Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

The remounted Opticstar PL-130M monochrome CMOS camera was placed in turn at the prime focus of a H-alpha PST (using two stacked neutral density filters) and a Ca K-line PST without the ND filters. AVIs of the full disk were captured at 1280 x 1024 resolution at 8fps. The AVIs were stacked in Registax and the resulting images were cropped and colourised to represent the parts of the spectrum used.
Click on an image to get a larger view.
Ha image


Ca K-Line image

Some compression artifacts are present and the cause will be investigated.


Blink-comparison of the two images


Steve Wainwright

An Opticstar PL-130M monochrome high resolution CMOS camera was remounted to bring the CMOS sensor forwards so that it can be placed at the prime focus of a PST H-alpha solarscope.












The purpose of the modification is to be able to image the complete solar disk within a single frame.

The result is quite encouraging.

Steve Wainwright

A Pentax K-x DSLR camera fitted with a light pollution filter was placed at the prime focus of a 10", f/4.8 Newtonian. A series of 30s exposures at ISO 12800 were captured of each subject. The RAW images were stacked in Deep Sky stacker:

Supernova in Galaxy M101


I used an image taken with the same equipment on July 24 to make a blink comparison with tonight's image to show the supernova. The images were converted to greyscale for the purposes of the blink comparison:


Comet Garradd close to the globular cluster M71


M13, the brightest globular cluster in the Northern skies


M31, The Andromeda Galaxy


Steve Wainwright

A DMK21AS camera fitted with a UV/IR cut filter and the lens assembly of a x 2 Barlow was used with a H-alpha PST to make a Mosaic of overlapping AVIs to cover the whole of the solar Disk:
Click on the image to get a larger view.


Using a 3x Barlow, a filaprom was imaged:


The filament crosses the limb of the Sun and becomes a prominence.

Also AR1271 was imaged.

The region is crackling with activity and shows huge prominences, one emerging from a sunspot. This image was featured on spaceweather.com Aug 26/27.

Steve Wainwright

A Philips SPC 880/900 NC camera fitted with a UV/IR cut filter was placed at the prime focus of an f/10, 5" Maksutov. AVIs were captured of two areas of the Moon and stacked in Registax to produce the following two images:

Shroters Valley


Crater Schiller region


A Philips SPC 880/900 NC camera fitted with a UV/IR cut filter and a x 2.5 Barlow was attached to an f/10, 5" Maksutov. An 1800 frame AVI was captured of Jupiter over a 3 minute period and stacked in Registax:


A Pentax K-x refractor fitted with a light pollution filter was placed at the prime focus of an f/5, 6" refractor. 28 x 30s exposures at ISO 12800 were captured of Comet Garradd C/2009 P1, and then stacked in Deep Sky stacker


A Pentax K-x DSLR fitted with a circular diffraction grating was placed at the prime focus of an 80mm apochromatic refractor. Vega was placed in a corner of the field of view and 6 x 30s exposures were made. The spectrum output produced the following image:



Steve Wainwright

A DMK21AS camera fitted with a UV/IR cut filter was placed at the prime focus of an f/10, 5" Maksutov itself fitted with a Baader photographic grade solar filter. There were thin clouds crossing the Sun so it had to be imaged through the clouds. Eight 1000 frame AVIs were captured at 60fps. The AVIs were stacked in Registax with the quality limit set to 80. Registax selected 362 frames which were then aligned and stacked to produce this image of AR1271:

This sunspot group is changing rapidly and could give rise to Earth directed flares.

Steve Wainwright

On march 24 2011 Gaynor Thomas and Steve Wainwright imaged M51 before the supernova exploded. On July 24 Steve imaged M51 again and in this image the supernova is clearly visible:


The two images were rescaled and made greyscale for the purpose of the comparison.
Blink comparison of the before and after supernova explosion images:


The supernova blinks on and off in this blink comparison.

Steve Wainwright

Jupiter was imaged with a Phillips SPC880NC/900NC camera fitted with a UV/IR cut filter and a x 2.5 Barlow lens on an f/10, 5" Maksutov.

Two AVI files each of 900 frames captured at 10fps were captured in rapid succession. This took 3 minutes which is the most time that can be spent imaging Jupiter before the planet's rotation smears out details. The AVIs were processed in Registax. The resulting image was corrected for atmospheric dispersion in Andrew Sprott's CAP (colour alignment processor) software. The resulting image showed lots of detail including a dark red spot in the north equatorial belt:


Four areas of the Moon were imaged with a DMK21AS Camera fitted with a UV/IR cut filter placed at the prime focus of the 5" Maksutov:
Crater Plato in shadow and Sinus Iridum (the Bay of Rainbows)


Crater Copernicus, and Hortensius domes


The Straight wall, a lunar fault


Crater Clavius and Crater Tycho largely in shadow


Comet C/2009 P1 (Garradd) was imaged with two scopes and two cameras.
A Pentax K-x DSLR fitted with a light pollution filter was placed at the prime focus of an f/5, 80mm apochromatic refractor and 35 x 30s exposures were captured at ISO 12500. The images were processed in Deep-Sky Stacker:


A Mintron integrating video camera set to maximum (256 frames) frame accumulation fitted with a light pollution filter was placed at the prime focus of the 80mm refractor and 30min of high quality DVD was captured. Ian Davies's Vob Frame Extractor was used to extract the unique frames as BMP files. These files were processed in two ways:
1) Stacked on the comet in Registax which produced star trails


2) Stacked on the stars which produced a trailed comet


Fifty frames were stacked to increase the signal to noise but over a time frame where little movement of the comet had happened. The frames were stacked on the stars but a non-trailed comet was produced:


The Mintron camera set to maximum frame accumulation was placed at the prime focus of an f/5, 5" Newtonian and 30 minutes of high quality DVD were captured. Vob Frame Extractor was used to extract unique frames a BMP files. The BMPs were stacked as above:
1) On the stars to produce a trailed comet


2) On the comet to produce trailed stars


Just 50 frames were stacked to produce this image:

The comet was not visible in 10 x 50 binoculars, but was just visible in 15 x 80 binoculars.

Steve Wainwright

A DMK21AS camera fitted with a short nosepiece, a green continuum filter and a UV/IR cut filter was placed at the prime focus of an f/10, 5" Maksutov fitted with a photographic grade Baader solar filter. AR1271 was imaged:
Clicking on an image will give a larger view.


The same sunspot group was imaged using a x 2.5 Barlow:

Granulation and the fibrillar structure of the penumbrae are evident.

A H-alpha PST was used with the DMK camera and the lens assembly from a x 2 Barlow. The Sun was imaged in overlapping sections and a full disk mosaic was constructed:


A prominence was imaged along with an exposure for the disk. The two images were combined in Andrew Sprott's Solar Layers software:


Steve Wainwright

A DMK21AS camera with a short nosepiece fitted with a UV/IR cut filter and the lens assembly from a x2 Barlow was attached to a H-alpha PST.
A large, arching prominence was imaged and Andrew Sprott's Solar Layers software was used to combine an image of the part of the disk present in the prominence image. The resulting image was colourised to represent the wavelength used:


Nine overlapping regions of the Sun were imaged and a mosaic was constructed in Photoshop and also in Microsoft ICE. The two images were then blended in Andrew Sprott's Flexible Image Combine to produce a final image of the Solar disk:

Click on the image to get a larger view.
Sunspots AR1271(upper region) and AR1272(lower region) are crackling bright with activity.

Steve Wainwright

This image is a stack of 20 subs, five minutes per sub. The scope used was an 8" Newtonian and the camera was an Atik 314L fitted with a narrowband H-alpha filter. The guide camera was a DMK21AS through a 70mm refractor. The image has been colourised to reflect the wavelength of light used:

Click on the image to get a larger view. This image shows the emission regions of the nebula glowing in H-alpha light at 656.28 nm.

Nikki Mackin

A Pentax K-x DSLR was placed at the prime focus of an F/5, 6" Refractor and an f/10, 5" Maksutov. The entire disk was in a single field of view with the refractor but required two overlapping fields of view with the Maksutov:
Refractor image


Maksutov image


Steve Wainwright

Swansea Astronomical Society put on an event for the public in association with the National Botanic Garden for Wales.
Members took a variety of solar observing scopes. and Brian Spinks delivered lectures on the Sun in the morning and mid afternoon.
Ironically, today was only the second day in the whole year when there were no sunspots to be seen on the Sun. However, there was plenty of activity in the Chromosphere and visitors were able to see 'surface' structure, filaments and prominences in the H-alpha telescopes used. One H-alpha scope was connected to a video camera and showed real-time video of the solar surface and solar prominences when there were gaps in the clouds.

Brian Stokes manned the reception desk and the exhibition. A computer and digital photo frame slide show provided constant and changing interest.


Brian Spinks talked about the Sun to packed audiences in The National Botanic Gardens theatre.
Various members set up and demonstrated their solar observing equipment outside a permanent marquee:

Keith


Rachael


Steve with Theresa Cooper from Cardiff Astronomical Society lending her support.


Derek


Phil and Colin with Phil's scope


Colin


Mavis with visitors in the marquee


Visitors in the marquee looking at the digital photo frame slide show, the Large monitor showing H-alpha real-time video of the Sun and a computer showing the satellite image of the weather.



Visitors outside the marquee, talking with society members and viewing the Sun.


Steve Wainwright