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):-

20090730 Sun

Rainy, sunny and cloudy these days. It sounds funny but it's real, and therefore, if you have to shoot, you need to be patient. Everything taken with my trusty setup consisting of the modified Tele Vue Ranger with a JMI NGF-CM, Coronado Solarmax 40 with BF10, and then tracked by Meade LXD55. With the introduction of the new tube ring, the whole setup is far more stable and much better balance and it is a pleasure to use.

First is a full disc shot taken with the reducer, 1612 (GMT+8):-


Push up the exposure to show the prominence better, 1613 (GMT+8):-


And then I put the Tele Vue Powermate 5x in the optical chain, I believe that I've forgotten to remove the reducer this time.

1616 (GMT+8), this active complex is getting weaker:-


1617 (GMT+8), the small emerging (or dying) active spot:-


1619 (GMT+8), finally, one of those tall prominence:-


Nice day indeed, and when I packed up my stuff, it's totally covered.

20090729 Moon

Hazy sky, captured with a Canon 100-400mm wide open with Kenko 2x (f/11 effective), contrast detected autofocusing in LiveView mode. I need better sky to test again.



ISO 800, spot metering, IS off, RAW, stacked of 10 frames by Registax V5.

20090729 Sun

Seeing 4/10, transparency 6/10. Tele Vue Ranger with NGF-CM, Solarmax 40 with BF10, DMK 31AF03 tracked by Meade LXD55.

1446 (GMT+8), with reducer:-


1452 (GMT+8), with 5x Tele Vue Powermate:-


That active complex is quite interesting, the few bright spots at the middle are nice as well.

DIY reducer experiments

I have two small objective lens, one is 30mm f=122 and the other one is 21mm f=200mm. They might be suitable as the optics for a webcam/eyepiece reducer project.

For the mounting, I've some cheap 1.25" filter lying around and I can remove the filter glass and replace them with one of the lens above. The 30mm lens is a bit too big for this purpose, but still, I can stick the lens on the filter mount so that they could be attached to eyepiece/webcam. The 21mm lens fits nicely within the filter mount.

Both of them works basically. However, with my transformed Ranger, I found that both of them failed to reach focus, I need around 5mm more in-travel. So, I will probably need to give up.

Having said that, there's still one more way to try, i.e. to mount that 21mm lens directly inside the BF10 for solar imaging, but I will need to invent a good detachable way.

--

Put that 21mm lens inside the BF10 still failed, since this lens has rather long focal length and the big reduction factor requires more in-travel.

20090728 Sun

Seeing 2/10, transparency 6/10 without much cloud around.

1645 (GMT+8), with reducer:-


1646 (GMT+8), with reducer:-


1645 (GMT+8), with 5x:-

For Sales: Planet Imaging Solutions

Let me know if you're interested. Here is what's included in the deal:

First of all, this is a small notebook from Sony.



The detail specifications:

- Sony Vaio U3 ultra small notebook
- 820 grams only
- Size: 185 x 140 x 32mm
- Crusoe 933MHz CPU, 512M RAM, 20G hard disk
- RJ45 network, PCMCIA, USB * 2, 1394 * 1, VGA out, audio in/out
- Battery life around 1.2 hour (rarely used)
- Installed with Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux

Mine is upgraded to 512M RAM and even comes with a PCG-DA1S cable to connect to VGA directly. I will also include a Asus Wi Fi as well as a USB 2.0 PCMCIA card as well. No drop frame when used with the ToUCam Pro.

Secondly, this is a ToUCam Pro with an extra case if you prefer the newer look. The original lens is included as well as an Mogg adapter to connect to any 1.25" focuser, threaded for filter. Finally, a Baader UV/IR blocker is included. This filter is very useful for imaging Mars.


All items for $420 USD including paypal fee and shipping to US or similar destinations, or you can take the package without the notebook at $120 USD shipped.

A very nice free filter box

I have several color filters, plus two filters for my Herschel wedge. Those color filters do have their own box, but the cover is made by glass, so I never use them in the field since they will be broken very easily and it could be quite dangerous. And for other filters, I found it quite troublesome to open each box, take them out and put them back every time... Having so many boxes at once is pretty bad.

Today, I've received a new filter which is for my Canon 100-400mm, and that box fits all of my filters very nicely. Great free box.

20090723 New active region forming

Most people will forget about the sun after those special events, but as a solar "addict", I definitely won't. I even hear someone who had become a solar addict after watching a couple of totality.

I setup my Ranger with the new ring, and now the 410 head can be removed and that improves the stability greatly. Don't get me wrong, the 410 head is very stable, but that's its weight and the raised profile on an offset platform which upset the performance of the whole LXD55, now it works very nicely. Good news to me indeed, since it's less than $10 USD to solve this problem.



Let's go back to the photographs, you can see three very bright dots near the center of the solar disc. The prominence loop which we saw yesterday was gone. As you can see from the above shot, the sky was pretty covered... It's not bad since I managed to take two shots!

1509 (GMT+8):-


1511 (GMT+8):-

Ranger fully transformed

Today I used the tube ring of my Canon 100-400mm and it does not work very well, it actually slided when we're observing, but as expected, there is no room for the scope to drop out. And after the observation, I got a new ring which is a third party ring for the Canon 70-200mm f2.8 and it does not fit well. Again, this is expected and I placed some padding material and now it's very firm unlike this morning. This ring will stay with my Ranger and the ring for the Canon 100-400mm can be returned to its intended partner :-)



Now the transformed Ranger is ready for any serious battle under the starry sky or sunny sky!