It's been a while...

Winter is definitely here, so here's hoping for some good Moon sightings!

Since I last posted here I've bought a proper camera, a Nikon D3100 DSLR with remote shutter activation and a t-ring adapter. The adapter lets me put the DSLR (with the lens taken off) where the eyepiece would normally go. This means I can take stable photos, but at the expense of zooming in. Since there's no eye piece, nor lens on the camera, it means I'm pretty far away from the subject. Fear not, I'm working on cobbling something together.

The main problem with using the DSLR and an eyepiece is that the camera sensor is a short distance away from the eyepiece so what may be a good focus for the eye (against the eyepiece) is no good for the sensor. Tweaking the focus is, of course, possible but sometimes the eyepiece is just not suitable for the sensor/distance. My latest botch is to slide the extended part of the telescope in/out to get focus. It's not ideal. Sometimes it'll look sharp as a pin on the DSLR screen, but on viewing the photo it'll be blurred.

Oh well, trial and (lots of) error(s).

Here are some recent photos of the full moon we had the other night. These were taken with the DSLR held against the 15mm eyepiece with the above botched method.

Chapter 4 and the Moon

Making a start on Chapter 4. So far it's trying to describe the indescribable (which isn't easy) when it comes to the shape/curvatures of spacetime. Anyway, I'm still one week ahead of schedule.  :)

Last night was the first time I'd had the Moon in a decent position to get the telescope out and have a looksy at it. Tried several different filters, cameras, webcams, phone... you name it. Still couldn't get a decent photo. Best I could get was:

I then settled for drawing the Moon:

I even recorded the entire drawing process, so you can see it being drawn (25mins) at:

Chapter 3 and more Aladin

Chapter 3 was a long one, but they saved the best to last with the Chapter 3 activities being more tinkering in Aladin.

Aladin uses FITS files which contain a lot of information regarding the photo. So, when you load a FITS file into Aladin you can see, using scientific notation (hours, minutes, etc.) where you are in the sky. Aladin also uses layers (like Photoshop) which lets you blend images. You can also create fake colour images.

Taking three layers (each image being photographed with a different type of light capturing camera):

You can apply an RGB to each of the layers to get a fake coloured image:

Having tinkered with it a bit more, Aladin seems kinda low on features, but that might just be ignorance on my part.

To Chapter 4 and beyond!

Chapters 1 and 2, and Aladin

From one of the online OU activities it seems like we'll be using some high-brow scientific software. Aladin to be precise (and, yes, that is how you spell it).

Aladin opens with a completely unintuitive amount of options. Thankfully it has an undergraduate mode which hides most of its complexity. Although, I've still no idea how to fully work the thing. One activity is to load up a FITS image (shown above), zoom in/out of it, tinker with its colours (or lack of) and import an online database of stars and what-not. Techie, and geeky. Thus it has my approval.


MOAR ALADDIN!  :D

It Has Begin: OU S177 - Galaxies, Stars and Planets

Well, when I say 'started' I mean 'hobbled'. <snip>

I'm rewriting this post as, to be fair to OU, the course doesn't officially start until the 12th of May, so I'm being a tad harsh on them,

The course unofficially started on the 08th of May with the rather awful website that I posted about previously. Now, today (09th), they've updated the site to be far more helpful with actual activities using the Aladin (Java based) software and some questions and video files. Hell, there's even a forum for us S177 folks now! Hoorah!

The Moon and The OU

Although the course doesn't start until the first week in May, I got my Open University text book the other day!

I thought it was going to just be your bog standard here's-what-Mars-looks-like type thing, but it has formulas, big numbers and will, apparently, require a scientific calculator! Oh dear...

Last night was pretty cloudless which meant I could not only see the Moon, but I could try out my camera mount thingy I got a while ago:

Which resulted in some nice Moon photos. Here's one:

I'm getting the hang of remembering to flip the image horizontally and vertically to take into account of the telescope mirrors.  :)

Camera mount and more lunacy.

Bought a cheap camera mount to see if it'll improve my photography any. Doubt it, but you never know. The eyepiece goes through it and into the usual slot, only problem is that the ring of the camera mount stops the eyepiece from going all the way in, so can't focus properly. Many minutes of filing later, it works. The camera screws into a sliding piece on a rod, and that rod slides up and down the rod that connects near the eyepiece. It's impossible to use for any pin-point precision as you can't mount the camera then easily look into the eyepiece. The camera screen becomes the eyepiece. Good for the moon/sun/Jupiter, but useless for star clusters.

Anyway, put it to the test last night with the (near full) moon:

The photo above was taken with a 25mm eyepiece (with moon filter) and 12MP camera on the camera mount. It was then processed in GIMP to remove the green moon filter tint to give it a nice blue tint. Came out quite well methinks.

On the camera phone front, I've had to buy a new phone. It seems that it's near impossible to find a Sony Ericsson Xperia PLAY camera module, so I'll be selling that on eBay shortly. Instead, I now have a shiny new LG Optimus 2X with 8MP camera.

The Sun, The Moon, you name it!

Caught a quick glimpse of the Sun this afternoon and grabbed a photo of it:

Couple of big sun spots today. Again, according to maps of the Sun, the entire earth could easily fit into that spot on the left of the Sun. Wow!

Even the Moon made an appearance this evening. At about 8pm it was near Jupiter in the West:

Even though there wasn't much of the Moon showing, I still had to test out my 9mm and 15mm eyepieces on it and try to take a photo of it:

Oh, and I managed to see Saturn the other night! Got up at 5am for a leak (I'll spare you the details) and remembered that Saturn is about at that time (in the West) and sure enough, there it was! Not much detail to see, but I could see a small planet with those infamous rings around it. Amazing!

OMG! Some decent weather!

Since the sun was peeking out from some sparse clouds I decided to construct my solar filter. Every care should be made when making a solar filter. Great skill and passion went into making this technical feat of homemade ingenuity...

OK, so, it might have a rough edge here or there, but it works! Doesn't help that the sun is, at the moment, coming into view behind a whopping great tree then setting behind some houses, so there's not much space for taking photos, but I'll get some.

Even while the sun was setting good ol' Jupiter and Venus were showing. I managed to get some OK shots of Jupiter afcoally with my digital camera:

I doubt (Sir) Patrick Moore would wet himself over my photos, but I'm pretty chuffed with them.  :)

Since the weathers been crap...

... and I've not been able to see anything decent in days now, I decided to do some astro-drawing. In my spare time I do art commissions and what-not, so I decided to do a drawing of the Copernicus crater which is, of course, on the moon:

Copernicus (Moon) - Charcoal and Pastel on Blue Paper (A4)

Gotcha!

Got my eyepiece kit (two eyepieces and three filters) and Astronomy For Dummies book today (as mentioned below). The collimation tool came yesterday.

Haven't tried the eyepieces/filters as yet, but I did tinker with the alignment of the scope a bit. Didn't mess with the primary mirror only the secondary mirror which was a bit of a bugger. I was trying to turn the center screw on it. Turns out that's NOT what you turn, it's the three allum key screws to tilt the secondary mirror then tweak the stalk bolt to move the mirror in/out of the scope (as you look through the eyepiece of the collimation tool). I think I've got it right. Did a quick check by looking at Jupiter and nothing was out of the ordinary, so I reckon, while I haven't tweaked much, I certainly haven't done it any bad. Yaayy!!


Hopefully the moon will make an appearance tonight so that I can test the moon filter and the new 9mm eyepiece. With any luck, there'll be new photos!

New stuffs! (soon)

Viewing the moon when it's so bright really does blind you for a minute/two afterwards, so I've bought a small set of filters (one moon, one red, and one blue) which will screw into my existing eyepieces. Not only that, but for £40 the kit comes with two Kellner eyepieces (9mm and 15mm) and all in a nice little box.

I've also bought a sheet of Baader (I think that's what it's called) solar filter stuff that I can put over the end of the scope to let me look at the moon without blinding myself (or my phone which is definitely now 'hard of sight') which will be awesome. Oh, and Astronomy for Dummies. Because I need it:

Lastly I've bought a Cheshire collimation tool. Sometimes when I'm viewing stuff I can see shadows at the side and I'm thinking the scope might need adjusting. I've not aligned it since I got it. Might not need it now, but either way it's a tool I'll need at some point.

That will be all.

Totally Unscientific Photography Experiment

I can easily tell you all about killah-giga-watt CPU's and USB/ABC/XYZ ports, but I know very little about photography and camera settings. Thus, I present to you, my learned friends, the photography experiment!

I unscientifically pointed my camera out of the back window (because it was cold outside) and initially set it for a 2 sec exposure with the ISO set at 100. I then, for the next photo increased the ISO to 200 and so on up to 1600. Then, for the next set I increased the exposure time to 10 sec (with 100 ISO, 200 ISO, etc.) and the same for 20 sec and 30 sec exposures.

What I then did was crop each photo (around the same area) and put them in strips. Behold!

Like I say, totally unscientific, but it was just to let me see how exposure/ISO changes affect the resulting image. One thing you can't really see in the small image above is that the higher the ISO the more noise it seemed to introduce. But that could be rectified with stacking I suppose.

Top left (2 sec @ 100 ISO) is pretty much what it was like outside to the naked eye. Top right (2 sec @ 1600) is what you could see with the naked eye when accustomed to the dark. The other photos are camera magic which show things that the naked eye couldn't even see!

Call the high-brow literature I wish to collect my Nobel peace prize...

The Sun and the Moon

First I tried some sun projections which went OK, but couldn't get decent photos of them as I'm holding a piece of paper in one hand, camera phone in the other. Due to not being a contortionist I didn't get any decent photos of the projection, but I did (in the process) manage to partially screw up my phone's camera. I held the phone over the eye piece (on camera) to see where the sun was on screen, rather than blind myself. Doing this I think I've damaged the camera sensor in my phone. *sigh*  :(

In other (better) news: I noticed a clear sky this afternoon and took advantage of it to snap some new photos of the moon with my digital camera:

I think, with the digital camera, you need to use a larger eyepiece (25mm in my case) then tinker with the camera zoom to get a focus.

Either way, I think my scope needs collimating (calibrated) *dramatic music* as the slightest movement of the eye/camera and your left seeing shadows. Oh, and I also need to clean my eyepieces.

An astronomers lot is never a happy lot...  :D

New photo's of the moon and webcam musings

Last night was the first decent night in several days so I took advantage of it to take a couple of new photos of the moon:

Again, they were taken with my Xperia PLAY mobile phone (5MP camera) held to the eyepiece. I did try the modified Xbox webcam, but it kept whiting-out all the time, even when it was pointed at Jupiter. Most disappointed. I need to try and get some decent wxAstroCapture settings as even with all the sliders down to single digits it's too bright.

Also trying to botch a way to hold my mobile phone more steady at the eye piece. It involves a small Pringles tube, scissors, pliers and lots of prayers. Will keep you informed...

Xbox Live webcam massacre

Had to do something to keep myself amused since there's been no clear sky since Saturday last week.  :(

Decided it was time to butcher the Xbox Live webcam since apparently removing the IR filter gives better viewing in the dark. Using a post on Stargazers Lounge (http://stargazerslounge.com/diy-astronomer/170747-xbox-livecam-mod-cliff.html) and a blog post on Astro-Beano (http://astrobeano.blogspot.com/2012/01/xbox-360-webcam-ir-filter.html) I was able to successfully operate, and the patient actually survived! Hoorah!  \o/

So... now I need to wait for some clear skies. Again!  *sigh*

Although, let this be a lesson to anyone thinking of buying a whopping great telescope worth hundreds, you could get it and with bad luck it'll sit doing nothing 90% of the time!  :(

Jupiter and Pleiades

First clear sky in about three nights. Time to test the Xbox Live Cam.

Most folks on the SGL Forum are butchering their cameras to (purposely!) break the green LED's inside then gluing a piece of pipe to the cam so that it can be inserted into the eyepiece of the scope. I'm going the less destructive route first. For a change. I'm keeping it intact and using some blu-tac to put a piece of pipe around the cam. I'm also keeping the adjustable lens in it. Basically if, after a while, I can't get anything good out of it then I'll butcher it to hell.  :)

Jupiter looked awesome tonight. The bands of colour were just visible, but the four moons stood out really well! Hopefully a couple of Xbox Cam videos will produce some sort of image I can post.

One image I can post if of a star cluster I found by accident. Pleiades!

Was scanning the sky after looking at Jupiter and came across a big group of stars. Took a while to get my head around their placement (remember: everything in the scope is flipped horizontally and vertically!) but using Kstars (on my old laptop) I managed to place the stars as Pleiades (NGC 1432). The photo was taken using my digital camera held to the 25mm eyepiece with a high ISO (800, I think).

Anyway, time to process those videos of Jupiter...

Ah, Doctor Frankenstein

Got my £6 Xbox Live Cam today.

Will hopefully get a bit of plastic pipe for it tomorrow and spend Thursday night butchering the little blighter.

The idea (according to this post on the SGL Forum) is to remove the internal LED's (which apparently increase the video noise level), remove the lens focuser and, last but not least, bolt on the piece of tubing to let me insert the cam into the scope instead of an eye piece. How good it'll be for photos when there's no eyepiece, I've no idea. Soon find out tomorrow though.

Worst comes to the worst: I lob the piece of pipe off, and rig the cam to the eyepiece holder or something.

Nurse, scalpel...

Sunshine, my only sunshine...

Before leaving for work today I just had to point the telescope at the sun and blind myself project it's image onto a sheet of paper to photograph. If you look reeeeeeally closely you'll see a couple of sun spots:

If I ever get sunshine again I'll try again, but with a better set up.

Jupiter and Mars

Finally! Some clear sky!  \o/

I was asked by someone on the Stargazers Lounge if I could see the banding on Jupiter. I armed myself with my scope and lenses and set to work. With the 25mm lens Jupiter was a little white blob. With the 10mm it was a slightly large, but fuzzy, white blob. Only when I added the 2X Barlow to the 10mm did I see anything. And even then... only just! It does take a wee while for your eyes to adjust to seeing things in the scope as you instinctively try and focus on the planet which doesn't help any. You need to look in the eyepiece and let your eye relax and, if possible, focus far off rather than close up. Well, I did manage to see the bands on Jupiter but they were very faint.

Not so much luck with Mars. Even at 10mm 2X Barlow it's still a red-tinted dot. But it's still awesome to see it.

While just browsing stars I saw a white dot, which looked like a star, whiz across the sky. I couldn't see it with the naked eye, only through the scope. I followed it for a bit then lost it. But, having looked at a forum members video of a meteor, I'm convinced that's exactly what I saw! Totally fluked it, and saw a meteor. Well chuffed!

Review and a purchase

If you're wondering what I think of the Skywatcher Heritage 130P thus far then you can check out my review of it here: http://stargazerslounge.com/member-equipment-reviews/175621-skywatcher-heritage-130p.html

In short: well chuffed.

I've also just bought a £6 Xbox Live webcam. Apparently these cams can be easily modified for use with telescopes and work pretty well considering their cheapness. Will report back on that when I get it.

*taps fingers* just need the clouds to bugger off now...

Damn you weather!

Just when I'm getting my bearings.

I've got the telescope, I've got a plan of action (webcam and Registax) and getting to know my way about the night sky - and what happens? Clouds. Lots of them.

Last night and tonight were completely covered in cloud. Not even the moon made an appearance!

Not impressed.

Registax - it's hard!

OK, it seems like I'll have to use Registax 6 via Wine. The only other alternative that seems up to the task is AstroStack and while it is a 'native' Linux app it's only because it's written in Java. Either way, both apps are pretty difficult to use.

What I've managed to do is (using cardboard and blu-tac) hold my Logitech HD webcam to the eyepiece of the telescope and record a short video. Also took a couple of stills using the webcam:

Only problem is that my slow old laptop has difficultly recording a full HD video, so I might have to bring the recording resolution down to about 640x480.

Oh, and here's one with my phone:

I can see that it's going to take a lot of tinkering to get Registax to give good results as apparently it needs hundreds of video frames to stack to give a good output image.

Moon, Webcam and Laptop, oh my!

I've been reading alot in the Stargazers Lounge forum (http://stargazerslounge.com/) about using some software to stack images (or frames from videos) to get more detailed pictures, so I'm going to give that a go. Only (good) thing is: I don't use Windows. I'm a Kubuntu Linux kinda guy. So I'm going to have to find some Linux astronomy software. Shouldn't be too difficult. Worst comes to the worst I can get Registax 6 running in Linux via Wine.

Full Moooooooonnn!

I only managed to get one photo of my new friend, the Moon. I really need to start looking at other things too...

There's a full moon a-comin'!

Should be a full moon within a couple of days. Hope there'll be a good clear sky for it.

In the mean time, another couple of mobile phone not-quite-full Moon photos:

More Moon Photos!

These came out quite good too.*

* disclaimer: I admit to having corrected these and the previous photos as it wasn't until later that I realised that when looking through the 'scope you're seeing things upside down. I did wonder if man-kind was on the way out when I noticed the South Pole of the Moon at the North...

Astro-Photography!

Having looked at the moon (obviously) I decided to give astrophotography a go.

Not as easy as it seems.

First I tried my 12MP digital camera as that would probably get me the highest resolution pictures. No dice. The camera has a wide field of view, so all I see in the viewfinder is a very blurry moon which is a small white fuzzy blob surrounded by a black circle which is the inside of the eyepiece/lens. Bah!

Mobile phone to the rescue! These photos were taken by holding my phone (Sony Xperia PLAY) to the eyepiece and trying not to breathe for fear of moving it. Either way. I'm damn proud of my first attempts!