First attempt at protuberance animation

Today, on June 12th, there was a lot of activity on the Sun, and I found one "forest" that I decided to take multiple videos of. After processing each of the videos in AS!3, I had a list of 39 images. Then I loaded these images into GIMP as layers. After aligned them all, I created a GIF-animation from them. And the following is the result. The 39 images were captured in 1 h 40 min.

Tech details : Lunt LS35 Deluxe hydrogen alpha telescope, ASI178MM camera, no binning, 2.5 ms exposure, gain 150, stacked in AS!3, processed and animated in GIMP. 

Interesting features on the surface on the Moon

 I have so far concentrated on the beautiful craters on the Moon. Both large and barely visible in my telescopes. But while looking at the the surface, I noticed some other features. Like faults on the surface. And I decided to try to enhance them. Particularly one area intrigued me. After conferring with the detailed images in Luna Cognita, I identified the parts.

In the image below, the horizontal "canyon" on the right, is called Rimae Ariadaeus. The v-shaped line is several smaller craters embedded into it. But they are hardly seen on this image. Needs more aperture to see them properly. The line is called Rima Hyginus, after the crater at the center, Hyginus.

In the lower part of the image, one can see thin lines. These are called Rimae Triesnecker. Named after the large crater to the left is also called Triesnecker. The crater at the top is called Manilius.

Click on the image for larger size.

Technical data : 6" RC with 2.5x Powermate. ASI178MM camera. Stacking with AS!3, wavelets with Registax 6.

Copernicus

 Long time since I have updated my pages here. But the last few days, I have done some imaging of the Moon. It is really interesting object that is probably a bit forgotten by us astrophotographers. But I love it. It is dynamic, and there are so many details that are a challenge to image. Some because they are small. Some because they are only visible when the sunlight is at a certain angle. 

I have tried new methods for increasing resolution. Not just using a larger telescope, but also how I process the image. In the following image, I tried a wide view of the Copernicus crater. I have been observing this crater in detail using high magninfication, and the whole area is full of interesting smaller details. Like mountains and craters. As can be seen in this image. Although I only used a 6 inch RC, a lot of details are still visible.

In processing, I used the drizzle functionality in AS!3 this time, and it made it much easier to extract details later using the wavelet function in Registax. I spent some time trying out different settings for this image. And it is hard. Because the setting that produced the most detail in one area, would make another part look weird. So I settled on this version as a "compromise". I know I can extract more details, but not without making the image look weird. And if I make it more pleasing, much details are lost. So enjoy the compromise! Click on the image to see a full version.

Tch details : TPO 6" RC F/9. ASI178MM camera. Gain 250, 1ms exposures. 1040x1040 crop. Dyadic mode wavelets in Registax. Some levels enhancement in Gimp. 

Moon 3rd of April

This is a better version of the moon image from the 3rd. The last one was made from an ASI071MC. A good camera, but since it is a color camera, they have only one color per pixel. Meaning that the resolution is poorer than the ASI178MM. Even with using binning 2x2 on the 178. So here is my best effort try for the max resolution.

Growing moon

New image of the moon. This is at april 3rd. And I have used the ASI071MC Pro for this one. Two images combined. Gain 290, exposures 1000x4 ms. Processed in AS!3, wavelets in Registax.

Not april's fools

There has been a string of clear nights with the Moon this week. So I have used the opportunity to take some images of the moon. This evening (april 1st), I tried using my ASI071MC Pro. The advantage being that I could get the whole Moon inside the frame. So no mosaic. And it did come out pretty good. I used the same setup as before, except for the camera. No binning, gain 340 and exposure 4ms. No wavelets this time. Will maybe try later. The only downside, was the ginormous filesize. 32 GB for 1000 frames. Took a while to process. I did use my ASI178MM too, and will try the mosaic later. But for now, this is the image. 16 megapixels. Click on the image, then rightclick and choose View Image to see the picture in full resolution.

Moonlit

I haven't been too busy updating this blog with new photos. Not because I haven't been active atking any, but processing takes too much time. And I have been busy doing other stuff. But yesterday, I took a mosaic image of the Moon. It was high in the sky, and at a phase where you can see a lot of reliefs of craters and mountains. Casting shadows across the surface. I love that way better than a full moon. When it is full, the surface remains flat. Lifeless. But add a lot of shadows, and it is a completely different picture. Literally.
I made a composite of images, and stitched them together with Microsoft ICE. That is, ICE wasn't quite working the way it should this time. I don't know what threw it off, but for some reason, it refused to add one of the images, so I got a gap in the image. I had to add that in Gimp afterwards.
Tech data : William Optics 98FLT with 4x Televue Powermate. ASI178MC 2x2  binning. 1000 exposures of 4ms per image. 13 images in total. SharpCap for recording. AS!3 for stacking. Microsoft ICE for stiching. Registax for wavelets and Gimp for touchups. To view the full version, (4500 pixels tall) click on the image, then rightclick on the image and choose View Image. Then you can zoom in to see it all.

In addition, not far from the Moon, Venus was lighting up the skies. And I slewed the telescope to the planet. Using a ASI178MM (monochrome), no binning and 0.2mS exposures. 5000 of them. AS!3 picked 20% of the best, and I did a little wavelet sharpening. This was the result :