Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

Saturday, December 18, 2010

Daytime Moon and night-time Jupiter

An 80mm Apo refractor was placed on a Merlin Mount and aligned on the Moon in the daytime sky as it rose through the trees:

A compact camera was placed afocally to the 25mm eyepiece as the Moon was about to clear the trees and this image was captured.

Click on an image to get a larger view:

A red filter was placed on the nosepiece of a 1.3Mp monochrome Opticstar PL-130M CMOS camera. This camera was able to capture the whole lunar disk in the chip. The resulting AVIs were processed in Registax.

After dark an SPC900 NC with a x2 Barlow lens assembly on the end of the nosepiece was used with an 11" SCT to obtain this animation of Jupiter.

The south equatorial belt seems to be re-appearing.

Steve Wainwright

posted by astroimager # 8:42 PM 0 Comments

Friday, December 17, 2010

Intrepid Maksutov and a high-resolution Moon

On the night of the 16th the first snowfall came, followed by a patch of clear Sky. I mounted the Skymax 127 Maksutov on a Synscan AZ GOTO mount:

I placed a 1.3MP monochrome Opticstar PL-130M camera at the prime focus and captured 3x 30s frame AVIs on the Clavius region and the same on the Plato region of the Moon. The AVIs were processed in Registax to produce high-resolution images. Click on an image to have a larger view:

Clavius-Tycho region

Plato region

Steve Wainwright

posted by astroimager # 9:17 PM 0 Comments

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

M42 with an Atik camera and a focally reduced 80mm refractor

This image is composed from 10x 30s exposures and 15x 90s exposures:

Visible are M42/3 and NGC1977

Keith Davies

posted by astroimager # 10:54 PM 0 Comments

Geminids observations

Last night, (13th) SAS member Chris Playle went to a dark observing site at Mewslade where he observed 20 Geminids and 2 fireballs over a two hour period.

Rachael Sweeting and Jo Rosney-Lee observed for about 45 min from Llanelli starting at 10-30 (13th). They observed 6 Geminids and one of them was a fireball

Colin Miles observed the Geminids (14th) between 11-10pm and 11-30pm from Llanon. During this time, he saw 7 Geminids.

Colin Elphic and Don Morgan spent several hours at Fairwood and observed a large number of Geminids over their observing session

I saw 2 Geminids during a 5 minute sortie into the garden at 11-00pm (14th)

Steve Wainwright

posted by astroimager # 5:53 PM 0 Comments

Sunspots and Prominences

I used a DMK camera fitted with the lens assembly from a x2 Barlow and H-alpha & Ca K-line PST solar scopes.

AR1131 is almost over the limb and AR1133 is getting close:

Ca K-line image:

H-alpha image:

This image shows swirling magnetic activity and an arching filament, dark against the disk.

Filaments and prominences are the same structures, appearing dark when viewed against the disk of the Sun and light when viewed against the dark sky.

The next image is an animation showing a filament becoming a prominence as it crosses the limb of the Sun. 1.5s are shown with no brightness or contrast changes and it can be seen that the filament and the prominence have the same brightness. The next 1.5s shows the same image with the prominences enhanced by combining an image exposed to optimally reveal the prominence:

The human eye has the dynamic range to be able to see the prominences brighter against the sky.

Steve Wainwright

posted by astroimager # 4:08 PM 0 Comments

Sunday, December 12, 2010

The Sun and Moon today

I used a H-alpha PST and a Ca K_line PST with a DMK camera fitted with the lens assembly of a x2 Barlow and an 80mm Apochromatic refractor fitted with a 1000 Oaks glass solar filter.

Sometimes, when you are imaging, the unexpected happens: