Swansea Astronomical Society Blog
Friday, April 29, 2011
Solar disk in H-alpha light
Yesterday (April 28) I imaged the Sun with a H-alpha PST. Six areas of the Sun were imaged, capturing 5000 frames in each area. The six resulting images were stitched togather to form a mosaic.
Clicking on an image will give a larger view.
H-alpha
The active side of the Sun was imaged in Ca K-line light and the 3 images made were stitched together to form a mosaic. Both images were colourised to represent the wavelengths used:
Ca K-line
Steve Wainwright
Friday, April 22, 2011
M3 and M57
Last night I used the Pentax K-x DSLR at the prime focus of an 11", f/10 SCT.
Multiple images were captured and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker:
M3
M57
Steve Wainwright
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Saturn with an SPC900NC camera
An SPC900NC camera was used with a 2.5 x Barlow and an 11" SCT.
The AVIs were stacked and dark-frame corrected in Registax:
Saturn
Steve Wainwright
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
The Sun and Saturn on April 19th
Using an 11" SCT and a Philips SPC880/900NC camera fitted with the lens assembly from a x2 Barlow, 6000 frames were captured in 5 AVIs using wxAstrocapture under Linux (Ubuntu).
Registax was used under Wine to process the AVIs and Andrew Sprott's CAP software was used to correct for atmospheric dispersion:
Saturn:
Earlier in the day, using a H-alpha PST and a DMK fitted with the lens assembly from a x2 Barlow Prominences were imaged. The disk image and the overexposed prominence images were combined in Andrew Sprott's Solar Layers software:
Steve Wainwright
Monday, April 18, 2011
The Sun and Saturn
On Saturday April 16th Saturn was imaged with a DBK camera and an 11" SCT with a 2.5 x Barlow.
The storm is visible in this image.
On Sunday 17th The Sun was imaged through an 80mm refractor fitted with a Baader solar filter and a 0.5 focal reducer
Keith Davies
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Lunar drawings by Chris Playle
Drawings were made of Crater Gassendi and Posidonius
Posidonius with a 6" Maksutov April 6th:
Gassendi with a 6" Maksutov March 15th
Chris Playle
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
April 12th Sun and Moon in fine detail
Part of the solar disk was imaged with a DMK21AS camera fitted with the lens asembly from a x2 Barlow and a H-alpha PST. Different images were stitched together to form a mosaic of the active regions:
The Moon was imaged with a 5" Maksutov with a x3 Barlow at a focal length of 4.5m. The following regions were imaged:
Clavius
Maginus
Copernicus
Plato
The Alpine Valley
Steve Wainwright
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Afocal Moon and Saturn with the Fairwood Observatory 12" SCT
On Friday April 8th a Casio Exilim 6Mp compact camera was connected to the eyepiece using a Steadipix afocal mount and the camera was set on timer delay.
Saturn
Moon
Dave Evans
Sunday, April 10, 2011
April 8th Moon and Saturn
A 5" Maksutov was used with a DMK21AS camera fitted with the lens assembly from a x2 Barlow to image a part of the Moon
I imaged most of the Moon and stitched the images togather to form a mosaic. Click on the image to get a full resolution image.
Saturn was imaged through a Teleview x3 Barlow
Steve Wainwright
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Crescent Moon and Saturn
Using the 12" SCT at the Fairwood observatory, the crescent Moon was imaged in three sections with a Pentax DSLR. The sections were merged with iMerge:
Saturn was imaged with the 12" SCT using a Philips SPC900NC camera fitted with the lens assembly from a x2 Barlow
Steve Wainwright
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Afocal Saturn
Afocal images were captured through a 10mm eyepiece. The best two were cropped an stacked in Registax and post processed.
Ken Shepherd
Monday, April 4, 2011
M51 with an Atik314 camera and an 11" SCT
Last night the Atik314 camera was used with the 11" SCT to image M51. The first image is in colour (6 x 45s exposures) and the second image is monochrome, resulting from 2x2 binning (10 x 45s exposures)
Keith Davies
Deep Sky with a Pentax K-x DSLR and a 6" Newtonian
I used a Pentax K-x fitted with a light-pollution filter and the lens assembly from a x2 Barlow. About 25, 30s exposures were made of each subject at ISO 12800. The RAW files were darkframe subtracted and stacked in Deep Sky Stacker:
Click on an image to get a larger view.
M57
M3
Steve Wainwright
Saturn and the Seeliger effect
An SPC900NC camera fitted with the lens assembly from a x2 Barlow was used with the 12" SCT at the Fairwood observatory to capture 9000 frames in AVIs. The AVIs were stacked in Registax to obtain this image:
The rings are showing the brightening characteristic of the Seeliger effect seen at opposition due to the back scatter of sunlight by the rings.
Steve Wainwright and Gaynor Thomas
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The solar disk in H-alpha light and a partial disk in Ca K-line light
I used a DMK21AS camera fitted with the lens assembly of a x2 Barlow with a H-alpha PST on a Merlin mount. AVIs were captured of six areas of the Sun to make six overlapping images which were then stitched together to make a mosaic of the entire solar disk. The image was colourised to represent the wavelength used to make the image.
The disk is seething with activity.
Click on the image to get a larger view
Before the clouds came in I managed to image two contiguous areas of the Sun in Ca K-line light suing the same setup as for H-alpha but with a CaK PST:
Steve Wainwright
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Sunspots in White light
An 80mm Apochromatic refractor with a Baader solar filter was used with a DMK31 camera.
The full disk image was obtained by using a 0.5 focal reducer
This image used a 2.5x Barlow
Keith Davies
M37 with a DSLR and an 130mm Newtonian on an AZ GOTO mount
A Pentax K-x DSLR camera with a 1.25" adapter was fitted with a light-pollution filter and the lens assembly from a x2 Barlow and used with a 130mm Newtonian on an AZ GOTO mount. A number of 30s exposures at ISO 12800 were captured and examined. Six of the images were not trailed and were stacked in Deep-Sky Stacker:
M37
Click on the image to get a larger view.
This image shows the range of star clusters in this open galactic cluster.
Steve Wainwright
Friday, April 1, 2011
An Afocal Saturn
An afocal image was captured of Saturn using an Olympus Camedia compact camera with a universal digiscoping adapter, a 25mm eyepiece and a 90mm f/10 achromatic Evostar refractor.
The effects of atmospheric dispersion were removed with Andrew Sprott's Colour alignment Processor.
Afocal imaging of planets is difficult but members of the SAS are getting to grips with it.
Ken Shepherd
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