Swansea Astronomical Society Blog
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Jupiter
A DBK21 camera with a 1.5x Barlow was used with an 11" SCT
Jupiter
Keith Davies
Monday, November 29, 2010
An SDC-435 with a focally reduced 6" Newtonian
A Samsung SDC-435 was fitted with a short nosepiece, a light=pollution filter and a focal reducer was fitted on an autoguided 6" Newtonian.
M31
M97 The Owl Nebula
M42/43
Steve Wainwright
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Nebulae and galaxies with an SDC-435, and an autoguided, f/4.8, focally reduced, 10" Newtonian
A modified Samsung SDC-435 camera fitted with a short nosepiece, a light-pollution filter and a focal reducer was used with a 10", autoguided Newtonian. DVD was captured and BMPs were extracted from the DVD the Vob Frame Extractor. Dark-frames were scaled with Andrew Sprott's Dark-Frame Scaler:
Caldwell 27, The Crescent Nebula
Click on an image to get a larger view
Caldwell 11, The Bubble Nebula
Caldwell 27, The Crescent Nebula
Running Man Nebula NGC 1977
M81
M82
Steve Wainwright
First Saturn of the year
Saturn was imaged early this morning through an 11" SCT with a 2.5x Barlow and a DBK21 camera:
The rings are starting to open up again.
Keith Davies
Saturday, November 27, 2010
High definition Moon
I used a 1.3Mp Trust webcam at the prime focus of an f/5, 6" Newtonian to capture 4 overlapping images of the terminator. Five, 30s AVIs were captured for each of the images which were produced in Registax: The 4 images were combined in iMerge and Photoshop to produce th completed mosaic.
Click on the image to see it full size
Steve Wainwright
Click on the image to see it full size
Steve Wainwright
Monday, November 22, 2010
Jupiter and the Great Red Spot
Jupiter was imaged with a DBK camera fitted with a x1.5 Barlow and an 11" SCT.
Despite recent outbreaks there is no sign in this image of the south equatorial band re-emerging.
Keith Davies
Despite recent outbreaks there is no sign in this image of the south equatorial band re-emerging.
Keith Davies
Friday, November 19, 2010
Star Party at the National Botanic Garden for Wales
The weather cleared and a successful star party was held at the National Botanic Garden at Llanarthne. The event was well attended.
Society members prepared their scopes for members of the public to see and observe through
Brian gave a talk in one location and Andrew in another. Both had lots of people wanting to hear their talks:
School children doing GCSE Astronomy and their teacher were able to look at the Moon, Jupiter and its moons, the Dumbbell nebula and M15 a globular cluster
Members of the public and astronomers crowded around the scopes
Members of the public and astronomers crowded around the scopes
.
Steve Waainwright
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Afocal Moon with a compact digital camera and an f/5, 8" Newtonian
It is always worth trying to take afocal images of the Moon. I took several shots through a 28mm eyepiece before I had one that was satisfactory. This is the beauty of digital photography. Click on the image to get a larger view:
Steve Wainwright
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
The Sun and Orion
Last night this image was taken of the Orion Nebula using a Nikon D700 DSLR camera at the prime focus of an Apochromatic 80mm refractor:
Click on an image to get a larger view.
The Sun Today:
Keith Davies
Monday, November 15, 2010
Bubbles, cigars and clusters under a half moon with an autoguided 6" Newtonian and a modified SDC-435 video camera, and a cheap lunar imaging camera.
A small, cheap security camera, (Swann DIY Security Cam (£29-99 from Maplin)) was tested for its suitability as a Lunar observing and imaging camera. The camera was placed at the prime focus of an f/5, 6" Newtonian.
This half Moon was lighting up the sky but the modified Samsung SDC-435 at the prime focus of an autoguided f/5, 6" Newtonian was able to detect and image Caldwell 11, the Bubble nebula. 15 minutes video was recorded to DVD, VOB frame extractor was used to extract the BMPs which were dark-frame corrected with Andrew Sprott's Dark Frame Scaler and stacked in Registax:
The camera with a 1.25" adapter attached:
Craterlet capture software was used along with a DVD Maker capture card to capture 3x AVIs to make a mosaic of the Moon. The 3 individual images were then combined in iMerge to produce this image: (Click on individual images to get a larger view)
This half Moon was lighting up the sky but the modified Samsung SDC-435 at the prime focus of an autoguided f/5, 6" Newtonian was able to detect and image Caldwell 11, the Bubble nebula. 15 minutes video was recorded to DVD, VOB frame extractor was used to extract the BMPs which were dark-frame corrected with Andrew Sprott's Dark Frame Scaler and stacked in Registax:
Similarly, images of M82 and M13 were obtained
Caldwell 11, The Bubble Nebula:
M82 the cigar galaxy in Ursa Major
M13 the great Globular cluster in Hercules
Steve Wainwright
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Solar activity
An 80mm refractor was used with a Baader solar filter.
This image is at the prime focus
Click on an image to see a larger image:
This image was taken through a x2 Barlow:
And this one through a 4.5x Barlow:
A H-alpha image was taken through a PST:
Keith Davies
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Jupiter with an 11" SCT and a DBK camera
A DBK21AS camera was used with a x2 Barlow and an 11" SCT to obtain this image of Jupiter on the evening of Nov 8th:
The great red spot is clearly visible.
Keith Davies
M57 with autoguiding
Last night after the wind had died down and the sky was clear I tested my new autoguiding setup using a Shoestring autoguider and PHD guiding software. The imaging scope was a 6" f/5 Newtonian and the guide scope was a 70mm F = 700mm refractor mounted in guide-scope rings:
Click on an image to get a larger view.
The guide camera was a DMK21AS making 1.5s exposures. The imaging camera was a Samsung SDC-435 frame-accumulating video camera set to 256 frame accumulation. The video was saved to DVD and the frames extracted later using VOB Frame Extractor. They were stacked in Registax and dark-frame corrected with a dark frame scaled in Andrew Sprott's Dark Frame Scaler.
The autoguiding software was run on a netbook. Here are the netbook and the video monitor side by side:
The Ring Nebula can be seen on the video monitor screen on the left and the netbook screen on the right. The guide star can be seen at the intersection to the vertical and horizontal lines on the computer screen.
The autoguiding worked superbly and held the stars absolutely still in the field of view enabling virtually all of the captured frames to be used:
M57:
Steve Wainwright
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Solar activity
The active regions AR1120 and AR1121 are not spectacular but I managed to capture images of them this morning before clouds came in.
I used a DMK21AS camera fitted with the lens assembly from a x2 Barlow with PST H-alpha and Ca K-line scopes. Exposures were made to capture solar disk details in H-alpha and also to capture the prominences. The images were then combined in Andrew Sprott's 'Solar Layers' software: Click on an image to see a larger view.
AR1120 in H-alpha
AR1121 in H-alpha
AR1121 in Ca K-line light
Steve Wainwright
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Ghost of a once great Observatory
Ecliptica stands sadly atop a building that once attracted visitors from across the world, educated thousands of children, delighted and informed members of the public and gave enormous added value to the culture and education of the region. A year has passed and she is consigned to history.
Click on the image for a larger view
M42/M43 region with an 80mm, f/5 refractor and an Atik 314L camera
This is an LRGB image comprising 25min luminance with 4min each of Red Green and Blue. Dark frame and bias frame corrected.
Click on the image to get a full size view.
The Orion Nebula
Part of the Running man nebula is visible at the bottom right.
Nikki Mackin
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Drawing Jupiter and deep-sky objects.
Drawing is an alternative and valid way of recording your observations. Making drawings forces the observer to look very carefully at what he or she sees in the eyepiece.
M56
Jupiter
Deep sky objects can be represented as the drawings or their negatives often to great effect as these drawings of the Veil nebula show:
Deep sky objects can be represented as the drawings or their negatives often to great effect as these drawings of the Veil nebula show:
M56
M57
Chris Playle
The Dumbbell with a 10", f/4.8 Newtonian and a modified Samsung SDC-435
On Oct 31st a modified Samsung SDC-435 was fitted with a light-pollution filter and was placed at the prime focus of a 10", f/4.8 Newtonian.
A 15 min VOB file was captured to DVD with the camera set to 512 frame accumulation. However, it was noticed that the background on the displayed image was updating quite rapidly, and this was unexpected.
VOB frame extractor was used on the captured DVD and every 12th frame was extracted as a BMP. This yielded more than 1800 frames of which 1800 were used in Registax. Dark frame data were collected in the same way and the raw darkframe produced was scaled in Dark-Frame scaler.
This is the resulting image of M27:
Steve Wainwright
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