The talk tonight at the UW Campus Observatory is on Comets. You can download the presentation in the presentation section or come to the talk itself.

Information regarding the UW Campus Observatory is here:

Theodor Jacobsen Observatory

This presentation gives a brief background of cometary history, examines composition and appearance of comets, and explains the current Stardust mission to comet Wild 2.

Presented August 18th, 2004 at the UW Observatory.

To view the presentation in Internet Explorer, click here.

To download the presentation in Power Point form, right-click here and "Save target as…"

The presentations are large! It is recommended that you download the presentation (either in .PPT or .MHT) before viewing it. The "web page" version of the presentation was made in Power Point so its functionality with browsers other than Internet Explorer is not guaranteed.

I played around in Photoshop with the uncentered M51 image I took on 8/13/04. Here are the results.

53 stacked 8.5 second exposures using "Image Stacker"

Click to see full sized image.

This is just a temporary page displaying the results and differences between the two imaging sessions.

Overall it was an unsuccessful night. Instead of placing the F/3.3 focal reducer before the Meade microfocuser I put it after and used a 1.25" eyepiece holder for the CCD camera.

The results? Not good. I am not sure whether or not that caused my images to be less bright.

I also had focus and alignment problems. Regardless, here are a few samples.

Both images are consist of stacked frames and a dark image.