More from November 9. 65 of 715 frames stacked.
Clavius closeup
November 10, 2009 by finkhStraight Wall
November 10, 2009 by finkh
November 9, 2009.
Mars
November 9, 2009 by finkh
Captured at f/15. Currently Mars is 8.3 arcseconds. At one arcsecond per pixel, it looks pretty lonely in that 1.4 megapixel frame. Zoomed view after processing.
Copernicus Closeup
November 9, 2009 by finkh
Captured using Astro IIDC with Point Grey 1.4mp Scorpion Monochrome camera on rear port (prime focus) of ETX-125 f/15 Maksutov-Cassegrain telescope polar aligned November 9, 2009 at about 2am. 38 of 465 frames. Registax 5 lets you limit your stack based on quality; these frames were 85% or better.
I export avi from Astro IIDC to process in Registax. There’s a 4Gb limit on avi so I had to trim the original in Quicktime Player before exporting. The best Copernicus I’ve done.
Tycho detail
November 5, 2009 by finkh
From earlier in the week, the last best exposure. 889 frames f/7.5. This was reprocessed in Registax V with multiple alignment points. Method 1 had nine points, method 2 about 250 points, matrix only two points. I chose method 2. A 1.4 megapixel stack of 889 frames took fifteen minutes to align, and each subsequent step (optimize, stack) took fifteen minutes or more. The advantage to using a dual processor machine was that one processor was devoted to registax, and the other was available for work. This is a crop from the original. I do most adjustments at 150 to 200% of original size, then reduce back or smaller.
Shot at f/15, 449 frames 339 stacked: 95% quality. This is a crop from a 1.4Mp image, but wordpress reduced it about 50%. The best of the week: about an hour of computer time processing. (24 alignment points, create reference frame, sharpen, continue, optimize, stack, sharpen.) No processing in Photoshop except cropping and conversion to jpeg.
New camera, no problems
November 3, 2009 by finkh
much reduced original exposure.
Crop from original f/7.5.
526 frames, 1392×1040 16bit 6ms 15fps. 512 at 90% quality in Registax. Stacked 487.
Actual size from original.
New camera, old problems
October 26, 2009 by finkh
Southern highlands.
Tranquility.
Set up etx-125 alt-az alignment. Tried three times, each time, got an alignment, and the autostar quit. Finally got out the hand-paddle controller, and let the moon drift across field of view for each exposure, 1280×960 16 bit, eight exposures from a hundred to three hundred frames. Conditions pretty awful, actually, with a cloudy haze, or a hazy cloud cover. The only things visible in the sky were airplanes, the Moon, Jupiter, and Vega. Any more sharpening brings out the waves of cloud drifting across the moon. I received a C to T/2″ adapter, and connected it to a T to T focal reducer I bought and could not use several years ago. It has a 1.25 inch eyepiece to T connected to it. The focal reducer is a big glass lens. Screwed in the IR filter and grabbed what frames I could. These two were typical, reduced to 2/3 original size, then WordPress reduces them another fifty percent.
My Orionids
October 21, 2009 by finkhTuesday Night: I was testing some ebay-bought binoculars, 7×35 Jason, and 7×50 Nikon. The Jasons have nine degree view, the Nikons seven degree. 10pm, up on the roof, looking for M31, which was near the zenith. Once I found it, I could nail it pretty quickly with both binocs; appearance about the same: a bright fuzzy. I let my eyes dark-adapt: lying below the parapet of the roof nearly all direct lights were blocked.
Just soaking in the view of the Great Nebula in Andromeda with two bright stars framing the field of view, a meteor shot right through, about fourth magnitude.
I went up on the roof about 3:30am Wednesday, the supposed peak of the shower, just looking. Waited. Twenty minutes and no meteors.
This is the second time I’ve experienced a Manhattan Meteor Shower: one meteor. The last time was in January, with the Quadrantids–one bright fireball immediately, and nothing else for forty-five minutes.
Northern Mare Serenitatis
October 18, 2009 by finkh
An almost exact copy of a page from “The Full Moon Atlas” http://www.lunarrepublic.com/atlas/sections/b4.shtml which I took May 30 with an Imaging Source 1.4 megapixel color camera. This is a 50% reduction of a cropped portion of the image, which by complete coincidence, nicely matches b4 of the atlas. From the atlas:
The northern shores of Mare Serenitatis (along the lower center section of the photograph), with Lacus Somniorum (right of center) and Lacus Mortis (above center; Crater Bürg is located at its heart).
The large craters Aristoteles (upper left), Eudoxus (left of center) and Posidonius (lower right) are prominent in this region, as is the Montes Caucasus range (lower left). Slightly north of Posidonius’ rim is Posidonius J, which was given the honorary designation Michael Joseph Jackson in July 2009 as a memorial to the legendary entertainer.
The extreme eastern sections of Mare Frigoris (upper left corner) and Mare Imbrium (bottom left corner) are also visible here.
The Full Moon Atlas takes its images from the Consolidated Lunar Atlas: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/cla/
Scorpion: First Light
October 17, 2009 by finkh
I purchased a Point Grey Scorpion, a 12-bit monochrome 1.4 megapixel CCD Firewire camera, new old stock on ebay. $225 for a 2007 camera, when released it was $1,795. (The price has since gone up to $275) A serious astronomy camera, which would benefit from dark frames, flat fields, cooling, none of which was done for this image. 500mm focal length voyager, with 2x barlow for f8.8, no tracking. Maybe 100 frames or so. I’m using Astro IIDC software for image capture and processing: a long learning curve ahead.
This is a 16-bit greyscale image originally 640×480. Never quite in focus on an 84% illuminated moon, nevertheless I see detail I’ve overlooked before, especially the ridges around Messier and Messier A.
