Moonlit February

 We have had a lot of clear evenings and nights lately, and I have used the opportunity to take images of a growing Moon. I managed to create images on the 6th, the 8th, the 9th and the 10th of February before the clouds gathered yet again. I have tried different techniques to get as much as possible from the images. I am still learning to process images taken with my new Klevtsov. And I think this is the most I have gotten from them. I decided to reduce them from the original size. The original sampling was about 0.25" per pixel. I doubled that to 0.5". It seems to make the images clearer and sharper. So I will maybe continue doing that. All images are mosaics of several images, since the field of the ASI178 only covers about 500x750". Click on the images to get original size. Right-click and choose "Open image in new tab" to zoom in on the details.

Tech details : TAL Kletvtsov-Cass 200/2000mm, ASI178MM camera with Astronomik ProPlanet 642 filter. Gain 200, 1000x4mS exposures. Stacked 25% best in AS!3, sharpened using wavelets in RegiStax 6, processed in Gimp 2.10.

 

February 6th :

February 8th:

February 9th:

February 10th:

The Moon with new (old) telescope

 A few months ago, I aquired an old Klevtsov-Cassegrain. I have been itching to try it on some high-resolution work. But weather and other reasons have made it impossible. Until yesterday. The moon was high, and a few days away from full. So there are some regions on the western parts that makes a great relief. And I wanted to capture that. I didn't care to take photos of the rest of the moon, as it is boringly flat. The telescope proved to be pleasantly sharp. I could even make out a number of cratlets in Plato. Although they aren't showing up at circles, they are obvious from the lightness compared to their surroundings. I will try later to picture those when the shades are different. And the atmosphere is calmer.

Tech data : Tal Klevtsov-Cassegrain 200mm F/10, ASI178MM 6ms exp, Gain 150, SharpCap for recording, AS!3 for stacking (20% best images), RegiStax 6 for wavelet sharpening, Image Composite Editor for stitching. 

For full image, click on the image, then open it in another tab. Then you can zoom to 100%. The original image is 7500x3500 pixels.

Flames ahoy!

 The last few days, I have tried a lot of techniques and processes for making timelapses of solar porminences. It has been a learning curve, but interesting. And I now feel I have it more or less under control. These are the two videos I made today. I found a large double prominence and filmed it for 3 hours. I am filming from my balcony, and when the sun is blocked by a support, I look at the whole sun, and I realized that there was a large area on the other side that had a lot of action. Unfortunately, clouds moved in, so I had to stop after about 1.5 hours. But it was definitely interesting.

I have used the same gear as before, but the processing is now AS!3 for stacking, then aligning ad cropping using imPPG before using PIPP for animation. This is smooth and works without a hitch.

Active prominence

 Another prominence. 4 hours of timelapse.

Tech det : Lunt LS35, ASI178MM gain 150, exp : 2.5ms. Stacked in AS!3, animated in PIPP.

Solar prominence animation, second attempt

 The first attempt was exciting, and inspiring. So I decided to make another go yesterday. But tracking was not good. I am not able to properly polar align my mount now during the summer, so the Sun drifted out of view of the camera in 10 minutes. More precisely, the cropped view. I only used 512x512 pixels of the cameras 3000x2000. Both in order to lower the storage demands, but also to speed up frames per second. 

The following is an interesting loop of plasma I discovered and started filming at the end of my session before I had to leave. Much to my joy and excitement, this loop was really moving. The frames were recorded 2 minutes apart. Which gives an impression of just how fast the plasma moves in this loop.

Tech details : Lunt LS35 Deluxe H-alpha telescope. ASI178MM gain 150, exp 2 ms. Stacked in AS!3, processed and animated in Gimp.

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.