Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

Saturday, November 5, 2011

 

Swansea's new Solar Observing Group: SOG

Today was the first meeting of SOG.
This was not an observing session although, of course, some observing was done.
It was a training session where members learned how to polar align the EQ3-2 driven equatorial mount in daylight, balance the Solarmax 40 H-alpha scope, locate the Sun, tune the etalon and observe in H-alpha.
The new solar binoculars were tested on AR1339, one of the largest sunspot groups in years as was the full aperture Thousand Oaks glass solar filter on the 12" SCT.
Keith demonstrated a PST H-alpha scope and a Baader filter equipped 120mm refractor. Keith demonstrated image capture in white light through the solar filter equipped refractor.
Emphasis was on safety throughout and times of possible danger were identified.
Members of SOG were treated to a fine day for their inaugural session:


Maggie checks out the solar binoculars


Colin views AR1339 through the 12" scope


Phil tries a little afocal photography


The massive full aperture Thousand Oaks Glass solar filter


Afocal shot of AR1339 with a Pentax K-x DSLR


David McDonagh took this image of AR1339 and AR1338 below with his 5Mp mobile phone camera.

It is hoped that SOG will go from strength to strength and will compliment FOG. There will be considerable overlap between members of the two groups.
Anyone attending a SOG session must place safety of themselves and others as the top priority.

Steve Wainwright

Thursday, November 3, 2011

 

Jupiter and The Moon

A Pentax K-x DSLR was placed at the prime focus of an f/10, 5" Maksutov.
Two overlapping images were captured and combined with Microsoft ICE.
Click on the image to get a larger view.


A Philips PSC800/900 camera was attached to a a x2.5 Barlow and captured a 2,700 frame AVI at 15 fps. The AVI was processed in Registax 6 and the best 40% of the frames were stacked to produce this image


Steve Wainwright

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

 

Jupiter with two cameras

10,000 frames were captured in a single AVI at 60fps with a monochrome DMK21AS camera fitted with the lens assembly of a x2 Barlow, a UV/IR cut filter and a x2.5 Barlow connected to a 5" Maksutov.
Then immediately 2700 frames were captured with a Phillips SPC800/900 camera were captured.
The best 1000 frames from the monochrome camera were stacked in Registax 6 and the best 270 frames from the colour camera were stacked in Registax 6.
The colour data were blurred as the planet would have rotated slightly between the two AVI captures.
The monochrome and colour images were combined in Andrew Sprott's Flexible Image Combine, using the monochrome data for luminance detail and the blurred colour data for chrominance.
The result is this image of Jupiter:

The great Red Spot is clearly visible in the south equatorial belt as well as markings in the north equatorial belt.

Steve Wainwright

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

 

Life membership of the Swansea Astronomical Society for Lon Shaw

At the last meeting of the Swansea Astronomical Society on Thursday October 27th, Lawrence Shaw was awarded a life membership of the SAS.
Despite considerable handicap, Lon, who was once a physicist and environmentalist has regularly attended the SAS meetings for a number of years and has made his own attempts to view the night sky for himself.
I was honoured to present Lon with his life membership and recalled 1982 when he and I published a scientific paper jointly with Betty Griffiths also an SAS member, and Dr Martin Hodson, Latterly of Oxford Brooks university.
The life membership was a highly deserved honour for someone who has, in the face of adversity, shown dedication to the Swansea Astronomical Society and his interest in astronomy.
I think it appropriate to quote the motto of the Royal Air Force and other Commonwealth Air Forces: 'Per Ardua ad Astra'.
Well done Lon!

Steve Wainwright

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