWTONIAN
REFLECTOR REFLECTORS ARE GREAT FOR
VIEWING FAINT, DEEP-SKY
OBJECTS LIKE GALAXIES, STAR
CLUSTERS AND NEBULA.

29. THE DOBSONIAN TELESCOPE AN ORION 6” DOBSON
 The basic idea driving the
original design is to make
large aperture telescopes
affordable, easy to make, and
portable. It is a combined
concept that allows the
builder with minimal skill to
make an extremely large
telescope out of common
items found in any hardware
store or scrap yard.

30. REFRACTORS ORION 60 MM REFRACTOR
 These are telescopes that use
refracting lenses housed in a long,
thin tube mounted on a tripod.
Refractors are great for viewing the
sun, moon and planets where
magnification detail is important but
brightness is not. Upright images.

31. MEADE 14” SCHMIDT
COMPOUND OR CADIOPTRIC CASSEGRAIN
 Compound scopes use
both refracting lenses and
reflecting mirrors in their
design to provide a
compact form factor. They
include those of
Schmidt, Cassegrain
(Cass), Maksutov (Mak)
and hybrid designs.

32. Attached to it is the Solar H-alpha telescope for viewing the sun’s flares, prominences, and
sunspot activity…Coronado PST… and an 80 mm guide scope.

33. DESKTOP COMPUTER CONTROLS TELESCOPE MEADE 14” ATOP PIER INSIDE
MOVEMENT, FOCUSING, AND IMAGING. ROTATING DOME.

34. INSIDE THE DOME – LADDER
WATCH YOUR HEAD! NEEDED AT TIMES.

35. CONTROL PANEL AND LATITUDE SETTING AND
CAMERA FOCUSER WEDGE CONTROL

36. STAR CHART 2000 DETAILED STAR CHART

37. The larger the mm of the eyepiece the wider and smaller the magnification. The
illuminated reticle has red crosshairs for accurate centering.

38. Many nights the atmosphere contains high humidity, thus resulting in a fogging over of the
main imaging scope. Dew heaters, or more simple dew shields, are used to prevent this. It
is attached to the end of the scope

39. Additional eyepieces, connecting rings, collimeter, and several filters (mainly for planets
and lunar use) are stored in handy cases.

40. My newest imaging equipment

41.  HyperStar is the easiest way to capture deep-sky
astrophotos. The HyperStar* unit is a multiple-lens
corrector which replaces the secondary mirror on a Schmidt-
Cassegrain telescope and allows extremely fast CCD
imaging. Depending on the size of the telescope, the resulting
focal ratio will be between f/1.8 and f/2.0, up to 31 times
faster than imaging at f/10! Removing the secondary mirror and
installing the HyperStar lens is very quick and easy. No tools are
required and switching between the HyperStar and regular f/10
modes of the telescope takes only a couple minutes. HyperStar
provides the easiest and fastest means of imaging deep-sky
celestial objects!

43.  Adjusting finderscope and main scope
 Hahnenberg Observatory Clear Skies forecast
 Collimation of Hyperstar lens
 Focus telescope
 Computer powered up & Scope polar-aligned
 Selection of object to image
 Maxim DL and Photoshop (latest version)
 Picture taking (30 sec upwards X 30+)
 Processing

45.  In order to get an image to correctly reflect what
the viewer sees without a scope the photographed
image has to be tipped upside down, then turned
to face the opposite direction, or reversed.
Software does this easily. The "incorrect" image in
a telescope has to do with the way in which
certain kinds of telescopes view the object. To get
a correct image with a telescope, as one in
binoculars, would require far larger instruments
due to the optics of the mirrors inside.

46.  One of the most surprising discoveries first-time
telescope owners will find is that images may
appear upside-down or backwards depending on
the type of telescope. The first thought is the
telescope is broken - when in fact it is working
perfectly normal. Depending on the type of
telescope images may appear correct, upside-
down, rotated, or inversed from left to right. For
astronomical viewing, it is not important whether
an object is shown

47. Rotate dome to take
image
The dome has a slide-back cover and a fold-down opening to
give a 28” window X 90 degrees of the sky.

48.  Deep Sky Object (DSO) is a term used by astronomers to describe mostly faint
astronomical objects outside the solar system, such as star clusters, nebulae, or
galaxies. They are hundreds to billions of light-years distant from Earth.
 The Messier objects are a set of
astronomical objects first listed
by French astronomer Charles
Messier in his Catalogue of
Nebulae and Star Clusters
published in 1771. There are 110
Messier objects.

49.  The NGC contains 7,840 objects, known as
the NGC objects. It is one of the largest
comprehensive catalogs, as it includes all types
of deep space objects and is not confined to, for
example, galaxies.
 IC stands for Index Catalogue, and is a catalog
of galaxies, nebulae and star clusters that is a
supplement to the New General Catalogue.

50.  The Abell catalog of rich clusters of galaxies is an
all-sky catalog of 4,073 galaxy clusters
 Like constellations, asterisms are in most cases
composed of stars which, while they are visible in
the same general direction, are not physically
related, often being at significantly different
distances from Earth. The mostly simple shapes
and few stars make these patterns easy to identify.

51. Andromeda is the nearest spiral galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy. It is visible as a faint smudge
on a moonless night. M31 contains one trillion stars, more than the number of stars in our own
galaxy, about 200-400 billion.

52. M 51& 52 – Whirlpool
Galaxy
The Whirlpool Galaxy a popular target for
professionals, who study it to further understand galaxy
structure with spiral arms.

54. The Pinwheel Galaxy
– M101
An edge-on galaxy that I used a
DDP technique to bring some detail
out.

55. NGC 6946 is a spiral galaxy about 22 million light-years away, on the border
between the constellationsCepheus and Cygnus

56. M81 is a spiral galaxy about 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. M81 is one of the most striking
examples of a grand design spiral galaxy, with near perfect arms spiraling into the very center.

57. M101 is a face-on spiral galaxy distanced 25 million light-years away in
the constellation Ursa Major,[

58. M 104 has a big bright core. It also has an unusually pronounced bulge with
an extended and richly populated globular cluster system - several hundred
can be counted in long exposures from big telescopes.

59. The Hercules Cluster

60. A double star

61. A barred spiral galaxy

75. M17 is located in the rich starfields of the Sagittarius area of the Milky Way.
It is between 5,000 and 6,000 light-years from Earth and it spans some 15 light-
years in diameter.

76. M20 is an unusual combination of an open cluster of stars, an emission nebula (the lower,
red portion), a reflection nebula (the upper, blue portion) and a dark nebula (the apparent
'gaps' within the emission nebula that cause the trifid appearance. It is approximately 7,600
light years away.

77. M27 is a planetary nebula in the constellation Vulpecula, at a distance of about
1,360 light years.

84. M 57is one of the most prominent examples of the deep-sky objects
called planetary nebulae

86. The Horsehead Nebula , in the constellation Orion, is approximately 1500 light
years from Earth.

89. 30 sec. exposure

94. The nebula is the remnant of a supernova explosion seen in 1054
AD. Located at a distance of about 6,500 light-years
from Earth, the nebula has a diameter of 11 ly and expands at a rate
of about 1,500 kilometers per second.

95. M13 is about 145 light-years in diameter, and it is composed of several hundred
thousand stars, M13 is 25,100 light-years away from Earth.

96. The Eagle Nebula is a young is a star-forming nebula. It is about 6,500 lys distant.

97. 10 min. exposure stacked – 9-2-2011

98. At high magnification, the moon moves extremely
rapidly, but a Go-To scope may have a lunar tracking speed
control. When observing the moon at high magnification, a
filter is necessary to cut down on the brightness. This is not
necessary for CCD imaging.

99. Apollo 15 was the fourth landing on the Moon and was the first to
use the Lunar Rover Vehicle. Landed on Moon July 30, 1971.

101. Crescent shapes can be waxing or waning…

102.  The Imaging Source cameras are excellent
lunar and planetary cameras. The DFK
21AU04.AS can create an avi file that is
basically a movie of live images. 30 frames per
second can yield 1800 images from which to
choose or to stack. Stacking with Registax or
other software can give a final picture with
user-defined thresholds.

103. One of many lunar images taken with the DSI III CCD camera. Moon in ½
crescent stage. No filter used. Exposure less than .02 of a second.

108. Plato is the maria-surfaced remains of a lunar imapact crater. The age of the
Plato walled-plain is about 3.84 billion years

109. Lunar image – DSI III

114.  Dome is rain and
snow- proof, but
getting there in a
heavy snow season is
by snowmobile.

115. THE PERSONAL SOLAR
TELESCOPE IMAGE OF SUN IN H-ALPHA

116. Photographing the sun
Viewing the sun is very dangerous in a telescope. NEVER DO IT without a
filter, for both the finderscope and main scope.

117. Nikon Coolpix 995, ISO 100, f/4.6/ and at 1/88th of a second

118. Images such as this are possible with our Coronado solar telescope.

119. Nikon Coolpix 995 attached with T-ring and using a solar filter.

120. Coronado h-alpha telescope picture

121. 
JPEG IMAGES FITS IMAGES
 (Joint Photographic Experts Group) An  The standard data format used in
astronomy
ISO/ITU standard for compressing still
 Stands for 'Flexible Image Transport
images. JPEGs are saved on a sliding System'
resolution scale based on the quality  Endorsed by NASA and the International
desired. For example, an image can be Astronomical Union
saved in high quality for photo printing, in  Much more than just another image
format (such as JPEG or GIF)
medium quality for the Web and in low
 Used for the transport, analysis, and
quality for attaching to e-mails, the latter archival storage of scientific data sets
providing the smallest file size for fastest
transmission over dial-up connections.

122. BMP IMAGES GIF IMAGES
 Short for "Bitmap." The BMP format
stores color data for each pixel in the  The letters "GIF" actually stand for
image without any compression. For "Graphics Interchange Format.” GIFs are
example, a 10x10 pixel BMP image will based on indexed colors, which is a
include color data for 100 pixels. This palette of at most 256 colors. This helps
method of storing image information
allows for crisp, high-quality greatly reduce their file size. These
graphics, but also produces large file compressed image files can be quickly
sizes. transmitted over a network or the
Internet, which is why you often see
them on Web pages. GIF files lack the
color range to be used for high-quality
photos.

123.  There are many astrophotography image
programs. Astroart, Photoshop, Maxim DL,
Astrostack, Registax, CCD Soft and dedicated
programs included in telescope company’s
software such as Meade’s AutoStar Suite. Their
function is to align and sharpen images.

124.  Planet comes from the Greek word πλανήτοs,
which means “wanderer.”
 In order to take a picture of a planet, one must
be aware there is a different motion speed and
direction than that of the moon or stars.
 So, there is planetary motion, lunar motion,
and sidereal motion.

125.  Fortunately, with CCD cameras, one does not
have tracking problems, because images are
taken in 100ths or thousandths of a second.
 Digital or film cameras are less sensitive to
light, so one might need to use a shutter
control.

126. Experimenting with exposure time and gain control gives different results.
This image was a BMP image of less than ½ a second.

127. Rings of Jupiter
Although extremely hard to see, Jupiter does have rings plus
63 moons. Four moons are usually visible.

128. Saturn will tilt its rings during 2009 so that no rings were visible in 2010.
Bummer!

130. Venus was in 60% crescent stage. DSI III image at less than .01 second. No
features are visible unless filter is used.

131. Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. The planet is one of Earth's "next-door neighbors" in space. Earth is the third
planet from the sun, and Jupiter is the fifth. Like Earth, Jupiter, the sun, and the remainder of the solar system, Mars is
about 4.6 billion years old. It has ice at its polar caps.

132. Uranus is 1.7 billion miles away from earth, between Saturn and Neptune.
All four gas planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune) have rings, although Saturn’s are
the most spectacular.

134. Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in our Solar System. Named for the Roman god of
the sea, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third-largest by mass. Neptune is 17 times the
mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, It is 2.7 billion miles away from
Earth.

135. After several years of reading books, blogs, and upgrading
equipment, I still consider myself a beginning astrophotographer.
Each year technology in the amateur astronomy field comes out
with new cameras, software, and telescopes. Let’s look in detail at
how to take DSOs worthy of publication.

136. The Hubble Telescope has provided some spectacular
images of the 500,000 known galaxies, each with 100
billion to our own Milky Way’s 400 billion stars. The
following frames are a sampling of what lies around
us…

137. M16 – The Eagle
Nebula
Appearing like a winged fairy-tale
creature poised on a pedestal, this
object is actually a billowing tower of
cold gas and dust rising from a stellar
nursery called the Eagle Nebula. The
soaring tower is 9.5 light-years or
about 57 trillion miles high, about
twice the distance from our Sun to the
next nearest star.

138. M104 – Sombrero
Galaxy
Hubble easily resolves
M104's rich system of
globular clusters, estimated
to be nearly 2,000 in
number -- 10 times as many
as orbit our Milky Way
galaxy. The ages of the
clusters are similar to the
clusters in the Milky
Way, ranging from 10-13
billion years old.

139. Omega Centauri
Omega Centauri is so large in
our sky that only a small part
of it fits within the field of
view of the Hubble Space
Telescope. Yet even this tiny
patch contains some 50,000
stars, all packed into a region
only about 13 light-years
wide. For comparison, a
similarly sized region
centered on the Sun would
contain about a half dozen
stars.

140. The Helix Nebula
It is similar in appearance to the Ring
Nebula, whose size, age, and physical
characteristics are similar to the
Dumbbell Nebula, varying only in its
relative proximity and the appearance
from the equatorial viewing angle. The
Helix has often been referred to as the
'Eye of God' on the Internet, since
about 2003.

141. NGC 2440
The star is ending its life by
casting off its outer layers of
gas, which formed a cocoon
around the star's remaining
core. Ultraviolet light from the
dying star makes the material
glow. The burned-out
star, called a white dwarf, is the
white dot in the center.

142. Supernova 1987a – Will it be seen in daylight?
1987A was generated by a star 20 times more massive than the Sun. It
resides in a nearby galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. Because
of the time it takes light from the event to reach Hubble, the explosion
actually occurred 160,000 years ago, in the time frame of its origin.

143. We are looking at an image that is no longer there as shown, but was 7000 light years ago.
The universe continues to expand, faster outward each day. It will end not with a bang, but
with a whimper, according to scientists and T.S. Elliot. Pillars has become one of the most
famous images of modern times.

144. This color photo was made from three images taken on April 9, 2007

145.  While over three
hundred exoplanets
have been discovered WHAT A CANADIAN TEAM FOUND IN
2004, AND CONFIRMED AGAIN
by noting wobble of NOV, 2008, ARE THREE PLANETS
CIRCLING THE STAR.
host stars, a trio of ACCORDING TO A THEORETICAL
exoplanets have been MODEL THAT ACCOUNTS FOR THE
LIGHT COMING FROM THE
directly imaged. PLANETS, THEY RANGE IN SIZE FROM
FIVE TO 13 TIMES THE MASS OF JUPITER
AND ARE PROBABLY ONLY ABOUT 60
MILLION YEARS OLD.

146. HUBBLE IS ONLY 353 MILES
FROM EARTH. LAUNCHED 1990.
 The $4.5bn telescope will
take up a position some
930,000 miles from Earth.
 It will measure 80ft long by
40ft high and incorporate a
hexagonal mirror 21.3ft in
diameter, almost three times
the size of Hubble's. It will
be launched in June 2013 and
have a 10 yr. life. THE JAMES WEBB SPACE
TELESCOPE…BETWEEN EARTH AND
SUN, AND PAST MOON.

147. My real stars ….
My real stars…Matt, Marie, and Ben … along with
Therese, Ed, Liz, Nick, Rose, and my wife Marlene.

149. Be sure to keep up with our website:
www.astronomy-
leelanau.blogspot.com.