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20160326 Sun

The sky cleared up, with seeing 4/10 and transparency 7/10.

Sharpcap upgrades again from 2.7 to 2.8 this time, and it's apparently faster.

Taken at 0453 (UT), using the "skip mode", i.e. to skip some pixels in order to burst the frame rate at the expense of lower resolution:

Another one at 0523 (UT), using near full resolution (crop a bit), the frame rate is much slower, and it might result in some field rotations... a much bigger file (nearly 9G of data), but high resolution full disc shot in a single capture!

A new member

I always love my trusty Canon 10x30 IS, it's so portable and powerful... even its rubber coating was damaged by the DEET a few years ago.

I got a good deal recently on a Canon 18x50 IS!  I had always been looking for something like that, for example, I suffered from a broken Canon 15x50 IS before from ebay which costs me the return shipping cost and so much frustration!  Finally, this is a local deal which is about perfect!

IS works very nicely and with the higher power and the heavier weight, I expect it won't be as great as the Canon 10x30 IS for the stability, but the added aperture, and the far higher power is going to shine!

Longing to use it in the field!

I guess it will be a great partner to be used with wild camping trips.

--

2016/3/27 night:-

The sky cleared up a bit with transparency 3/10, I picked it up for some scanning from inside my home.

I saw nothing when I pointed it to the muddy sky.  However, after engaging the IS, stars popped up from the view, and the stars are pinpoint!  I could see the subtle color differences between stars, but then there is no chromatic aberration except on a few brightest stars, but I suspect they might be from atmospheric dispersion or effect of poor seeing.

I am pleasantly surprised by its optical quality.  High power scanning with image stabilization is just fantastic! 

20160309 Partial Solar Eclipse

My original plan was dull and boring, i.e. making high resolution H-alpha eclipse shots.  But the sky was so bad earlier this morning rendered this plan impossible.  So armed with my Canon 70D with a 100-400mm lens, and a 20 years old thousands oaks solar filter, what can I do?

I did a field trip yesterday night to see whether the location is suitable or not.

And this was how it looks this morning:-

Gave up? Not yet...

At 0814 (GMT+8), I first saw a hint of the sun...

Then at 0821 (GMT+8), it was even better

Soon I realized that I could take some images which clear sky would not allow, this was taken at 0844 (GMT+8),

Another mug shot at 0835 (GMT+8),

The sun was climbing up, taken at 0844 (GMT+8),

The sky was once cleared enough so that my filter must be used, taken at 0857 (GMT+8),

More shots with terrestrial object at 0920 (GMT+8),

Another one at 0922 (GMT+8),

The last one at 0954 (GMT+8),

Something that couldn't be done with great sky...