Archive for the 'Astrostuff' Category

Observing Report 20th-21st July 2019 (Fifty years on)

Posted by on July 22nd 2019 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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At 02:56:15 UTC on July 21st 1969 Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon.

It seemed fitting to get an image of the Moon at 02:56:15 UTC on July 21st 2019.

 

 

It's not the best lunar image I've ever made, but I was trying out a recently-acquired second-hand camera with a recently-acquired second-hand PC and a recently-acquired new SSD. Being able to record full-frame (1936 x 1216 px) raw .avi files at 160 FPS with no skipped frames and no write-lag is a real improvement which should be useful for capturing ISS Transits:

 

Observing Report 1st-2nd November 2018 part 1 (Early Christmas Treat)

Posted by on January 15th 2019 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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I seem to have plenty of time on my hands, so instead of wasting it I've been wading through the backlog of astro-data that I'd been meaning to either process or bin.

Here's the first pic from way back in November last year:

NGC 2264 Area, 2nd November 2018.
Subs: 27 light @ 300s, 50 dark frames, 50 bias frames.
QHY10 on the C80 ED-R Frac, guided with PHD.

There's a lot going on there, so I think I'll be giving it a lot more attention with a bigger scope when I get through the current treatment. There's the Cone Nebula, the Christmas Tree Cluster, the Snowflake Cluster, and the Fox Fur Nebula - see the NGC 2264 Wikipedia page for a what's what and where.

Observing Report 12th-13th September 2018 (Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner)

Posted by on September 14th 2018 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports
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It's been over half a decade since I imaged a comet and came away with anything half-decent. Here's my attempt at 21P/Giacobini-Zinner which, from here, is currently visible low in the Eastern sky in the pre-dawn hours:

 

Comet 21P/Giacobini-Zinner, 13th September 2018.
Subs: 27 light @ 300s, dark and bias frames, sensor -20C.
QHY10 on the C80ED-R frac, guided with PHD.

There are some other pics still to process - Uranus and some of its moons - so I might post the results sometime soon if I think they're worth showing.

Observing Report 29th August 2018 (I see a little silhouetto of an ISS…)

Posted by on August 29th 2018 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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I've been waiting to have a pop at this for quite some time - solar transits of the International Space Station (ISS) visible from my obsy are as rare as rocking-horse shit.

For the past two days the weather had been forecast to be cloudy until two hours after the transit but I got set up regardless, hoping for a gap in the clouds.

It didn't exactly clear, but it thinned sufficiently at just the right time for me to give it a shot.

Visibility was poor due to the thin cloud, and the camera was dropping frames for the first time ever, but at least I caught some footage. Viewed from here the full transit lasted about one second (the ISS moves at about about 17,500 miles per hour) and my FOV covered about two thirds of the transit path, I was shooting at 30fps so in theory I should have captured about 20 useful frames.

Here's a composite pic of all of the frames featuring the ISS, run your cursor over it to see a sharpened version:

 

ISS Solar Transit (~ 09:41 UTC, 29/08/2018).
DMK mono camera on C80ED-R, Baader Solar Film filter.

 

I'm chuffed with that for a first attempt.

Observing Report 9th-10th and 10th-11th August 2018 (Perseid meteors #2)

Posted by on August 13th 2018 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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Further to my previous report, here's a composite pic including all of the session's Perseids, sporadics and Iridium flares. Just like before, you can click it to see a resized version:

 

Observing Report 9th-10th and 10th-11th August 2018 (Perseid meteors)

Posted by on August 12th 2018 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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Typical British weather... week upon week of sunny days and clear nights, and then, when it comes to the peak of the Perseid meteor shower (12th-13th August), it all goes to shit.

In anticipation of a weekend of crap weather I'd spent the last couple of clear nights trying to get some pics of the early arrivals, here's one of the best that I caught on camera. Feel free to click it to see a resized version:

 

 

Last light was a rainy and cloudy non-starter, and the next two nights are slated to be just as bad. The show, which so far elsewhere has been the best for many years with higher-than-expected rates and no Moon-glare, will be more-or-less over by the time the skies clear here.
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