A few good nights

Contrary to common weather patterns, we had a few nights of competely clear skies. Which is quite unusual. I was originally supposed to go to a friend's cabin in a bortle 2 area in the mountains. But due to illness, this was cancelled. So I had to settle for my bortle 8/9 city skies. I did go through a few objects, instead of one the whole night. The reason for this is that I am taking photos from my balcony. The balcony has a roof, blocking most of the sky. And since I my balcony is on the west-side of the building, there is a wall on the east side. And all of these restrictions make it impossible to spend a whole night on one object. I think the max I have managed is around 3.5 hours. But with several nights, I managed to collect a lot of photons nonetheless.

I did M33, M45 and the area around Deer Lick Group (centered on NGC7331). Click on the images to get larger versions. Enjoy!

Tech details : SharpStar 94EDPH @ f/4.4, ASI585MC gain 200 at -10C, off axis guiding, Scorpio Astro AS-17 harmonic drive mount. Stacked with StackingWizard. Processed in AstroWizard. Final touchup in IrfanView and Gimp.

M33, 272x1 min exposures

M45 240x1 min exposures

Deer Lick Group and Stephan's quintet 370x1 min exposures

Picking the Pickering

 There has been a few clear nights lately. Or at least, semi-clear. So I decided to try to capture Pickering's triangle. I have previously shot the more common Witch's Broom and the Network nebula. But remembering how beautiful the triangle nebula looked through my 21" dobson, I decided I wanted to trythat one as well. 

I had 4 nights of images. With lots of frames having to be dropped due to clouds, or winds causing bad guiding. Or other stuff. But I did get 756 good ones, totalling just over 12.5 hours of exposure. 

I recently started using the "wizards", the Stacking and Astro ones. And so I did here. Making it a lot faster to get to decent results. After stacking and processing through the wizards, I did some final tune-ups in Siril, Gimp and IrfanView. The image below is the result. I am planning to image more of the eastern side of this nebula later, and then I will spend more time processing the image. But I am satisfied with the current result.

Tech details : SharpStar 94PHED w/compressor and flattener giving f/4.4, riding on a Scorpio Astro SA-17 harmonic drive mount. ASI585MC pro, gain 200, -10C temperature. 756x1 minute exposures. Stacked in  StackingWizard. Processed in AstroWizard. Tuned up in Gimp, Siril and IrfanView. 

Almost tuned double stack

 I have worked on double-stacking my h-alpha frankenscope. And it is getting there. I came home late after work, and decided to exploit the clear skies at sundown. I focused on a prominence and took a short timelapse of less than half an hour. It looks ok.

Tech details : Homemade 5" h-alpha, double stacked. ASI678MM camera. Gain 150, 6ms exposure. Best 25% of 1000 frames stacked by AS!4. Sharpened and stabilized in imPPG. Timelapse in PIPP.

High resolution half moon,

 I tried my luck using a ASI678MC with a ProPlanet 807 filter to exploit the IR sensitivity of the camera. IR light has less turbulence, and that is good if you are trying to do high resolution imaging.

I pointed my 200mm Klevztov-Cass towards the moon and shot 12 films of 1000 images. After Autostakkert had done its job on those videos, I had 12 images which I sharpened in imPPG before using Microsoft Image Composite Editor to stitch them all together. Here is the final image, in all of its glory. This image is 7500x5000 pixels. I recommend you click on the image, open it in another tab, and zoom it to the max. Enjoy!

Testing Bortle 4

 I live in bortle 8-9 area of the city. So any photo without a filter is not an option. But this weekend, I went with a couple of friends far into the woods on the border with Sweden. Where it is much darker. Not like Namibia, but better than most places close to the city.

I did my imaging with a SharpStar 94EDPH with a 0.8 reducer giving 414mm focal length. The camera was my new ASI585MC Pro cooled to -10 degrees. Gain 252. I decided on the comet, M33 and M45. The comet was just setting into the forest. But I managed to get 30 minutes. 

Then i shifted to my 200mm Klevtzov for some closesup timelapse of Jupiter. Unfortunately, I didn't have software for guiding on the planet, so I had to manually guide. And at nearly 2 am, I was ready for bed. So I just got a short timelapse, before I packed up and went to bed. It had been a great night.

I used my ASi715MC camera for this. 4500 images per video, 1 minute interval. I used 10% best of the images.

Double the stack, double the fun!

 Not quite finished yet, but I have converted my h alpha scope to double stacking. It definitely needs some tuning of the filters to work properly. And probably something else too. But it definitely looks promising, as the following 2 hour timelapse shows. Click on the GIF to view larger and more detailed. Enjoy!

Sunspot september 6th

 Clear skies = sun timelapse. Same gear as always. But slightly different processing and sharpening. The result was better than usual me thinks.

Loopy loop

I found  loop on the limb of the sun. I took 90 minutes of timelapse videos with my usual gear. It turned out to be nice! Enjoy!

Solar activity

 Long time since I have done anything here. But yesterday, I managed to film some very nice prominences. One was a giant loop that flung out of the surface of the Sun. And on the other side of the Sun, I found a "waterfall" prominence. I shot all of this with my homemade 5" h-alpha telescope. Using a ASI178MM camera. I used gain 350 and 10ms exposures for the prominences, and gain 200 and 7ms exposures for the surface. Stabilization was a bit tricky, but with a combination of imPPG and PIPP, I managed to get them semi-stable. All timelapses covers about 1 hour. I did them longer, but guiding failed midway, so they started "wandering", cutting the timelapses short.

Jupiter rollin'

 Last night, the skies finally cleared without the risk of sudden snow. So I decided to whip out my Klevtson and pull a timelapse of Jupiter. According to the stats, the GRS would transit during the timelapse. And there it was. Unfortunately, some clouds, both thin and thick, passed in front of Jupiter. So the processing was a bit distorted. And thats why the timelapse looks like it is "blinking" at times. But all in all, I am satisfied with the result. The timelapse is taken over the course of about 2.5 hours.

Tech details : 200mm Klevtsov-Cass, ASI678MC camera at 200 gain and 4ms exposures. Approx 100 30 second movies. Stacked the best 50% of the images. Stacked in AS!3. Wavelet and rgb balance in Registax. Animation in PIPP.

Fiery sun June 9th

 Yesterday, the "boring" prominences from the day before suddenly blossomed and became quite active. Sputtering plasma around. Unfortunately, some clouds rolled in, so I had to cut it short. But later in the afternoon, I started filming an area around a sunspot. And I am glad I did. It flared up at the end of my run. The Sun was getting low, so there was a lot of turbulence. But it is still acceptable quality.

Lots of prominences on june 8th

 When I checked the Gong network today, it was obvious something was going on all around. So I couldn't decide which prominence to film. And I decided to go wideangle. After the filming, it was obvious that the newcomer, although bright and powerful, didn't have much in the order of dynamics. So I should probably have just stayed with the one from yesterday. But here is the both of them.

I also added one photo to show the size compared to the Earth. Earth is shown in the little image on the sun. Click on the image to zoom in.

 

Prominence June 7th

 Whispy prominence on the Sun. A continuation from yesterday.

Tech det : 5" H-alpha telescope, ASI174MM camera, gain 275, 6ms exposure, 1000 images per 20 second for 2 hours. Stacked in AS!3 (best 25%), sharpened and aligned in imPPG. Animated in PIPP.

Whispy prominence

 The universe sometimes conspires against me. Today, I found a beautiful prominence shooting in all directions. But wouldn't you know. The only place the clouds decided to pop up today, was in front of the sun. ll the way to the horizon, the skies were, more or less, clear. But there was a strip of clouds passing in front of the sun. But I did manage to get something from the movement. In two timelapses. The first one had a lot of "holes" in it due to the clouds popping in and out of view. But I did get some of the action. The second was more continous. Enjoy!

Bubbly surface

 Yesterday and today, I did some timelapses of the surface of the Sun. I just love my 5 inch telescope. Showing so much detail of what is happening on the surface. 

The first is a prominence that I thought would amont to something, but didn't. It was flapping a bit, but nothing big. Today, after work, I managed to take a short timelapse before the Sun dropped too low. And I got to see a little spurting on the surface an the edge.

The data is the same for both except the gain is 275 and exposure 6 ms for the prominence, and 175 and 5ms for the surface video.

Solar blast!

 Today, I was lucky enough to catch a big blast from one of the sunspots that have travelled all the way to the other edge of the Sun. I made 1 video per minute for 2 hours. The blast came in the middle of my timelapse. And the following is the result. Click on the animation for a bigger version. Enjoy!

Tech details : 5" homemade h-alpha telescope, ASI174MM camera gain 175, 5ms exposure, 16 bit resolution. Stacked in Autostakkert, sharpened and aligned in imPPG, animated in PIPP.

Solar activity

 The solar activity is definitely picking up. The past few days has been clear, so I have been able to make some timelapses of a group of sunspots. The first day wasn't very active, but today, there was a lot more flares and prominences flashing. I also made a mosaic of the whole surface of the Sun. This was made up of 9 images. Click on the animation or the image to see full size.

Tech details timelapse: 5" homemade H-alpha telescope, ASI174MM camera, gain 175, 5ms, 8bit. 1000 frames per video, 1 video per minute for 180 minutes (3 hours). Stacked in Autostakkert (best 25% used), sharpened and aligned in imPPG and animated in PIPP.

Tech details full image : same equipment, but gain 215, 3ms exp, 16bit. 1000 frames (best 25% used). Stitched in Image Composer Editor (Microsoft). 

The Mars occultation on December the 8th

I got up at 5 in the morning to get ready. I had put out the telescope the previous evening so it would be acclimatized in the morning. I connected the camera to the PC and fired up FireCapture. I pointed the telescope to the Moon and focused as well as I could. I was ready, And I had half an hour to spare.

I had set up autoguiding which was working fine. I did take a full frame image of the Moon and Mars. Just as a start. I was ready.

There were some thin clouds in the view. But nothing that hindered the view.

As Mars was closing in, I changed the ROI to 400x300 pixels. And I planned to take a timelapse. I was ready a couple of minutes before Mars would disappear behind the Moon. And then things started going south. First, a thicker cloud moved past, causing autoguiding to fail due to the lower brightness, And Mars moved almost out of the view. I turned off autoguiding and moved the planet back into view. And increased the gain to compensate. I could now see the Moon's limb in the view already. My pulse increased as I now realized I had to speed things up. I set up a timelapse run. Continuous 100 frame videos of the scene. After the first video had been shot, a message popped up. "Do you want to overwrite the file?" Wait? WHAT? I pressed No. The message popped up again. The Moons limb was closing in. I went back to the main view to do things manually. But the record button was gone. It took precious few seconds before I realized that by NOT closing the autorun window, the record button would be gone. I closed it, and pressed "Record". Only to realize that Mars had slipped halfway out of view. I moved it back into view. My heartrate and blood pressure were now in the 200 range. I tried taking a number of files in a row just as I planned with Autorun, but the same message popped up. I realised the problem. File naming in FireCapture didn't allow several files to be written too close in time. So I had to wait a second or two between takes. I gave up the timelapse idea, and just settled for getting ANYTHING. And I did. After some processing, I did get a few decent shots of the occultation. And here they are. My heartrate and bloodpressure is now back to normal. I have learned some hard lessons about preparations. I thought I was prepared, and then this "feature" of FireCapture reared its ugly head, and my prep and planning failed. 

Tech details : 200mm Klevstov Cass at F/10. ASI178MC camera, gain 300, exposure 5mS. 100 frames per video. Stacked in AS!3 (100%), sharpened and RGB-aligned in Registax. Final touch-up in Irfanview.

Best resolution with new camera

The skies cleared for a short while on saturday evening, so I took the opportunity to do some timelapse filming. Unfortunately, as per usual, some clouds/fog ran in front of the planet. So the guiding failed, and Jupiter slipped out of view. But I did get about 1.5 hours worth of videos. I did the usual processing. But this time I also added another step. I found out that Gimp actually has a batch-mode! So I could do some sharpening there, and when I knew how to sharpen a single image, I just went ahead and did it with all of them. There is still some noise in the images, so I need to figure out how to make them less so. But I am getting there...

Tech det : 200mm Klevtsov-Cass w/2.5x Powermate, recorded with SharpCap. ASI678MC binning 2, gain 300 6.25mS exposures. 20 seconds of exposures with 40 seconds intervals. Stacked in AS!3, wavelets/whitebalance in Registax, extra sharpening in Gimp and animation in PIPP.

Jupiter October 11th

 Yesterday night was clear'ish. At least for most of the night. I started recording 4 hours of videos from around 11.30PM and went to bed. In the morning, I closed down shop and went to work. This evening, much to my disappointment, I found that most of the night was miss, since obviously a could had moved in front of Jupiter, making the autoguiding fail. And thus I only got 47 videos in total. But I DID get the Giant Red Spot! I loved it. So here is the short animation. This was also with a new camera, and without the Powermate I had used previously. There was a lot of turbulence, so the images didn't come out superclear, but I am happy with the result. Looking forward to the next really clear and steady night.

Tech det: Tal200 Klevtsov-Cass & F/10, ASI678MC camera, gain 200 exp 5mS. Stacked in AS!3, wavelets in Registax, animation in PIPP.