29/10

Poor seeing, no electricity night.

Tried b/w cam for 5x with Sky90, stacked with a 2x on top later as well.

Finally, the color one is the best, 5x only.

Three solar observations

22/Oct: Went to a playground (football field!!!!) to observe the sun briefly with my friend, he has taken some afocal shots with his Coolpix 4500 with 18mm ortho afocally, I just had a look, no sunspots but some QRF and some nice prominence.

22/Oct: Did some b/w webcam solar imaging inside home when Alby was sleeping, found a tiny crack on the CCD protective window, I got to track it poorly in order to erase that crack after stacking. Need to find a long term solution for b/w solar imaging. The result was not bad, afterall. I even got an 1 hour sleep afterward. :-)

23/Oct: Did some afocal imaging inside home when Alby was sleeping, should not give any decent result, time to give up that camera since it gives too much compression.

I also processed some AVI from that camera, even with -EV, it still overexposed crazily and the images are compressed way too much, can use G channel for surface detail and R channel for prominence. File close.

Short Martian imaging

I did a short observation this morning from 0400-0430.

LXD55 was used in a non-polar aligned manner, just hand track with the control box, Ranger is used without a counter weight to maximize the clearance to be used at home, and to point outside as much as possible.

At 5x, very low gain is used with the color ToUCam Pro, transparency was nice, but cloud was floating around, making imaging a nightmare especially without tracking. I can only get a single clip with around 500 frames.

Preliminary processing reveals the detail on the Mars, despite the small image scale, I believe I caught the dust storm too, and it's already very BIG. Got to find chance to shoot in the street, or else I will get a dust filled featureless globe soon.

Playing afocal

Got a short break yesterday during Almy sleep, did some non-tracked afocal shots with my father's A85 instead of webcam again, this camera has a lens more suited for afocal imaging, those QRF should be the original strong 798.

813 and ghost of 798

813 was not too small... binoviewing shows it all even at moderate power.

that so called ghost of 798 was several filaments... some nice prominence at the edge.

I did took one white light and a h-alpha image as well, cloudy at first but cleared around before sunset...

was a sick leave... slept and then did it, a bonus.

First look on Mars in 2005

This morning around 5:30am, I had the first look on Mars in 2005.

Mars was very high in the sky, barely ok with my Ranger, not EQ mounted but with the tripod pushed against the window and using the 410 head. The 410 head still works very well.

I used my Ranger since C8 was not useable at that viewing angle. With my 20mm widescan, the field was filled with stars, missed that feeling for long. Panning around with that slow motion control was nice, very enjoyable experience.

With the 20mm, and even the 13mm Nagler, the image was dead small and super bright, enough to wash out any detail... chromatic abberation is very very obvious.

Adding the 5x barlows revealed the detail inside, chromatic abberation is not much worsen, and I could see it's the "X" side of the Mars, polar ice cap was briefly detected, also those hazy atmosphere around the limb.

Everything was done within around 20 minutes, since no imaging can be done, packed up very quickly, missed this feeling for long.

Short solar observation

SM40/BF10 Ranger 13mm nagler

had a brief look, very quite, can see a small active region, barely resolvable.

a medium sized prominence at the edge, extends inside the solar disc to form the most notable filament at the time.

1 Oct 2005, afternoon around 4:30p HKT