How to be a Star at a Star Party

[kaymann]

How to be a Star at a Star Party - Show off BEOS!

Last night I attended the SCOVAC public star party.

Equipment: Canon 60D, a vintage 1981 Meade Model 2080 SCT, on a Celestron CGEM DX mount and tripod, PoleMaster polar alignment camera, and BEOS on a 16" laptop.
(Could have installed the alignment camera but kept it simple).

I setup my scope much like everyone (five others  brought their go to telescopes).

I then took off my eyepiece and attached my 60D and fired up BEOs
I got the 60D into fine focus with FWHM in Frame & Focus, which everyone thought was better than sliced bread.
I did a couple more star alignments with BEOE using Frame & Focus with the Zoom box grid - educating them on what the goto was actually doing and calculating.

Most people were checking in and out with the different scopes being awed by Orion M42.
I instructed my mount to go there, leaving it in Frame & Focus - onlookers were underwhelmed as expected.
I told them "lets throw some more light in the 60D" and took one under exposed, couple of seconds, photo by only selecting the first entry in the Capture Plan Center. Better, but they could tell I was up to something...
I then ran the entire Capture Plan - they loved the count down timer - and as each new image appeared with more and more detail of Orion nothing but ewes and awes!
They loved how each finished photo just popped up (occasionally going into presentation mode was killer as well)
I was able to teach them a little bit about the histogram when asked about the weird graph "thingy".
I finished M42  with a very overexposed core but a more detailed fringe.

We moved onto Venus, Andromeda, the Pinwheel, and more.

I kept hearing "He just took that with that..." I got to teach them a little about astronomy, photography and light science but it all would have been very dull and tedious without BEOS!
BEOS was the real star of the party last night  - Thank you Guylian for making it all possible!

Randall

 

Initially tried to put this in how to but not an option...