M42(Orion nebula) using my DIY Barn Door Tracker.

After 8 months of researching, building and learning to write code for a microprocessor, I finally got into the garden to test my Arduino driven, straight rod Barn Door mount.

 Its not only more portable and faster to set up (including polar alignment) than my Meade Etx 105, its also more sturdy . I have used the Meade tripod for stability along with my home made wedge which is now used on both barn door and Meade. This image was taken on a Canon 40D with 70-200 f/4 lens @ 200mm. I was really interested on the roundness of the stars as this would indicate that my calculations and programming for driving the mount were out. Tonight also was very windy so I was delighted when I staked only three 30 second images to reveal this image.

Geminid meteor shower 2013

Taken using a canon 40D with a 17mm f2.8 lens. 20 second exposure @ISO 400.
This year shower was really good with 5 or six meteors in quick succession followed by a lull for a few minutes then half a dozen more. The weather had been cloudy all week but at 10pm the clouds melted away leaving a still cold and clear night. Jupiter was shining brightly in the constellation of Gemini with Orion between it an the moon. I tried to catch a meteor crossing Orion and this was the closest I could manage. As I was setting up the camera a very large meteor passed right through the viewfinder. It sounds like a fisherman's tail of the one that got away but its true.

Tonight's Moon Halo.

Tonight's moon halo was extra bright so I just had to get a shot. Its supposedly 22 degrees in diameter and caused by ice crystals high in the atmosphere.

 

Perseid meteor shower 20130812

This years Perseid meteor shower was really good. With the darks sky at Durlston Country Park and few clouds I saw many of them shooting across the sky. Taking a picture of one is quite difficult as although radiate from the north east they seem to appear anywhere in the sky. I found that it was best to point the camera straight up and hope. I took many shots and only managed to capture this one flying past the summer triangle (Vega, Deneb and Altair). Thanks to the dark sky, the image also contains some of the Milky Way which run through the summer triangle. The large dark streak running from Deneb top left to Altair at the bottom is called the Cygnus Rift for obvious reasons.

The Milky Way 20130812

The Wessex Astronomy Society held one of their Astro evenings at Durlston Country Park. Its a nice dark sky, particularly to the south as its right on the cliff tops at Swanage in Dorset. A very big crowd were there to see the Perseid meteor shower which was great but the Milky Way was very noticeable and I could not resist a 30 second RAW exposure at f2.8 ISO 1600.
Its such a treat for me to see it as I live in Poole which is very light polluted.

If you look carefully you will see the constellation of Sagittarius low down in the sky.
Within the constellation are eight bright stars that make up the well known asterism know as the TEAPOT. I've marked it on the image below.
Also in this area is the centre of our galaxy (the Milky Way) which is about 27,000 light years away in the direction marked with a circle containing "MW CENTRE."



Lightning strike 20130722

Taken on a very strange July night. In the space of just a few minutes the weather changed from being hot and muggy to being cool and windy. Travelling from south to north the show passed by in less than half an hour. This shot was taken hand held (camera held against a support) at f8 at ISO 800. I set the camera on bulb in manual mode and kept the shutter button pressed until I saw a flash or had counted to 3 or 4 seconds then released it and repeated (this image was shot at 3 seconds).

ISS & Albert Einstein ATV

On the left the ISS and on the right, ten minutes later is the Albert Einstein ATV following.
The ATV- 004 is a European unmanned cargo resupply spacecraft for the ISS. It carries propellant, air, water and dry cargo. It normally takes 5 days from launch to docking but this flight will take 10.It will dock with the ISS on 15th June 2013 carrying 6,590 kg of cargo. It will also use its own thrusters and fuel supply to reboost the ISS to counteract its decaying orbit.
Shot with 20 sec exposures at 17mm FL and F2.8, ISO 400. The ISS track has been overlaid.
Look closely its transiting the Plough (Ursa Major) or as we used to call it when we were kids, the saucepan.

And this is the same image in full colour and uncropped.

 

International Space Station @ 2am 6th June 2013

This is the best image I have managed to capture so far of this tiny dot whizzing overhead using a webcam attached prime focus to my 4" Etx scope.

It has taken hours and hours to get this image so its not been easy.

The ISS orbits the earth every 90 minutes so the night had three passes at 10.44pm, 12.25am and 2am and this image was taken at the darkest time at 2am so its worth waiting up.

Its the size of a football field and weighs about 450 tons, but its travelling at 17,500 miles an hour and its about 260 miles away when its overhead. When you first see the ISS, its about 960 miles away in the West and looks quite small so the best time for imaging is when nearly overhead.

The image has raised a few questions for me. I am not sure exactly what parts of the station I can see and I'm not sure where the solar arrays are?

Jupiter, Venus & Mercury Conjunction 26th May 2013

Tonight these three planets formed this neat triangle just 3 degrees apart in the evening sky about 30 minutes after sunset (your little finger viewed at arms length is 1 degree).
The alignment is quite rare and wont happen again until October 2015.
In this image, Jupiter is on the left while Mercury is almost vertically above Venus.

My Solar System Collage (so far)

I wanted to make a collage using some of my favourite images of our Solar System.

Its not to scale because I liked this layout and my main aim was to show the vibrant colours.

However I have roughly sized the planets relative to each other.

I still need 4 planets including Earth so its not finished and I'm not sure how to get an image of Earth unless I go to the Moon? So I just need Mars, Uranus and Neptune  .

I couldn't resist  slipping in Comet Panstarrs.

and

Sun with behemoth Sunspot AR1743

Taken 1 hour before sunset prime focus Canon 40d and Meade Etx 105 scope. Using EOS movie record and about 300 frames at 20 fps. Stacked and wavelets in Registax then levels, curves, sharpened then false coloured.

Saturn using a prime focus DSLR and eos_movrec 20130430

I was pleasantly surprised with this image of Saturn. Taken on the same night as the previous post but instead of a webcam I used a Canon 40D looking through my 4" Meade Etx scope tethered to a program called eos_movrec which produces an AVI movie. At first glance the movie looked to bright and lacking any detail but after using a program called PIPP then Registax with some wavelet adjustments this image popped out.

For reference, the image below is one frame of the 1242 frames used to make this image. The frame is of an average quality. Some frames were much more distorted than this one. It show how bad the "seeing" was that night and also shows how good this software is at extracting the planet from the distorted view through our turbulent atmosphere.

Hopefully when "seeing" conditions improve I can get an even better image. That's what make astronomy and astrophotography so interesting. If it was easy it wouldn't interest me.

Last nights Saturn image 20130430.

Captured on my Microsoft Lifecam webcam at 10 frames a second through my 4 inch Meade Etx.
I preprocessed the 1200 images in PIPP before stacking in Registax using the best 840 images.

I'm no expert in "seeing conditions" but to me the view through the scope looked horrendous. The rejected frames were amazingly distorted. The dark Cassini Division is still not visible and I'm not sure if it is possible to resolve it with my scope on a really dark still sky so I will just have to keep trying.

A very partial lunar eclipse 25/04/2013

A lunar eclipse is caused by the Earth passing between the Moon and Sun. In this case the Earths shadow just clips the top of the Moon.

Copernicus Crater taken 20/04/2012

This is a stacked image of Copernicus Crater on  the Moon. I always think of it as the big one in the middle. It was taken using 352 images @ 15 frames per second using my £28 Microsoft HD Lifecam from ebay afocal on my Meade Etx 105. I used Registax to do the stacking.

Copernicus is 57 miles in diameter and its crater rays spead out for nearly 500 miles. Named after Nicolaus Copernicus it is estimated to be about 800 million years old.

ISS close up.

This is my second attempt at capturing the International Space Station as it flew by.

My first attempt was a disaster as I couldn't get it in the field of view at all.
Its quite difficult as although its nearly as big as two football pitches, its a long way away and travelling at around 17500 miles an hour. When it first appears low down in the sky its around 907 miles away and within 3 minutes and 21 seconds it is nearly overhead and just 260 miles away. I used a 10 frames per second afocal webcam and my Meade Etx105pe. I pre focussed it on a star as there is no time to focus on the ISS.
During this time the shape and angle of its image changes, so stacking too many images won't work.  In fact my aim was so bad that this image is made from just two images out of 2,305. I think I can do a lot better next time as this image is overexposed and blurred possibly from camera shake. I am going to try a moon filter as it was so bright and reuse the machine gun approach guided by my red dot finder but position the scope in front of its path so it passes through the frame. I hope this approach will allow the vibration to settle before capturing the image. I will hopefully post the results soon.

International Space Station 20130413

Last nights International Space Station pass, very bright at -3.3. Taken with a Canon 40d and 17mm lens @ 2.8 using 23x10 sec stacked images 2 secs apart. Jupiter is in Taurus & the Pleiades can be seen above the Moon.

M65 & M66 in Leo

This is my first attempt at deep space Galaxies. Part of the Leo triplet these two galaxies are 35 million light years away. Taken through orange light polluted sky, I was quite pleased with this image as I could hardly see them at all through the scope. I used only 16 x 20sec images at ISO 3200 plus darks, flats and bias frames stacked in DSS. Due to blustery conditions, only 16 out of 80 images had round stars. I hope to do much better with good seeing and calmer weather in future.

Full Moon landscape.

I just had to blog this image. I think it just happened to fall into place. The clouds, full moon and the large tree with the brown tinted branches seem to make the scene a little eerie.

Moon through cloud 20130325

Its been very cloudy over the past few weeks but looking out into the garden I noticed the Moon was trying to shine. I couldn't resist a shot at the wonderful cloud pattern.

33% Waxing Moon 20130317

Taken with a Skywatcher 500mm F7 refractor and Canon 40D Dslr Afocal.
Shutter speed of 1/30 sec ISO 250.
The Crater with the central spot is Theophilus which is 110km across.

Comet Panstarrs and the Moon 2013/03/14

I tried again tonight to get a descent image of this comet and lukily the skys cleared for a short time. The comet was supposed to be 10 degrees up from the horizon and as the sun set I scanned the sky with my binoculars with no luck. This comet is a bit dissapointing for me as I remember Hale-bopp in 1995 lighting up the sky even with the naked eye and I was expecting a repeat.

Finally after nearly an hour of searching the sky comet Panstarrs appeared as if by magic from behind a whispy cloud. It was sitting in a clear area of the sky with some thin cloud approachig.

I had already focused my 500mm skywatcher refractor on the moon using live view on my 40d so I rattled off as many shots as possible with different ISO settings from 100 to 1600.

The final comet shot was 2.5 seconds at ISO 400. F7

This lovely waxing Moon 10% lit was to far away from the comet to be  in the same shot so here it is on its own. The same scope and afocal camera was used set at ISO 100 at 1/80th of a second F7.



Comet C/20122 L4 (Panstarrs) on 13/03/2013

 

Finally after 4 days of disapointing cloudy skies it was partially cloudy. I took lots of images of the bright star just below the moon thinkung it was the comet. Browsing through the images later, I discovered the comet lurking near the horizon. Its much smaller than I thought it would be but at least I've got I my first image of a comet.

Image was taken using a Canon 40D. 

Settings were 4 second exposure, Iso 800, F/4 and focal length 111mm

M42 with round stars at last.

At last after 2 years of trying to get round stars, this is a stack of 47 images unguided. The "seeing" was poor and the wind was a bit gusty so I pulled out about 10% of the images. My Polar setup was really good so I just did a 2 star align and let the scope guide itself.

The problem in the past was a sticky gearbox in the base of the Etx making the stars jump into a line on the final image. I simply tightened the bearings and lubricated the gears before adjusting the gearbox position and it now runs really smoothly.
To check how smooth it was moving I engaged PHD guiding and ran the graph below. I think the scope has been sticky from new as the graph always jumped very erratically before alarming out.

This has shown me that its the quality  and smoothness of the mount is very important if round stars are needed.

Betelgeuse 06/02/2012

So windy last night that long exposures were not possible without long stars so this was a 10 second exposure. The image is cropped in but I just liked the look of this giant sun. Clasified as a Red Supergiant its about 640 light years away.

My DIY Dew Heaters for just a few £'s

I thought I would share my Dew Heater design as it was so easy and cheap to make.
Without the battery these heaters cost me less than £10.

Dew heaters can be expensive and often need expensive controllers to adjust the temperature output of each heater. The idea is to heat the corrector plate end of the telescope just enough to replace the heat lost to space thus stopping dew from forming on the lens. Much like the dew on your car windscreen collects overnight.

My aim was to design a simple and cheap 12 volt system without the fancy heat controllers.This would save me using a 240 volt hair dryer with is obvious dangers outside in the damp night conditions.

I worked out from research on the net that I needed somewhere between 0.5 watts and 1.5 watts of heat on my finder scope and between 1 watt and 2.75 watts on my 105mm dia Meade etx.

If you look at the diagram this can be achieved by wiring both dew heaters together across a 12 volt battery (mines an old car battery). To adjust the heat output I simply use a direct connection across the battery for maximum heat or add either one or two 10 ohm resistors in line next to the battery as shown in the diagram below. SIMPLE.

The wiring is looped back around the heater band so that it can be easily attached.
The parts list shows roughly what I needed.

The resistors are really cheap. They come in bags of 20 and you only need 11 x 4.7 ohm resistors
and 13 x 10 ohm resistors for the whole job.
Just solder the resistors together exactly like the diagram and stick them on the inside of the foam using duck tape. Connect them to the battery car with speaker wire and watch out for any short circuits.
A cheap foam camping matt was used as the band to carry the resistors. It would make loads of bands.

I use self adhesive Velcro on each end to easily attach and detach the heater bands.

Last night I used the heaters connected to a car battery continuously for 5 hours at between +3 and -2 degrees with no dew on my lenses. I did not see any reduction in image quality due to the heat.

Please note that I am not an electrician and if you choose to copy this design you do so at your own risk .If wired incorrectly the resistors or wiring could overheat.

M42 Last night poor seeing?

Poor seeing in the upper atmosphere and -2 degrees made it a difficult night with the scope. I only managed 6 images worth saving and stacked them to produce this image. I spent most of the time indoors shooting tethered to the unmodified DSLR camera.
6 x 30secs subs.
3 darks
3 lights
2 bias.
Analysing the reject subs for "jerky star trails" on my etx made me strip the RA drive today. I have found the base was tight to turn and the gear train sticking.

Last Nights Full Moon

Last Nights Full Moon is often referred to as the "Full Wolf Moon" as it was in the sky when wolves could be heard calling in the snow. Some call it the Old Full Moon.
For me the full moon always looks stunning as it hangs majestically in the sky. However its the worst time to image it. Flat and disappointing when the images are downloaded. It lacks detail because the sunlight is not casting any shadows. I've tried HDR but it looks unreal so processing this image is quite simple. Mainly contrast improvements using curves with an additional layer, its blending mode set to soft light and 20% opacity. It seem to be the best I can do without a lunar filter.

Today's Sun Spots.

A rare sight in southern England. 

THE SUN

 

I took this image of the Sun with my little 70mm skywatcher refractor which has a focal length of 500m mm. The camera was a Canon 400d shooting through the scope like a long telephoto lens.

Its nice an quick to set up using just a simple tripod. The filter was diy using Baader AstroSolar safety film.

PLEASE, PLEASE DON'T LOOK AT OR POINT ANY CAMERA AT THE SUN WITHOUT USING  PROPER SOLAR FILTERS OR YOU WILL SEVERELY DAMAGE YOUR EYES IN AN INSTANT.

Over saturated Moon

This picture was taken with a Canon 40D through my Etx 105 at prime focus .

Normally a colour image of the moon is grey with some slightly blueish areas. During post processing I often change elements like contrast  to bring out the shadows but I recently learnt from Filipe Alves that by increasing the saturation of the colours in the image, details about the Moons geology composition can be revealed.
I have not added any colours to this image, merely magnified the colours in the image.
It is often called a false colour image as this is not how its seen with the naked eye.
In 1992 NASA's spacecraft Galileo produced an image using filters that is remarkably similar. The blue colour shows titanium rich areas whilst the orange areas are lower in titanium. The Sea of Tranquillity where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed in Apollo 11 in 1969 is to the right of centre and shows up really blue so its high in titanium.
Anyway all that aside, I think its good to see the moon is not just grey but a marvolous mix of colour.