Archive for the 'Pics' Category

Observing Report 30th-31st March 2008 (Saturn webcammed again)

Posted by on April 1st 2008 in Astrostuff, Observing Reports, Pics
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At about 21:30 the light clouds parted and the stars were bright against a really dark backdrop, so I took advantage of this unpredicted opportunity and set up to get some more experience of webcamming Saturn with the scope. As expected, the seeing was rubbish again (too much air-turbulence caused by rising warm air mixing with the colder stuff higher up), so the images in the acquired .avi files weren't holding shape or focus. To get some idea of the seeing, here's a 15-second snip from one of the .avi files, in .mp4 format:

Anyway, I ended up with 9000+ frames to play with. I plugged the files into K3CCDTools to do a quality analysis, then exported the best 10% + about another 100 that the quality sorter ignored to a folder, manually sorted the best 360 of these in vdub and then stacked 'em in Registax, which didn't crash at all this time! The result's not brilliant, but it's better than previous efforts:

Lunacy

Posted by on January 22nd 2008 in Astrostuff, Just for fun, Pics
Took a few shots with the D50 + 70-300 lens tonight, the skies were wild with fast-moving broken low cloud, impressively backlit by the full moon, which looks flat without shadows. First one: handheld stuff only, couldn't be bothered to race upstairs for the tripod. Full manual settings (300mm, f/5.6, 1/1250s, ISO 200), minimal tinkering with PS CS3.  

  Second one: mounted on the Velbon. Full manual settings (300mm, f/5.6, 1/1600s, ISO 200), minimal tinkering with PS CS3.  

  I'll take a few more next week, hopefully we'll see more depth and contrast as the shadows lengthen.

In from the cold

Posted by on December 15th 2007 in Astrostuff, Great Escapes, Pics

The Thursday night / Friday morning skies did indeed stay clear, so a session watching the Geminids was on. The car was de-iced, packed and soon I was at the chosen venue. The temperature had dropped to -2 by then, so I donned a fair amount of insulation. There's something weird about dressing like the Michelin Man, complete with buff and balaclava, then walking through a very posh neighbourhood at 11:30 p.m. while carrying a small pack and a reclining chair. It certainly earned me a more than fleeting glance from a couple of car-cops.

I was set up within 20 minutes and soon I was snapping away with the camera. Sitting back while the D50 did its work, I could see that catching these meteors on camera was going to be difficult. There was no shortage of them, indeed for some periods they were showing at a rate of about 50 per hour within my field of view. The problem was that most of them were too fast and they weren't leaving bright trails like the Perseids tend to. I know that I caught at least 50 of them on camera, but, aside from one that left a bright trail, no amount of post-processing of the raw "NEF" files was going to bring out enough detail to make satisfactory images.

I stayed until 02:30, by which time the temperature had dropped to -6 and the camera was frosting up too much to take decent pics (note to self: buy a lens heater-band).

So, here are a few of the resulting images, feel free to mouseover for the annotated versions. There's plenty of room for improvement, I reckon.

Orion and neighbours

 Faint trail in Ursa Major (at the top left)

Totally barking

Posted by on December 1st 2007 in Pics, Rambling on...
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I'm not one of those weird tree-huggers, but I will admit to fondling my wood now and again.

Just a few pics of our willow tree, taken this afternoon as the sun was lowering.

 

 

 

 

 
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