Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

Saturday, March 28, 2020

 

The Crescent Moon and its conjunction with Venus and the Pleiades

A Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ72 bridge camera was mounted on a static tripod. The Moon was imaged on two consecutive nights capturing over 100 frames each session in Burst mode. The frames were precisely cropped in Nicola's AstroCrop. The best 95% of frames from each session were stacked in Autostakkert 2, wavelet processed in Registax 6 and post processed in the Gimp 2.10.

Click on an image to get a closer view


10.2% waxing, crescent Moon
The orange colour was because the Moon was quite low in the sky.


16.7% waxing, crescent Moon

The Moon was in conjunction with Venus and the Pleiades, forming a triangle. An 8 second exposure at ISO 400 was used to capture the conjunction. The ISS was captured crossing the Pleiades.

Conjunction. Click on the image to get a closer view

Steve Wainwright




Conjunction of the Moon and Venus. Handheld shot with a Panasonic TZ100 camera.

Anne Startup
 

NGC 4565; Caldwell 38

Taken using the Altair Wave 102 on the Cem 60ec and SXVR H694. 715mm focal length.

Luminance 11x300s, R and B 5x300s and G 6x300s. Stacked in Maxim dl and processed in Pixinsight and Photoshop.

Click on the image to get a closer view

NGC 4565; Caldwell 38

Anne Startup
 

Deep Sky Sketches

Using a 150mm f/5 refractor and a Starlight Xpress Ultrastar camera as an electronic eyepiece.

Click on a sketch to get a closer view














Jim Startup

Friday, March 27, 2020

 

Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) and M81/82

A USB tethered Canon EOS 4000D DSLR was placed at the prime focus of a 102mm, f/4.5, ED refractor mounted on a HEQ5 Synscan GOTO Mount.

The telescope and mount

The camera was controlled by Nicola's AstroDMx Capture for Windows. 150s exposures were captured and a stack (Deep Sky Stacker) of 3 exposures was used to show the un-trailed comet.

Click on an image to get a closer view.

Comet C/2019Y4 (ATLAS)

Thirty 60s exposures were captured of M81/M82 with matching dark-frames. The images were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker, and post-processed in the Gimp 2.10.

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Windows capturing data on M81/M82


M81 and M82

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin
 

5% waxing, crescent Moon in a twilight sky

A Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ72 bridge camera was mounted on a static tripod. The Moon was imaged in a twilight sky over the mountain.

Click on an image to get a closer view.

5% Moon over the mountain

66 images of the Moon were capture in burst mode.
The images were precisely cropped in Nicola's AstroCrop, and then Stacked in Autostakkert! 3.
The resulting image was wavelet processed in Registax 5 and post-processed in The Gimp 2.10 and Pinta.

5% waxing, crescent Moon

Steve Wainwright

Thursday, March 26, 2020

 

Observing log for 2020 March 22nd

For Eyepiece observers, it is desirable to keep a log of objects observed in a given session.
Here is an observing log for March 22nd 2020

Telescope: 20cm SCT

19:45UT start

19:45ut Venus  300x +W47(light blue filter). A bright sun facing limb,slightly dark hue on the central portion of disc. No anomalies seen along terminator,phase roughly 50%.

20:05ut Sirius  double star. Tried to locate B star but unable due to glare, tried various filters to no avail. The Pup is a difficult star to see, there are not many who have seen it.

20:24ut  International Space Station. Just glimpsed passing through the northern part of the field of view. At 120x some square structures could be made out.

20:45ut  Comet 2017 T2 (Panstars) 120-240x  Not as bright as expected but still fairly easily seen. A bright coma and fainter fuzzy body, no tail visible, Comet is in Cassiopeia .

21:20ut. Comet Y4 Atlas 120x  Comet is well seen slightly brighter than Panstars and did not need any higher magnification. The comet has a bright coma no tail evident.

22:21ut  Hopped from comet to near by galaxies M81,82 and a few more.

22:20ut  Open Clusters M46+47 Puppis 120x M47 is a loose cluster of bright stars that fills the field of view. About a degree west of M47 is M46,this cluster contains fainter stars but is a lot richer. One unique feature of this cluster is that it contains a Planetary Nebulae NGC2438 on its northern edge, the planetary jumps out at you if you have a good dark sky otherwise it can be difficult.

22:54ut  The planetary Nebulae NGC 3242 known as "The Ghost of Jupiter " in the constellation of Hydra. This easily seen bright and large Nebulae is like looking at Jupiter with out its belts hence its nickname.

23:00ut  End of session,

Howard Davies

Wednesday, March 25, 2020

 

The Orion Nebulae with AstroDMx Capture for Windows

A Bresser AR 102xs f/4.5 ED refractor was mounted on a Celestron AVX, GOTO mount.

Using AstroDMx Capture for Windows, a tethered Canon EOS 4000D and a 102mm f/5 ED refractor. Setting the camera remotely to ISO 3200, exposures of 10 x 4s, 30 x 30s and 15 x 60s exposures were captured in Camera RAW with matching dark-frames.

The images were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker using Auto adaptive weighted average for the light frames. The final image was post-processed in the Gimp 2.10 and Neat Image.

Click on the image to get a closer view.

M42/43 and the Running Man Nebula captured by AstroDMx Capture for Windows

Steve Wainwright and Nicola mackin


Monday, March 23, 2020

 

The Orion Nebula and Venus with AstroDMx Capture for Windows

Nicola is making good progress with AstroDMx Capture for Windows.

DSLR USB tethering is implemented and is working well.

Click on an image to get a closer view

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Windows capturing data on the Orion Nebula with a tethered, 14-bit Canon EOS 4000D DSLR and a Skymax 127 Maksutov.

The Orion Nebula



Venus was captured by high-speed image capture with a ZWO ASI178MC using AstroDMx Capture for Windows and a Skymax 127 Maksutov.

Stack of the best 1500 frames from a 15,000 frame SER file captured with a region od interest of 640 x 480 at 125 fps

More images and full details can be seen by clicking  HERE.

Steve Wainwright and Nicola Mackin

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