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...