Well.... thanks to Chet and Luc and Larry I finally was able to get my "observayurt" back into functional mode.... thanks again guys for the "kick in the pants" to get this going.
Spent last night setting up the mount and confirming that all the hardware was still working properly, with new firmware updates to the Celestron CGEM mount and NexStar handset controller. I can't see very much of the sky because of all the trees, and it doesn't get very dark because of the neighbor's porchlight and the corner streetlight, but I had fun exploring double stars, particularly the double-double Eta Lyrae, and was able (barely) to make out the Hercules globular cluster, the faint Ring Nebula and wispy dim Dumbbell nebula. But the main reason for the setup was to capture as much of the Solar Eclipse as I could. It was really hot outside, me sweating like the proverbial pig, and partly cloudy, but I did manage to get some pix of the eclipse. It was only about 65-70 percent full here. The photos look unreal, like something faked, but I assure you they are actually photos of the moon obscuring the sun! You can barely make out some roughness on the edge of the moon, caused by craters and mountains along the limb. The big sunspot chain that is visible on the full solar disk was covered up by the moon so there isn't really any detail on the face of the sun. A little editing, and here's what it looked like at just about the maximum totality, which happened at 1:09 pm CDT.
very nice "utilitarian" setup ,and a beautiful piece of equipment .. on a sturdy looking mount .
the Pic of the peak really doesn't look real,
we should all spend a bit more time looking up ... especially at night !!
Amazing !!
Thx
Chet
Don't forget that photographing super bright objects (stars, sun moon) can be difficult. The meter is not set up for it. You could try bracketing three stops a bracket and see what happens or if you have a good manual override, just keep taking shots and reducing the aperture two stops a time. Of course, in the olden days, this would have been expensive.
But I don't know how easy it is to burn the CCD target.
Well, it does depend on the camera's metering logic. Modern DSLRs have at least several options for metering: you can use the whole frame, just the center of the frame, or a defined rectangular area within the frame. You can have the camera display, in the viewfinder, the meter's "best guess" at exposure on a bar graph, and then you can choose your shutter speed manually for a selected degree of over or underexposure. Or you can have the camera choose the shutter speed automagically to give the "best" exposure in the previously selected area in the frame. I took a bunch of exposures during the eclipse, some on "full auto" with different areas selected for metering, some with manual shutter speeds based on the meter's indications, some bracketed around the suggested exposure, and so forth. According to the metadata for the above shot I used ISO 800, partial frame metering (center), and an exposure of 1/500 second which resulted in about 1/2 stop underexposure. Aperture and focal length are determined by the telescope and field-flattener-reducer of course so they don't appear in the metadata, but come out to about f/6 for the setup used here.
I usually underexpose astrophotographs because digital processing can stretch (akin to push-processing for film) the histogram and bring out contrast and brightness, whereas overexposure that saturates the sensor just results in lost data, nothing can be done with that.
Toys of friends of mine that I get to play with: SoftwareBisque.com (http://www.overunityresearch.com/SoftwareBisque.com)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeVJ_L6dRlE&feature=youtu.be (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeVJ_L6dRlE&feature=youtu.be)
That's a nice rig all right. The Paramount line of mounts are certainly among the top-line setups for the amateur. It is a bit pricey for my blood though. I'm surprised it's not located inside some kind of observatory structure. Is there a sliding or otherwise mobile shelter arrangement there?
http://www.bisque.com/sc/shops/store/All+Products/Robotic+Telescope+Mount/default.aspx?PageIndex=0
My own system is the heaviest _portable_ system that I could handle by myself, in addition to being the most expensive I could possibly afford, back when I was still "gainfully employed". I went without lunches for months to be able to pay for my rig. Here's the CGEM mount + 9.25" EdgeHD + ShortTube80 guidescope "on location" in Atascosa County, along with an image obtained with this rig and the Orion Parsec M8300 monochrome CCD camera + RGBL filters:
Quote from: giantkiller on 2017.08.24, 15:53:38
Toys of friends of mine that I get to play with: SoftwareBisque.com (http://www.overunityresearch.com/SoftwareBisque.com)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeVJ_L6dRlE&feature=youtu.be (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeVJ_L6dRlE&feature=youtu.be)
I wonder if that motorisation is fast enough to keep up with the space station. I've always thought it might be fun to see what sort of image one might get.
The image is likely to be so small that the bracketing method might be the best. If the camera has an auto bracket facility, ( -5,-3,-1, 1, 3, 5 ), that would be useful on the orbit prior to the preferred orbit. Then, on the preferred orbit, 1hr 32 mins later, the bracketing could be sharpened up. Once the best exposure is determined, that is fixed.
space station eclipse transit [3rd party not NASA
3:27 mark actual speed [get an idea of speed.....difficulty tracking ??
3:48---sequence slowed down
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=space+station+transiting+solar+eclipse+youtube+smarter+everyday&qpvt=space+station+transiting+solar+eclipse+youtube+smarter+everyday&view=detail&mid=88902098908E55F70FC688902098908E55F70FC6&FORM=VRDGAR
I hope you fare well with hurricane Harvey these next few days
Quote from: Chet K on 2017.08.25, 16:54:48
3:27 mark actual speed [get an idea of speed.....difficulty tracking ??
3:48---sequence slowed down
I'm not too sure but I reckon the angular tracking speed will depend on the position in the sky and the magnification, the effective focal length. But it can be seen by inspection easily enough.
I suspect that the shutter speed will be faster than one would imagine.
This will answer all your questions:
The U.S. Ari Force has bought over 50 of these and stood them around the planet for monitoring the object inventory in the skies. The enemy is now sailing spies through the trash-o-sphere to try and gain a foot hold on things they should not see. The idea is to process 25k images per scope a night, real time, to observe any renegades. Also check out the Dragonfly observatory: http://astronomynow.com/2015/05/26/dragonflys-compound-eye-reveals-very-faint-galaxy-structure/ (http://astronomynow.com/2015/05/26/dragonflys-compound-eye-reveals-very-faint-galaxy-structure/)
and check out the slew rate.
There are many a greater things going on which are not in our purview. But I have seen things that are far beyond reality in this set of tools.
We went up to Buena Vista to photgraph coronal mass ejections. We got a medium one that had an arc with a 4 million mile radius from the inception point in 4 seconds. You read that correctly. We saw light and matter travel at 1 million miles per second. I questioned the qualified members right there about this anomaly. They responded 'We don't talk about that.' I repeated myself and said 'I know what I saw.' They all turned and walked away. My buddy, whose equipment it was just winked at me, 'Its not worth the argument.'
A new subject [ photo ?] approaches .
http://www.newsweek.com/biggest-asteroid-nasa-records-flyby-earth-657444
You can use this site to determine the exact coords (RA and DEC, or ALT_AZ) for 3122 Florence at whatever time you want:
http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/iau/MPEph/MPEph.html
Output looks like this for me tonight:
03122 [H=14.1]
Date UT R.A. (J2000) Decl. Delta r El. Ph. V Sky Motion Object Sun Moon Uncertainty info
h m s "/min P.A. Azi. Alt. Alt. Phase Dist. Alt. 3-sig/" P.A.
... Suppressed ...
2017 09 01 010000 21 03 15.0 -01 51 03 0.047 1.052 154.9 24.0 8.7 23.66 344.8 289 +26 -02 0.75 040 +37 N/A N/A / Map / Offsets
2017 09 01 020000 21 02 49.9 -01 28 12 0.047 1.052 154.6 24.3 8.7 23.73 344.4 299 +38 -15 0.75 040 +41 N/A N/A / Map / Offsets
2017 09 01 030000 21 02 24.2 -01 05 19 0.047 1.052 154.4 24.5 8.7 23.79 344.2 314 +49 -27 0.75 040 +40 N/A N/A / Map / Offsets
2017 09 01 040000 21 01 58.1 -00 42 25 0.047 1.052 154.1 24.7 8.7 23.83 344.1 335 +57 -37 0.76 039 +36 N/A N/A / Map / Offsets
2017 09 01 050000 21 01 31.9 -00 19 29 0.047 1.052 153.9 25.0 8.7 23.86 344.0 004 +60 -46 0.76 039 +29 N/A N/A / Map / Offsets
2017 09 01 060000 21 01 05.7 +00 03 27 0.047 1.052 153.6 25.2 8.7 23.86 344.1 032 +56 -51 0.76 039 +20 N/A N/A / Map / Offsets
2017 09 01 070000 21 00 39.6 +00 26 24 0.047 1.052 153.4 25.5 8.7 23.85 344.3 052 +48 -51 0.77 038 +10 N/A N/A / Map / Offsets
2017 09 01 080000 21 00 14.0 +00 49 22 0.047 1.052 153.1 25.7 8.8 23.82 344.6 066 +36 -47 0.77 038 -02 N/A N/A / Map / Offsets
2017 09 01 090000 20 59 48.9 +01 12 19 0.047 1.051 152.8 26.0 8.8 23.77 344.9 077 +24 -38 0.77 038 -14 N/A N/A / Map / Offsets
2017 09 01 100000 20 59 24.5 +01 35 16 0.047 1.051 152.6 26.2 8.8 23.72 345.3 085 +11 -27 0.78 037 -26 N/A N/A / Map / Offsets
... Suppressed ...
Will I be out there tonight looking for it? Probably not.
This is a nice image showing what you might expect in a photo from the backyard:
(http://wwwcdn.skyandtelescope.com/wp-content/uploads/3122-Florence-by-Gianluca-Masi-m.jpg)
QuoteA 60-second exposure with a large amateur telescope on August 28, 2017, records asteroid 3122 Florence (bright dot in center). The telescope tracked the apparent motion of the object, so stars are trailing. The long vertical trail on the left is the geostationary satellite AMC-14. The asteroid was about 5 million miles (8 million km) from Earth.
Gianluca Masi / Virtual Telescope Project
The ultimate solar astrophotography site:
https://www.helioviewer.org/
Quote from: TinselKoala on 2017.09.08, 15:14:28
The ultimate solar astrophotography site:
https://www.helioviewer.org/
Very good site O0
A lot of sun activity lately which might be the cause of Earth events .
Regards
Mike 8)
On my way to Astro photo workshop in 15mins :) those rigs look great
Quote from: TinselKoala on 2017.09.08, 15:14:28
The ultimate solar astrophotography site:
https://www.helioviewer.org/
I have used this one where you type in the month instead of mm and the day instead of dd. Use preceding "0" where applicable (i.e. today would be 2017/09/09. not the most convenient, I must say:
https://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/browse/2017/mm/dd/ahead/euvi/195/512/
Alas, NASA have broken the other one, Stereo B. Careless fellows, but we mustn't grumble. We have much to be grateful for (along with Burt Rutan).
Got to play with some coronado scopes. That was interesting. Here's a shot from my backyard. The moon is out 3/4 hence the blue sky and lit foreground.
Pretty. You can see the galaxy in the upper right.
Do you have that image in a full, raw, uncompressed format that you could send me to play with? I can't do much with the png except remove some of the blue and adjust the curves to make the colors of the galaxy stand out a little more. But if you have a raw uncompressed version I might be able to do more.
I'm getting a new lens f2.8 so I take some pics of Milky way. That was just one still from a 3 hour time lapse sequence.
I put this on gdrive as YT compression kills the quality. The time lapse I did last night on my 7d MkII 18-35 f3.5 20"exp 1600ISO then batch stitched together in Time Lapse Assembler for OSX
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BznWQjS-OxzPVWlsVW5sd3BDM2s (86MB)
Tonight I'll be attempting to capture the movement around the south celestial pole but it may not be possible with this lens. The general consensus seems to be Samyang 14mm 2.8 . I think I'll need that aperture to get good definition of the Milky Way.
btw I'd be interested in your thoughts on the various light shows. Some are aircraft, space junk etc but there is one around the 5" mark if you go though frame by frame. It's a weird one because of how long it stays in the video. It's in for 10 frames so 400secs but does not move very far. The exp are for 20" then pause for 10sec. I can't do longer exposures with this lens without getting star trails. I can share the individual pix if anyone wants a close look.
Nice time lapse!
You must mean this thing. I think it's an airplane or helicopter, coming in from a long distance away. I count about 19 flashes in one 20 second frame, so that fits with a blinking red rotating beacon or strobe/nav light kind of thing. A slow moving airplane coming in on a trajectory almost towards the camera, so it doesn't move sideways much as it comes towards you.
Yes, please send me a few single frames, as raw and uncompressed as possible, right out of the camera in its raw format if possible. I'd like to see what I can get out of the raw data. There is usually a lot of image information that can be pulled out by stretching histograms, modifying color curves, sharpening and noise reduction, etc. but a lot of this potential image data is lost when shrinking image and compressing from the raw camera format to jpg or png or other methods. One would usually work on enhancing the raw frames first, then put the processed images together for the slide show or time lapse.
I used gimp and PixInsightLE to get this enhanced, cropped, enlarged, stretched, noise-reduced and color curved detail from one of the frames of your time-lapse. Could probably do a lot better if I had the raw frame from the camera, if it didn't automagically already compress internally.
Damn my posts never made it.
Ok that wasn't it. check around Frame 130 TDC. Satellite I guess, I have not looked up the time stamp with known flybys yet.
the trajectory of this "thing" from Vega ??
is uncanny IMO
https://twitter.com/tony873004/status/923109368903622656
I'm such a lump these days. The weather has been astro-perfect the last few days, so I set up the telescope
in the observa-yurt during the day on Wednesday... then fell asleep and didn't actually look through it.
Same yesterday evening-- all set up, but too lazy to take the roof-tarp off, and went to sleep, no observing
at all. Bad, bad astronomer, no donut for me.
Scope is still set up but we've had some kind of frontal passage and it's windy and partly cloudy. Don't
know if I'll have the energy to look through the scope tonight either.
All the lights from the neighbors and the new LED streetlight on the corner have me really bummed out.
It's never dark in the backyard any more.
I have this nice expensive bandblock photographic filter for mercury and sodium streetlight scatter... but of course its blocking
wavelengths are wrong for the LED streetlights. And that damn thing is _bright_.
light pollution is ruff these days ,all the new streetlight LED's are extra crispy ...
when it comes to Lumens and street safety the Light rules the night .
Quote from: TinselKoala on 2017.10.27, 16:54:27
... for the LED streetlights. And that damn thing is _bright_.
You could approach the offending streetlight with a ladder and a tin of black paint and improve the edges where the beam is useless anyway.
Why I don't like driving at night these days, the led tail lights give me red eye :'(
Regards
mike 8)
opportunity knocks, this time a photo opp next time perhaps a real knock??
http://www.newsweek.com/potentially-hazardous-asteroid-3200-phaethon-will-pass-earth-sunday-and-you-750356
Have you seen the stars tonight?
nice shot TK. What lens?
Thanks!
I've lost the full image data (stacking, exposure times and numbers) but I used the William Optics Megrez 90 apo refractor, at about 600mm fl and f/6.5, and the TeleVue field flattener/reducer, into the Canon DSLR. Took a handful of image frames, some dark frames and some flats, stacked them all together in DeepSkyStacker, then processed the result in PixInsight and gimp. The diffraction spikes on the brightest stars come from a little trick: A "crosshairs" set made of black thread that I mounted on the front of the telescope.
Capturing the bluish nebulosity around the main stars of the Pleiades has been a real challenge for me. I captured a bit of it in that image, but there is much more that can be caught. I'm still trying....
I came across this video tutorial today. It's a demonstration of Darktable, a freeware photo editing package, as applied to astrophotography.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Yq60o5yQsg
It's kind of long and he goes really fast, but I couldn't look away. He also has some more basic tutorials on his channel, so that should keep me busy for a while.
Fascinating video O0
Thanks, TK.
Quote from: TinselKoala on 2017.12.24, 02:53:30
Thanks!
I've lost the full image data (stacking, exposure times and numbers) but I used the William Optics Megrez 90 apo refractor, at about 600mm fl and f/6.5, and the TeleVue field flattener/reducer, into the Canon DSLR. Took a handful of image frames, some dark frames and some flats, stacked them all together in DeepSkyStacker, then processed the result in PixInsight and gimp. The diffraction spikes on the brightest stars come from a little trick: A "crosshairs" set made of black thread that I mounted on the front of the telescope.
Capturing the bluish nebulosity around the main stars of the Pleiades has been a real challenge for me. I captured a bit of it in that image, but there is much more that can be caught. I'm still trying....
wow nice work indeed. What's the max exp time you can get on that combo and not leave star trails?
Quote from: JimBoot on 2017.12.29, 10:20:43
wow nice work indeed. What's the max exp time you can get on that combo and not leave star trails?
Thanks! Depends on how carefully I can get the mount aligned, (Celestron CGEM) and whether or not I am using guiding. Two or three minutes when not guiding, and basically unlimited if guiding (using Stark Labs "PhD" "push here dummy" guiding software and the Orion Short Tube 80 guidescope setup). My main problem with long exposures isn't usually tracking or guiding accuracy, but rather "skyglow" from all the light pollution hereabouts. And it's worse now that they have changed all the streetlights to LED. I have a photographic filter that cuts sodium and mercury vapor lighting but it doesn't work so well with the new LED light spectra. So ten minutes per exposure is pretty much my practical limit due to light pollution. But if something happens (and it often does) then I lose time, so I generally limit to 5 minutes max and just take a bunch of frames and stack them in DeepSkyStacker (Free software) or Stark Labs Nebulosity (not free but worth the cost). I generally use Nebulosity for controlling the camera and saving the frames. DSLRshutter is another free application from Stark Labs that works well if all you need to do is to control the DSLR exposures and sequencing.
A few years ago I installed a concrete pier for the mount so I don't have to use the tripod. It's a lot more stable, but when a truck goes past I still get vibration that can ruin an exposure. It's a tradeoff: Longer exposures mean a given incident of vibration doesn't affect the image as much, but longer exposures also mean more chances for vibration to happen during the exposure.
I also have Maxim DL (quite costly, "professional" amateur astrophoto software) but it is so complicated that I never actually use it.
So, when seriously imaging, I have the mount connected to the laptop, and I'm running PhD with the Orion guidescope to keep the system on target, and Nebulosity to control the camera and save the exposures. It's a maze of cables. Laptop > USB hub > mount, guidescope camera and imaging camera.
This is the result from a stack of ten-minute exposures of the Rosette nebula, taken with the Parsec monochrome cooled CCD camera.
Quote from: Paul-R on 2017.10.28, 14:15:08
You could approach the offending streetlight with a ladder and a tin of black paint and improve the edges where the beam is useless anyway.
Heh... that's a good idea, especially now in winter that the trees have shed leaves and no longer block the direct view from the light to my observayurt ... but it would probably get me arrested! ???
Quote from: TinselKoala on 2017.12.29, 15:29:45
Heh... that's a good idea, especially now in winter that the trees have shed leaves and no longer block the direct view from the light to my observayurt ... but it would probably get me arrested! ???
There are some new LED street lamp heads which are very directional and much more energy efficient. You might be able to persuade the local authority to swop them in. It will pay them in the end. I may be able to provide precise details but not for a couple of weeks.
wow TK that's great info. I'm yet to get a scope, it's on the list though. I'm pretty lucky with light pollution here. I'll be going wide before going deep. A Samyang 14mm 2.8 is also on aforementioned list :)
Imagine finding some of this?
a piece from the solar system before it was formed.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/mysterious-ancient-egyptian-rock-made-091001866.html
I'm interested in what telescope + camera combinations you guys are using, or would like to acquire. Intriguing stuff, world-wide really.
IIRC, Ouamuamua was first found by an amateur astronomer.
NEWS: https://www.foxnews.com/science/israel-set-to-launch-historic-moon-landing-mission?cmpid=NL_SciTech
4th nation to soft-land on the moon, and explore?