20061126 Solar/Lunar Observation

C5/PST and SM40/Ranger were used. Cloud moving very fast, very disturbing, poor seeing.

Ranger at prime focus, 1553 HKT:-


Ranger with 2x barlows, close up of AR926, 1602 HKT:-


C5/PST, 1530 HKT, processed with MAP:-


C5/PST, HKT 1533, a big prominence, processed with MAP:-


C5/PST, HKT 1539, another prominence, but this one is much dimmer so that I've to use 1/9s exposure at high gain, only 7.5 fps can be used:-


An animation made from four images separated by 4 minutes, click on it to show:-


Lunar observation is conducted at around 6PM HKT after coming back from a nearby playground with my daughters, all by C5 with/without the 2x barlows:-

C5 at prime focus, this one is the first time which I targeted at the wrinkles, to be exact, the Y shape long wrinkle is called Serpentine Ridge, the close by Gassendi like cracter is called Posidonius:-


C5 with 2x barlows, typical thing which I would do is to get close up of attractive craters on the moon, the guys on the stage is Theophilus, Cyrillus and Catharina:-


This one aims at to capture that two domes, name and whether they're really domes are pending to check:-

Observation logs in IM

H:- I went out on 8th Nov for mercury transit and of course, I failed, since it should be on 9th Nov instead. Anyway, it was quite nice since I could explore a better nearby place for the observation.

Finally on 9th of Nov, I managed to wake up at 07:50!!! Luckily, I could rush out to a nearby place to observe fairly quickly. I only got a very bad baader film (very old one) for my 12x DC, I didn't bring any telescope. Later I found that piece of baader film has light leakage, quite serious indeed and it actually hurt the performance, in particular the contrast a lot.

Anyway, I was blessed to be able to get a few shots with a tiny mercury dot.

(Later I believe it's not mercury but a large sunspot near the solar disc edge)

X:- We booked a car at 30RMB to go for a nearby "big grass field", it was very very dark except the headlight from the nearby highway, but it was enjoyable enough. I didn't regret that I finally pulled out all the mounts, telescopes out from our suitcase since it was so cold there, one couldn't stay there long enough for photography, also the battery which I planned to bring will not live long under this kind of adverse condition, it was well below -10 degree celcius.

My green laser pointer was unable to stand the cool and the battery drained so much that it didn't give a strong enough beam after a few minutes.

The 10x50 was very great. We didn't looked for a lot of targets except those obvious ones like double cluster, andromeda galaxy, pleaides, and those open clusters like M35/36/37/38. Scanning around the winter milkyway was a superb experience... it gave enough impression more than photography, more persistence I mean.

Our local friend failed to stay as long as we did, since she didn't wear enough apparently and she headed back for the car soon. We stayed there for less than an hour, lying on the withered grass land, watching meterior (more than 1 per minute), scanning around.

Totally amazed.

M31 was the most spectacular sight I ever saw about it, it extends all the way to fill up the field of view! That's the first time which I realized that it could be that huge...

20061104 Clear Sky!

Clear sky is must for everything, SM40/BF10/Ranger/DMK



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