Its a beautiful sunny day on the East Coast. Have been to the hospital to have an MOT on hip and back. Received great service and care from all staff at the James Paget Hospital. The NHS is great!:hello2: Having a bit of time on my hands and wanting a sit down, have spent an hour with an old photo of M57 which I took last summer in my backyard. Quite pleased with myself in that I have worked out how to use the de-convolution algorithms in IRIS software. (Probably less than pleased with myself
I took an image directly using the Mac last night with the 383 (the PC was still performing guiding using the 16IC and controlling the mount as it was the end of a late session). This is a raw image with all the dead pixels, the refractor aberrations and no processing.. Here's a link to the raw 17.1MB 16 bit TIFF of the Bear Paw Galaxy You may want to do some curves to pull out the target(s).
Wednesday, February 15th, 2012
Many purchase telescopes and once that the moon has been spotted or a couple of chance views of planets, the excitement wanes, the equipment is soon forgotten and collects dust somewhere in the backrooms. We all want to see the planets don't we? I admit to jumping up and down upon seeing Saturn through my eyepiece and I also confess doing a "dance of joy" upon seeing Jupiter the first time but that's not where my interest lies. I always want to look fart
Hot on the tail of the 383 video.. the titan makes it's first light on the mac! It helps when you remember that shift right is actually >> and not << (for the technically minded!). I still have more work but I thought I'd spam the blog some more :D
Rather than write.. The 383L taking an exposure on the mac. GacWol1KbpU Here, the 383 is initialising then taking a 10 second exposure before downloading the exposure. Please excuse the wedding preparations in the background!
Due to a flare up of arthritis in my back and hip have been unable to take advantage of the breaks in the clouds which have been infrequent to say the least. Have spent my time downloading images from the ESO archive and practicing the use of image processing software. Have managed to start using IRIS which appears to be the least accessible of the free image processing software I've tried to date. Quite humorous trying to follow the French - English translations.:)
Had a go at this tonight about 6.30-7pm tea time, been on full power with mak 276x still could not see Uranus ( no **** jokes please!!) i suspect Venus is masking it, very cold out tonight freezing temps, could not stand out for long tonight even though i was rapped up!! moon was very big and bright Wednesday, coming up in east. i have now retired to the warm house!!
Well it's friday and the last day before a week of carry-over holiday that I need to take. With Sandrine at work this gives me the opportunity to push ahead with the ATIK support :hello2: (stop here if you're feeling over-geeked) So on my checklist this week I have, in priority order: * Finish the 383L support, this includes resolving the slow transfer rate (I know how to resolve this but I've not had time to resolve it). * AOSX module using the above code - this is a relatively straightforward
February 3rd, 2012
There are certain people that fill us with resentment and make us shrink into a world where battery acid pulses through our veins. Of course, one understands that such a negative power is controlled entirely by you. Although you are the only one that can stop the unbelievable crippling sensation, sometimes it seems much easier to do nothing and let it fester. Yeah, one therefore creates their own suffering.
"It comes from others!" you scream! "I wouldn't be like
I had another go at the moon tonight with my Webcam. I manged to split the video with Virtual dub and Stack the frames with Registax. I also tried to get an image of jupiter, but it was too bright. No amount of adjustment of gamma or exposure setting would reduce the glare.
Somehow, I got a burst of enthusiasm today and decided to repair my EQ2 tripod this evening. After an hour and drilling and tapping, I managed to get it balanced. As it happened the clouds also cleared. I quickly setup the laptop and had another shot at using a Webcam. I managed to get about 30secs of footage before the clouds rolled in, so I didn't get a chance to practice focusing with the webcam. After downloading and using Virtual dub to splice the video and remove the rubbish frames of the
A while back I purchased a Philips SPC900NC Webcam and flashed it etc to use with Sharpcap Webcam imaging software. I then watched the astronomyshed tutorials on youtube to learn how to setup the camera. I downloaded the software from the link below. http://sites.google.com/site/rwgastro/sharpcap After messing around with the camera, all I managed to get was a flashing screen. I got frustrated and gave up and I still couldn't get the Philips camera working tonight. Yesterday, I thought I would h
As Sandrine is away doing female wedding things (dresses).. it's left me a free weekend to sit down and push forward the project. There's still a way to go, mainly down to differences between windows, OSX and Linux that will need additional work but the core goal of today has been achieved - namely getting a first downloaded image from the 383 onto the mac. So the event may be impressive, the image isn't (lol) as it's a saturated white from the pentax on a sunny day pointing at the garden ground
ASTROPHOTOGRAPHY QUOTE=ashworthacca The Astrotrac is great and can be setup, polar aligned and be tracking stars in less than 15 minutes. My HEQ5 and all the gubbins is usually setup and imaging within 45 minutes. I'm sure you'll love the pick up and go flexibility of the Astrotrac.....just watch for the polar scope falling out of the holder, that's a real pain. Good luck.
Originally Posted by MjrTom I use the astrotrac for imaging upto 300mm focal length and it works a treat. I can be setup aligned and imaging in about 15 minutes flat. I have also packed it all into a rucksack and hiked out into the wild of snowdonia away from civilaisation. Try doing that with a standard GEM
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