Marc's blog

Satellite galaxies of M31

Astronomy

Par Marc Kossa

It is little known that M31, the Great Andromeda Galaxy has not 2 but 4 satellites: M110 (NGC 205), the ellongated one north of M31 (mag 8.9) M32 (NGC 221), the round galaxy south of M31 (mag 9.0) NGC 185 (mag 10.1) NGC 147 (mag 10.5) I was able to capture...

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Compact camera and Infinity focus

Aerial photo

Par Marc Kossa

I usually set my Pentax A20 to infinity focus when doing Aerial Photography. However, I just discovered that it just isn't right: Here is an extract from a distant scene taken with Autofocus: it is sharp. Same scene taken with focus set to Infinity: completely...

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Barnard's Star

Astronomy

Par Marc Kossa

(voir ici pour une traduction automatique de cette page en français) This is the star with the highest proper motion of the Heavens: more than 10" every year. See the Wikipedia page on this star here. I took this picture yesterday, with my Canon 350D...

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Field of view and true magnification of Canon binos

Binoculars

Par Marc Kossa

Here are my measurements. Canon 18x50 IS: The apparent field of the bino is 62 degres (from Polaris to over Alpha And). The real field is 3.85 degres, measured to be midrange from Delta Cas to Gamma Cas (3.60 degres) and Delta Cas to SAO 11444 (4.13 deg)....

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Observation of Variable and double stars

Variable star

Par Marc Kossa

Yesterday I was able to observe some interesting stars using the Canon 18x50 IS binos. These observations were made on Sep 22 at 20h30 UT. Delta Cephee This is a variable star and a double star. Blue compagnon (Mag=6) was clearly resolved, at 41". As...

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Some old pictures

Astronomy

Par Marc Kossa

Spring 1977, Grenoble. 60x700 refractor. Spring 1986, col de l'Arzelier. Ready to watch Halley's comet ! Mauna Kea, Hawaii, December 1996. Mt Palomar, Mai 1997. A more modest observatory near Grenoble.

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Old Astro pictures

Astronomy

Par Marc Kossa

Here is M57 in Lyra, taken on June 4 1996 from Austin, Texas. 6 minutes single exposure, on Kodak 1000 ISO film. Olympus OM-1 camera, Lumicon Easy Guider. Here is also M57, taken 11 years later with a smaller telescope, with a single 30 "exposure...on...

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How does the Canon 18x50 IS binoculars compare to the 10x30 IS ?

Binoculars

Par marckossa

(Voir ici pour une traduction automatique de cet article en Français) After searching for years (literally), I was finally able to pick up a good deal on Canon 18x50 IS binoculars out of EBay (thanks to the cheap $!). I have been using the smaller 10x30...

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VirtualBox and VMware server ESX

Virtualization

Par Marc Kossa

When using the VMware Infrastructure Client GUI to connect to the VMware ESX Hypervisor, I encountered a nasty problem. It was not possible to upload a Virtual Machine image, or even an iso image to boot on. Every attempt to add a file to a datastore...

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Astrophotography without equatorial mount

Variable star

Par Marc Kossa

Yes, it is possible ! This picture of M31 goes to magnitude 15. Click on it to see it fullsize. It was taken with a Canon EOS 350D mounted on a fixed tripod. The lens was the Canon 85mm f/1.8. 77 exposures of 4 seconds each were taken. Then Iris software...

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