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astrobaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 952
Registered: 5-22-2006
Location: near San Pedro Martir Park
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Mood: beam me up
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Astronomy in Baja
Hi All this is my 1st post to the list!
My Wife Pamela and I have been to Baja 3 times now, our last trip was just a few weeks ago! We did a road trip across the US (we're from Ontario
Canada) with our F350 and a pop-up camper (the RT built for off-road) and went to camp out at a property owned by David Lang. Its a really sweet spot
called Rancho Conception about 6 km past Meling on the way up to the observatorio. Anyway the place is just amazing, its at 5000' elevation with a
fantastic view of Cerro Corona which I guess is about the start of the San Pedro Martir park.
I took my telescope with me, its a fairly big reflector (an 18" dobsonian for those of you who are interested) and the views from there were
outstanding!
Just in case you don't know Baja is one of the best places on the planet for astronomy for 3 reasons.
1) its clear for a very large %age of the time
2) very minimal light pollution once you get south of Ensenada you get increadible sky darkness, esp once you get some altitude as well!
3) the air is very steady most of the time because of prevailing westerly winds, this is probably not the case on the cortez side though. Steady air
means a undistorted view of celestial objects.
This is the main reason that the San Pedro observatory is a candidate site for the worlds largest scope which will be 30 meters (the diameter of the
mirror). I suppose this is the main political reason for the road to be paved up to the observatory!
I'm wondering if there are any other amatuer astronomers that venture to Baja for observing? If so I'd love to hear form you! I attached a pic of our
capesite at Conception!
--Mike Wirths
[Edited on 6-14-2006 by astrobaja]
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Bruce R Leech
Elite Nomad
Posts: 6796
Registered: 9-20-2004
Location: Ensenada formerly Mulege
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Mood: A lot cooler than Mulege
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mike can you post a photo of that 18 inch telescope.
Bruce R Leech
Ensenada
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astrobaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 952
Registered: 5-22-2006
Location: near San Pedro Martir Park
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Mood: beam me up
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I also take pictures of the stuff I look at, heres an image I took of Saturn last year, one day I might have a little observatory in Baja, then I'll
be able to take some awesome images!
--Mike
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astrobaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 952
Registered: 5-22-2006
Location: near San Pedro Martir Park
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Hi Bruce!
You know what I don't even have a close up pic of the scope, but heres a pic of it setup at our camping spot. Believe it or not that scope is my
small "portable " one!
I have another one that 30" but its not exactly portable
I fit it all in the sliver box thats in the back of my dualy.
Heres a link to the maker of the scope, its made by a guy from Kansas!
http://www.starmastertelescopes.com/
I'll see if I have a pic of my "big" scope
cheers
Mike
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bajajudy
Elite Nomad
Posts: 6886
Registered: 10-4-2004
Location: San Jose del Cabo,BCS
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Wow
One of my favorite things about living here is the beautiful night skies. We were here for that huge meteor shower about 3 or 4 years ago. We took
our blowup bed out to the east cape and watched the entire show...spectacular.
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astrobaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 952
Registered: 5-22-2006
Location: near San Pedro Martir Park
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Mood: beam me up
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Bruce,
Heres a pic of me with my big scope at my observatory in Canada. It gives awesome views of faint stuff like galaxies, love to get this one to
Vallecitos near SPM sometime!
--Mike
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Bruce R Leech
Elite Nomad
Posts: 6796
Registered: 9-20-2004
Location: Ensenada formerly Mulege
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Mood: A lot cooler than Mulege
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astrobaja
I am really impressed.
what kind of tracking do you use for the photos? and how long of an ex poseur did you use for the saturn photo?
Bruce R Leech
Ensenada
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Bob and Susan
Elite Nomad
Posts: 8802
Registered: 8-20-2003
Location: Mulege BCS on the BAY
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Mood: Full Time Residents
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our telescope is one of those little white ones....
are you sure that's not a CANNON
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bajalera
Super Nomad
Posts: 1875
Registered: 10-15-2003
Location: Santa Maria CA
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Wow! Now we've got a real live astronomer, with an industrial-sized telescope to prove it. Welcome aboard, Astro!
\"Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest never happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.\" -
Mark Twain
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David K
Honored Nomad
Posts: 64480
Registered: 8-30-2002
Location: San Diego County
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Mood: Have Baja Fever
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Yes, welcome aboard amigo!!!
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astrobaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 952
Registered: 5-22-2006
Location: near San Pedro Martir Park
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Mood: beam me up
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Thanks for the welcome everybody!
Bruce about my scope and how I do my planet/moon shots, my particular type of scope has built in tracking but its really just meant for visual so
stuff I'm looking at doesnt drift out of view. Very accurate tracking is only needed for taking images of faint stuff like nebulae and galaxies where
you accumulate hours worth of data. I use a webcam (Toucam) where I unscrew the crappy little lens that webcams usually come with and with the use of
a little adapter slide that into where the eyepiece goes on the scope. So then with my laptop I get a live image of say Saturn on the computer and
take a short "movie" in avi form. Exposure is about 1/25 sec so this way I can pick the sharpest individual frames that are the least distorted by
atmospheric conditions. Usually the finished picture is a stack of several 100 images. There is special software that aligns all the individual frames
and then I sharpen the final "stack" in Photoshop CS. Using these techniques modern amatuers like me can way surpass any image taken by professionals
even a decade ago!
cheers
Mike W
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astrobaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 952
Registered: 5-22-2006
Location: near San Pedro Martir Park
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Mood: beam me up
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BajaJudy
That must have been the Leonid meteor shower! And yeah from a truly dark sky that must have been quite something. When we get an Aurora display here
in Canada I do the same thing with a blowup bed cept I'm freezin my butt off
I attached a light pollution map of Baja to show how un-polluted it is and why the night sky is so special there! I'm sure part of it is how
unextravagent Mexicans are with using electricity. We are all way too wasteful in the US and Canada!
--Mike
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burro bob
Nomad
Posts: 264
Registered: 3-15-2004
Location: Poblado del Ejido Plan National Agrario
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Astrobaja
I've looked at buying a nice telescope a couple of times. I never even saw anything like you have. Are these home built kits?
I find it interesting that you only use a web cam for photography. Does this limit your resolutijon to 640 x 480 or can you go higher? With a better
digital camera could you get even better photos, What you have now is very good, just wondering if a better camera would make them even sharper.
Sorry for all that light pollution around San Felipe. It's not my fault, I don't have electricity yet.
burro bob
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shari
Select Nomad
Posts: 13033
Registered: 3-10-2006
Location: bahia asuncion, baja sur
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Mood: there is no reality except the one contained within us "Herman Hesse"
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Hola Mike and welcome to this forum...great to see another paisano on here, I was born in Chatham and am heading to London for a family reunion in a
couple weeks. What part of Ontario are you in? If you come back to baja, try to come and stay with us...we live in a very dark, unpopulated spot and
the sky is totally mind boggling. We see lots of unexplained things lurking up there! Great to have you on this post....hasta luego
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thebajarunner
Ultra Nomad
Posts: 3687
Registered: 9-8-2003
Location: Arizona....."Free at last from crumbling Cali
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Mood: muy amable
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Your setup is "muy cool"
thanks for sharing it...
Baja is such an awesome "galactic gallery" that even with a lot of training and regular observation up here in the country of lights I have trouble
sometimes locating clusters, etc.
On a moonless night the sky is jammed beyond imagination with stars and points of light.
And the best "star event" ever was the eclipse of 1991 where we clearly saw Orion in July at mid-day.
What an incredible adventure that was!
Hope I run across you some night and you let me have a few moments to peek through your glass.
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astrobaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 952
Registered: 5-22-2006
Location: near San Pedro Martir Park
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Mood: beam me up
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Burro Bob,
This design of scope I have is called a dobsoninan, its very user freindly and moves kinda like a lazy susan, they usually don't track (although mine
does) and you get the most bang for the buck i.e. a big aperture mirror for less $. You can build them yourself and many do but you can get a good
starter 10" dob for around $500. Mine is kinda the rolls royce of dobs but then I've spent many years upgrading through various scopes, heres the
manufacturers website:
http://www.starmastertelescopes.com/html/truss-scopes.htm
and heres a good website to read user reviews of different types of scopes, best thing to do is join a local astro club and look through other peoples
scopes before buying your own:
http://www.cloudynights.com/
About the cameras I use, the webcam is a great cheap way to start but now I have another camera which has a bigger chip (1616X1216), the big
adavantage of these video camera over digital cameras is that they gives 1000's of frames to work with. The big limitation on how good an image you
can make is how steady the atmosphere is, this way you pick out the sharpest individual frames.
Heres my new camera:
http://www.lumenera.com/scientific/inf22.php
I would advise a astro newbie not to get into photography at 1st, best to learn the night sky a bit first!
I'll be in San Pedro Martir park this fall, when Iknow better I'll psot when I'm going to if any of you want to visit and observe with me you most
welcome to!!
--Mike W
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astrobaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 952
Registered: 5-22-2006
Location: near San Pedro Martir Park
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Mood: beam me up
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Hola Shari!!
My Wife and I are live on a horse farm about 100km west of Ottawa, come visit us if you're in the area!
Heres our farm:
http://www.superaje.com/~mwirths/index.htm
Right now we are planning on building an off grid adobe solar home near San Pedro Martir park, once we're setup we would definitely come down to visit
you!! The pics on your website look wonderful!
cheers
Mike
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astrobaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 952
Registered: 5-22-2006
Location: near San Pedro Martir Park
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Mood: beam me up
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Hi Bajarunner!
I know what you mean about getting "lost" in a truley dark sky. Sometimes you see so many stars that you no longer recognise all the constellations
that you know! Its on nights like that where you actually get the sense of being on the edge of our galaxy, the milky way. Its quite a feeling!
I hope you can join me sometime and check out the nighttime spendors in my scope!
Long range plans are that my Wife and I will startup a astronomy B&B someday!
-cheers
Mike
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Rusty
Newbie
Posts: 15
Registered: 1-25-2005
Location: Flagstaff, AZ
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welcome
Mike -
Glad to hear of your interest in astronomy, and particularly dark skies. I don't own a scope (yet) but I find scanning the Milky Way with a good set
of binoculars is equally enjoyable. Wil Tirion's book "Binocular Astronomy" is a great resource.
The LSST site has been selected:
http://www.lsst.org/News/site_selection.shtml
It will be in Cerro Pachon, Chile. First light in 2012 seems like a very ambitious goal.
Baja is a great place to get started and experiment with astrophotography. Because of the incredibly dark skies, you can do longer exposures without
getting sky glow. All you need is a camera and cable release, and a tripod. Set it up away from camp, point it at the north star and go back to your
camp to enjoy your beer.
Rusty
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astrobaja
Senior Nomad
Posts: 952
Registered: 5-22-2006
Location: near San Pedro Martir Park
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OK heres some more pics I've taken in the last year:
Mars taken last nov during a pretty close opposition
south is up in the image, you can see a very small polar cap and a fairly big carbon dioxide cloud at the bottom, a small circular light colored spot
in the lower left is Olympus Mons a volcano the size the Texas
[Edited on 6-16-2006 by astrobaja]
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