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.  :)

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...

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...

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.

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:

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!