20090828 Sun

The sun remains silent, there's a filament somewhere if you carefully tune the Tmax, I nearly missed that one. There's a big prominence around and let's hope there's something great coming there. Seeing 3/10, transparency 6/10. Again, all captured using my Tele Vue Ranger with Solarmax 40 and BF10, low power taken with a 0.5x binoviewer corrector in the nosepiece of the BF10, higher power version taken with a Tele Vue 2x barlows, the camera is my DMK 31AF03.

1505 (GMT+8):-


1506 (GMT+8):-


1507 (GMT+8), Tmax adjusted to show that filament:-


1513 (GMT+8):-


1514 (GMT+8):-

20090815 Moon

Just snapshot with my Canon 100-400mm at widest and longest respectively.

1209 (GMT+8):-


1210 (GMT+8):-

20090822 Sun

Seeing 2/10, transparency 7/10.

1342 (GMT+8):-


1343 (GMT+8):-


1344, exposure further pushed to reveal the prominence loop (GMT+8):-


The sun is now in better location from inside my home, it's accessible earlier than before so that I could capture it on saturday as well. Good.

That prominence "cluster" might have an active region there, keep watching!

20090820 Solar Mosaic

This is my first day of my new semester, I still managed to find time to shoot today. The sun is still very silent, but the sky was pretty clear, so I proceeded to do a mosaic of around 4*4 frames, i.e. 16 frames to remove the sweetspot.

Click for full size, individual shots taken from 1623-1632 (GMT+8):


1633 (GMT+8), a very interesting detached prominence:-


1635 (GMT+8), another interesting prominence:-


Taken with my Ranger with 2x barlows, Solarmax 40 and BF10.

20090814 Sun

Very low activity again, transparency 5/10, seeing 5/10.

I did a simple experiment like this on the usage of the reducer. I pulled out the camera a little bit, i.e. the nosepiece is not all the way sit in the BF10, that results in stronger effective focal reduction, but it will require more in-travel. So my initial attempt shows that my scope has insufficient in-travel, so I pushed the DMK a little bit more into the BF10, still couldn't reach focus, so I further pushed it until a power where I can reach focus... that is the strongest reduction I could get with my given setup, and here are the results:





No need to mark the time, since there's virtually zero activity.

Stronger reducer for Solarmax 40?

With the sweatspot, we can either push up the power so that we only use the central part of the image, and then stitch the power up frames into a big uniform mosaic.

Or we can use a stronger reducer so that the whole solar disc lies in the sweatspot, that would again form a uniform image.

Make sense?

Problem is, I cannot push too much on the reduction factor since it would require excessive in-travel. But again I guess this idea could be employed to generate good and uniform solar image in H-alpha. Time to think more.

20090807 Sun

The typhoon is going to Taiwan, we have a little bit better weather here. Seeing 3/10, transparency 2/10. My usual setup, no high power shot due to extremely low activity. Maybe those who have bigger setup should try...

1455 (GMT+8):-


1456 (GMT+8):-

20090804 Sun

Typhoon coming, cloud moving extremely fast, I was about to give up but I got a cloud gap of around 30 seconds eventually. Guess what, I was about to settle with this short video:



But then I got a stackable AVI!



Patience is the king.

20090802 Sun

This is just a snapshot taken with my Canon 100-400mm, notice the thick foggy sky... nothing could be seen even for the sun, a "typhoon" is developing and coming.

Small stuff for sales

Let me know if you're interested in any of them, the price listed above the item is the expected price in paypal shipped to US or similar places. If you want several items at the same time, combined shipping discount will be offered, please contact me.

Meade 1.25" prism, $25 shipped.


Zoom Monocular 7-14x25, $30 shipped.


Philips ToUCam Pro with an extra-case plus the original egg like case as well as matching Mogg adapter and 1.25" Baader UV/IR blocker, $110 shipped.


Reducer lenses, good for DIY project, the red filter is placed along side for size comparison only and it DOES NOT included in this deal. The unmounted one is 30mm aperture f=122mm, and the mounted one is 21mm aperture f=200m. Both for $25 shipped.


From Nexstar mounts, both working with encoders, many Nexstar mount used these, $70 shipped for both of them.


Tele Vue 3x barlows optics in Chinese barlows body, effective magnification is still 3x, excellent quality! $55 shipped.


Plastic 1.25" focuser with very long focus travel, and also the 70mm objective below:-


70mm and f=500mm objective, very nice optical quality, to be sold with the above focuser at $50 shipped.



JMI 1.25" -> 2" visual back in compression ring, T-thread, $25 shipped.



Generic 2"->1.25" adapter with set screw, T-thread for $22 shipped.


JMI 2" nosepiece <=> SCT male thread (sold):-

20090801 Sun

Seeing 5/10, transparency 4/10. Again taken with my Ranger, with reducer on, that remnant is still doing fine, but I didn't go for a close up due to the poor transparency.

1632 (GMT+8):-


1633 (GMT+8):-