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.