Franco Skies

I took my 10x50 bins with me on holiday, I'd wanted to take my little scope, but there just wasn't room, so that I could, hopefully get some observing in, both, being further south, and with luck darker skies.

Well, both proved true very quickly. The skies were so dark, that the milky way was very visible directly overhead without any dark adaptation, and I could see no hint of LP anywhere around. Of course, the quantity of trees didn't help with seeing the horizon, but they were quite dark trees.

On the 18th, I could just about make out Ursa Major's tail through the trees, it was a little tricky to work out my bearings, but this got me sorted. Anyway, just a bit of sky watching. Throughout the evening, I saw 4 Perseids, a Tumbling Iridium (at least that's what I think it was), a very odd sight, but I don't see it being anything else. The track kept fading in and out. A few minutes later, a real bright Meteorite tore across the sky, and a bunch of other satellites joined in the fun.

The following night I got my bins out and had a good nose around. Easily finding the Coathanger, having a wander along the Milky Way through Cygnus. A little later, through a gap in the trees I spotted an odd Teapot shaped grouping of stars, and wondered whether that could actually be Sagitarius... A quick check in the books, planetarium and TL@O proved this to be correct. I had a good wander around here. The two globs M22 and M28 were easily discernible as small blobs. I could make out M8 and I think NGC6530. M21 was another easily seen target, and I think I may have seen M20 (or that might have been wishful thinking)... And moving higher up M23, 24 and 25. Wow, what a busy area that teapot is.

Anyway, most of the following nights were spent looking at the same thing, and trying to find and prove to myself that I had indeed seen these targets. I also shared the bins with friends and family, so they could see what I was looking at, mounting them on my camera tripod.

I also tried to capture some images of the teapot, both a widefield with the 18-55 lens



and a bit closer in with the Nifty Fifty

Star Trails - Part Deux

I found a little trick (thanks Dangerous_Dave) paint in black on the frames that you don't want the planes to show and they disappear when combined... cool... and a quick fix on the flare



I also trailed the other images I took, in which I only caught a satellite and no Perseids... this is only 25 frames combined, thus the shorter trails

Startrails

I had a bash at combining the 83 frames I took last night for the Perseids into a startrails image. The Startrails application is amazingly easy to use for this, load the images, click the trails button, sit back and wait. The foreground is dull, I wasn't aiming specifically to capture a startrails image in the first place... I've also got an Iridium flare and a pair of planes ... the Perseids shown earlier are in the image somewhere... but I can't find them.

AAPOD

I've only just noticed... but I got an AAPOD... Amateur Astro Photo of the Day

AAPOD

Very Cool

Perseids

For the first time in what seems ages, the sky cleared as the sun went down. As tonight is one of the best nights to see the Perseid meteor shower (and with a tent up in the garden, there's no danger of getting the scope out, assuming of course I could carry it anyway) I got out one of the sun loungers, setup the camera on a tripod next to me, lay back with a pair of binoculars and waited.

When I setup, the sky was still light enough to show some blue. And I watched as the sky darkened, the stars started to show. Cassie turned her face toward me, then as the sky darkened further, the great wings of Cygnus spread across me. To the accompaniment of small furry winged creatures... teeny bats whizzing around over the garden.. never noticed them before.

Watching the sky generally, I noticed other things, constellations, Draco, Lyra, Lacerta all showing up nicely. The band of the milky way, a faintly glowing ribbon, delicately connecting Cassie to Cygnus, almost as if the Celestial Queen was trying to capture the swan.

Over the course of an hour and a half I witnessed 9 Perseids, from the quite dim, up to the blazingly bright, leaving an incandescent trail across the sky behind it.

One in this skimming the bottom of Cassie


One in this passing just over M31


Two in this, both starting at the centre, one up to the corner, and one below it.


11 Satellites including a spectacular Iridium flare, at last a magnitude -6. I caught this one, it's actually a composite of two images, of course, the timing of the shots on the camera and the flare were not in sync.



and a seperate flare, not an Iridium though


The camera was set to jpg, so I might have a go at a couple of things, an animation and a trails.

I also, with the viewing of some autumn friends had a wander around with the bins, reaquainting myself. M31, and I was amazed at just how easily I found this one, M103, the double cluster and the Mirfak association, amazingly clear, all of them, given how low down, and the slight mist glow at those altitudes. I had a look around for the owl cluster, but I'm not sure a pair of 10x50's cut it. I also had a wander around Cygnus just lost in all those stars...

I really enjoyed that, the more so, given the total lack of opportunity over the past couple of months. It's got me thinking about what I want to achieve over the Autumn and Winter.

Update on the Rig and a couple of widefields

I've added a couple of bits to my rig over the past couple of months, so now the guide scope is mount next to the imaging scope on a side by side bar, and I've got a set of collimating rings, allowing me to adjust the guide scope if needed. I've also now got a proper power setup, meaning I won't be limited to 2.5 hours from the powertank. It'll be nice to get it out and try it, just hope I can remember how.

Given the crummy weather and lack of dark skies, I've not had the gear our for a couple of months, but there have been a couple of clearish spells that lasted long enough for me to pop the camera on a tripod and try a couple of things.

First off, using the nifty fifty (aka, the Canon EF 50mm II), bit limited in sub length at this focal length, but 10x8s f2.2 @ISO800



Then a few nights later another gap. This time I tried to do a panoramic of the milky way, 3 panes of 10x30s f3.5 18mm @ISO800



They both need some work. I now have an adapter that allows me to fit my LPR filter to the nifty, so that'll be good for some tracked shots. I also need to work out the best aperture to use as the setting has caused some oddities around the edge of the frame. I also need to think about the best way to setup and adjust the tripod for the pano. It was really tricky trying to adjust the head to pass along the milky way and keep roughly the same orientation.

Sky At Night - August

Yay.... I got my first image printed in the pages of the magazine this month. The image is below, it's great when you see the first one in print.

Lunar Corona and some NLC's

A couple of weeks ago (I can't believe I didn't post this at the time) I saw a lovely sight of the moon low down surrounded by clouds. This caused a wonderful Corona and I set about trying to capture it. I tried a 3 shot bracket, but 3 shots wasn't wide enough to capture the entire dynamic range. I ended up using 6, manually adjusted between each shot. After some playing around at merging them, and trying a couple of tools, my first attempts failed as the software couldn't determine enough information from the subject I guess, I ended up with this :



On Monday 6th, I gave a talk at my Astro society on Imaging with cheap and inappropriate equipment, it was what I had so I did it, the images are all posted on here. The talk went down well, as were a couple of the mods I'd carried out to make things better for me.

Then tonight, without having seen or done anything astronomical for a while now I looked out, and I saw an amazing display of NoctiLucent Clouds. I dashed back in and grabbed my camera and tripod, this was even better than the previous view. Unfortunately, it didn't last as the clouds were making there presence felt, but here's the images









And I took some with the intention of making a panoramic or two.

My first attempt to create a 3x2 mosaic didn't work as I couldn't align the two rows, but I did them separately anyway. Will have to think about that one for next time.







then as the display began to fade, the clouds moved in. I hope there are more over the next couple of weeks.

Not Iridiums

But rather a couple of other flares... in daylight. Calsky provides predictions of all sorts of flares not just Iridiums. On friday night, I saw IGS1B flaring merrily to itself. It travels very fast and the flare duration was only about 4 seconds. I didn't catch it, my watch isn't accurate enough, and I hadn't allowed for it. Tonight, Calsky predicted MetOp A, flaring at Mag -5. An absolute belter, at 2140. A bit early for the skies you might think, but I setup anyway with the Satcatcher, but even stopping the lens down to f22 (yes overkill and guaranteed to find all the DB's and diffraction central...) I still couldn't get the exposure down enough. So no image of the flare, but what a beauty in that blue blue sky. This one was also very short, maybe only 5 seconds again. It's interesting to see these others flare away.

My First NLC's

I've been trying to spot NLC's (Noctilucent Clouds) since I first heard of them last year. Well I did some research and worked out where to look, always a good start of course. The downside is, that most of that direction is covered by trees from my garden. I did get a glimpse through them though..









Then, after some thought, and trying a few different locations, including the bathroom window, I hit upon the plan of trying over the road at the front. Not being keen on taking the camera, at night onto public ground, but, twas the only way. The view was simply breathtaking and so eerie. The NLC's looked almost like clouds of electricity low in the north west.







And my favourite


I'll be on the look out for more.

More Moon images

A few images of the moon over the past couple of weeks. The lack of dark, and the weather is not helping my astronomy... Although I do now have a dual mount bar on the HEQ5 so the C80ED and the Konus are mounted side by side. This allows far more flexibility, so I could also mount the Skymax instead of the C80ED and guide that too now.

A couple of longer exposures with cloud about to see what sort of effects it produced





And I decided to get the C80ED out on the camera tripod for some Moon shots. These were all taken using a Kenko 2xTC. The 2" fittings compared to the Skymax means that I can get the blue sky colour and not have to deal with horrible vignetting.

ISS and Flares

I had a bash the other night, using the Skymax on the HEQ5 to try and image the ISS. The first pass, the sky was too light to try and align to use the Satellite Tracker on the lappy, so I tried releasing the clutches and manually tracking. Sounds easy, but it's not. I had the 450d and a 2xTC on the Skymax and struggled to get focused. I finally managed to get focus just as the ISS disappeared behind the house.

The following pass the sky was much darker, and I tried with the webcam instead. This time I was able to use the Satellite Tracker. I'm not 100% sure I setup correctly, but after PA'ing I ran a quick goto align, then after the ISS had crested the horizon told the software to track it. It seemed to do a good job of tracking, but was always a little behind and I couldn't get it to catch up, so again no results.

I will try this again.

There were a few clear spells allowing me to attempt a couple of flares with the Satcatcher. The first one I got was out of focus... not sure why, but I blew it.

The next one, was too dim against the bright sky.

Then, too low behind the hedge.

As the clouds were moving in, finally, the Mag -7 was bright enough, and high enough to catch.

450d with the nifty fifty, 30s, f2.2 ISO200. Iridium 49




Phew... First decent one in ages.

Some more Lunar fun

The weather has not been good for the past few days, but I have been able to get a few shots of the moon using the Skymax on a camera tripod.

This first one was using the 55-250 handheld, the vignetting on the Skymax is really bad on a single frame against the bright blue sky, this works so much better.



Then later on, I setup the Skymax



and a subtle colour



I ordered a motor focuser, designed for the NexStar 5, but given that it was 80% off, it was too good a bargain to miss out on, and I got to test it out last night, again the Skymax on the camera tripod. The sky was very misty, to the point, the moon had a very noticeable corona, that even came through on these shots, but I've been able to process them and it's gone.



and a colour



The motor focuser works very well, but doesn't fit on the scope easily. At the moment, it's wedged in place on the end of the dovetail, which works, but I need something a little more rigid to hold it in place. I've no ideas at present, but I'm sure something will come to me.

Moon and Flare

My back is still bad, so I didn't get the gear out. I did setup the Skymax on the camera tripod and grab a shot of the moon with the 450d



and with a subtle colour


And one flare, with the SatCatcher and the EF50mm, this lens is superb for this sort of thing as the wide aperture it can use lets in so much light, I don't need to ramp up the ISO..

Iridium 65 - Mag -5


I hope my back feels better soon, I want to try my hand at M101 and need the HEQ5 for that.