Category Archives: Astronomy

Sunspot Imaging with the Lifecam Cinema

Posted on October 3, 2012 by james

I was out doing some solar imaging recently and tried to get my son a bit more interested in the world that exists outside various electronic games devices by getting him to get some sunspot images using my modded Lifecam … Continue reading →

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Observation Report 8 September 2012

Posted on October 3, 2012 by james

Another moonlit night washing the less bright objects out, but clear enough to step out with the 10″ dob again… First up was M39 in Cygnus. I found this one tricky to locate, but eventually got to it starting from … Continue reading →

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Observation Report 6 September 2012

Posted on October 3, 2012 by james

Very poor seeing on this particular night. I couldn’t even be sure I could make out the four stars in the “body” of Usra Minor, so the conditions were clearly not at all good. Nonetheless I got out for a … Continue reading →

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EQ3-2 motor gearbox reduction ratio

Posted on October 2, 2012 by james

I’ve decided there’s nothing more I can do with my EQ3-2 mechanics to improve the backlash that’s painfully obvious in the DEC axis. What backlash there is left (about twelve seconds at the 8x speed when changing direction) appears to … Continue reading →

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Observation Report 21 August 2012

Posted on September 28, 2012 by james

This was my first decent length session with the 10″ dob and a good night for it. Checking Ursa Minor suggested a NELM of at least 5.70, so I shan’t be complaining in that respect, although there was a small … Continue reading →

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Arrival of my 27mm Tele Vue Panoptic

Posted on September 28, 2012 by james

Whilst my Baader Genuine Orthos are fine in my 10″ dob the largest focal length I have is 18mm and the longer focal length lenses I have from my Revelation kit just aren’t up to coping with such a fast … Continue reading →

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Comparison of JPEG and RAW White Light Solar Image Exposure Times

Posted on September 22, 2012 by james

I almost didn’t post this because I can’t quite believe the results are so poor for the second image, but here it is. I’ll try again tomorrow if the weather holds out. A stack of 60 images, processed from RAW … Continue reading →

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Comparison of JPEG and RAW White Light Solar Images

Posted on September 22, 2012 by james

These two images were taken from the same imaging run, 60 of 120 images stacked, 1/1000th @ ISO100. The RAW files were processed with PIPP, but I couldn’t get Registax to process the TIFF files produced by PIPP from the … Continue reading →

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Another wide field Andromeda Galaxy Attempt

Posted on September 22, 2012 by james

Fresh from my previous attempt at this I repeated the process, but this time in the capture application (APT) I pushed the live view zoom up to 10x and set the emulated ISO setting to 1600 with an exposure as … Continue reading →

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Widefield Andromeda Galaxy

Posted on September 22, 2012 by james

This is the first time I’ve ever attempted this sort of image. I left the telescopes in the house for this one, just taking out the Canon 450D and 200mm f/2.8L lens on my unguided EQ3-2 mount. I shot ten … Continue reading →

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