Bugdozer

After waiting all through April for a good opportunity to photograph the sun, I finally managed to get the chance on Saturday. 

Taken on Nikon D90 at prime focus with my Celestron 5SE and Baader solar filter, exposure time 1/800 ISO 320.

I am hoping to try my infrared modded camera next, quite curious to know how the sun will look outside visible wavelengths. 

Great picture! Technical question though - since that appears to be a negative image, how come you still have a black background with bright flares and prominences? 

Daughter and I were galaxy spotting in Leo last night. Small patches of cloud seemed to materialise right over the M95/96/105 area every time I tried to star hop around there, but eventually managed a positive ID on them all. M95 was VERY hard to see. Because of wind, I just stayed in my garden and there was quite some light pollution in the Leo direction. I really should have driven over to a darker site. When I swung the scope round to look at M81 and M82, there was much better contrast with a darker sky, and even more so towards Hercules where I got a good view of globular M92. With Bootes high in the sky, I took a look at Izar, splitting it easily at around 250x. The yellow/blue colour contrast was great. Seeing was actually really clear and steady - last time I observed this star the atmosphere was so soupy that they just looked like a slightly pear shaped single star. 

Testing out my solar filter for the first time. Bonus inclusion of my wife taking a photo through the eyepiece! 

Sorry to anyone in the Hastings area, my purchase has now ensured there will be no sunny days for a couple of weeks at least! 

Thinking about it, I should have put my Powertank light somewhere other than just on the ground to illuminate this picture, but oh well. Pointing at Comet Pons-Brooks with the moon and sea behind. 

I am cursed with an obstructed view to the northwest, so this evening I travelled to a nearby park to get a clear view in that direction, aiming to bag two objects I have not seen telescopically before - Mercury and Comet Pons-Brooks. 

Mercury was easily found, being visible to the naked eye in a still fairly bright sky. I wasn't expecting much from it through the telescope, but at around 128x magnification I could clearly see the half phase of it, tilted towards the direction of the sun. Unfortunately the seeing was pretty poor and the low altitude was producing lots of colour fringing too. But it's the last planet I had left to see through a telescope, so I was happy enough. 

I spent some time observing Jupiter whilst waiting for the sky to darken a little more, then by the power of typing coordinates into my goto scope, I had the comet nicely centred. I saw it a couple of days ago through binoculars but there was haze in the sky. Tonight's view was much better. I couldn't really see a tail, but I could tell there was more fuzz on one side than the other. I also didn't detect any colour. After about 15 minutes, haze began to form in that part of the sky, so I packed up. 

I managed to get a really poor view of it through my binoculars this evening. My views north are obstructed from my garden so I had to go down the road with the binoculars. It looked very like a star at first, but there was haze and bright moonlight sabotaging my view. Nice to have seen it at least, but I really do want some better weather! 

20 hours ago, PeterStudz said:

This is a smartphone single snap. There’s a lot of noise (to be expected from a tiny camera) and no stacking. Even in this picture you can just make out the reflection under the Milky Way on the water. Visually it was more obvious. My 12 yr old daughter who was with me at the time pointed it out straight away.

I don't dispute seeing its reflection in water. I DO dispute that it is bright enough that it illuminates the ground sufficiently on its own that you can distinguish between an area that's shaded and one that isn't. 

10 hours ago, Flame Nebula said:

I had to look into this milky way thing further, and found loads of stories on CN from people who'd had seen the milky way cast shadows! But apparently also Mars,(at opposition) Venus and Jupiter can too! Incredible. 

This is one thing that I am always curious about when people talk about really dark skies and the descriptions of them given in the Bortle classifications, because some of it doesn't quite make sense to me. 

Firstly, a higher Bortle sky is always going to have more light from the sky overall than a lower Bortle sky. No objects actually lose brightness under a high Bortle sky, they just lose contrast against the increasingly bright background glow that is everywhere, until at some point they are effectively rendered invisible. But their light IS still coming down. 

However, in my experience, once you get down to about Bortle 2.5, there isn't actually enough light to see any shadows at all. The Milky Way could be right overhead, and clear to look at, but I can't distinguish between looking at the ground and having my eyes shut. Basically, the amount of light given off by things like the Milky Way is below the threshold at which my eyes can detect reflected light from objects. I can believe something like Venus could give off enough light to cast a shadow at its brightest, but if I already can't see the ground at all, then having an even darker sky is not going to make shadows on it more visible. Seeing it reflected off water makes sense, but I am dubious of darker skies seeming to make our eyes more sensitive to light which is already below detection threshold.

Hello there, welcome to the forum!

For my birthday yesterday, from my lovely daughter (she made me wait to open it until today when she was back from France!) 

On 14/03/2024 at 03:14, Nakedgun said:

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Is there no Nikon/Canon adapter available?

 

 

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I believe not every Canon lens is even possible to fit with an adaptor, due to Canon's "innovation" of making the auto focus motor part of the lens rather than part of the camera body with some models. I don't know whether that applies to this particular lens.

If it's a star out of the frame, then the culprit would have to be Mintaka, just away to the top right. As to when I stacked them, the streaks blurred out into a smeared cloud. I wasn't massively bothered because the quality of the stack wasn't as good as it should be anyway (condensation started up halfway through the sequence and I didn't notice) so I will be repeating this shot, but maybe a slightly different framing will get rid of the streak. 

This is wonderful!

I love this area too, there's so much to see. Great image.

Here's one of a set of sub frames I took a couple of nights ago. I have brought up the exposure to show the odd green streak in the picture.

This is definitely NOT a real object in the sky. It's in all the frames but sometimes looks slightly different in shape or has a different position relative to the background stars. I can't figure out what's causing it, though. My first thought was that it could be something akin to lens flare from one of the two bright stars in the frame, but I have never seen this happen on other photos I have taken with the same lens (Tamron 70-300 zoom). I couldn't see any other light sources where I was shooting from that could be shining into the camera lens, so I'm a bit stumped as to what's causing this. I realise zoom lenses are not ideal for astrophotography but it's what I've got.

Bonus points to anyone who can work out what I was actually trying to photograph here!

I put one of those oxygen activated handwarmers inside my gloves, it really helps. The gloves themselves are warm woollen ones. 

Hello there. You will find lots of good advice here. 

Welcome, have fun! 

That certainly is in about the right place at the right time. It would have had to be moving quite slowly though. The lack of apparent movement was what made me dismiss the idea but as you say, being far from bright reference stars could have fooled me. 

To my mind, the next logical step will be a new model with a wider aperture, meaning improved resolution and more light per capture, resulting in shorter exposures with less noise and the ability to magnify a bit more. I was surprised that the Seestar was made with such small optics in the first place - I imagine the plan has always been to step it up to something bigger. 

Welcome! I can't advise on the rod I'm afraid. 

Around 18:45 from Hastings, I noticed a starlike light somewhat brighter than Jupiter. It was slightly orange in colour, and as I watched it faded to invisibility over about 10 seconds. Unfortunately I didn't see it appear so I don't know how long it was there before I noticed it or how quickly it appeared. It was roughly in the position of Epsilon Eridani. I later discovered another local astronomer had seen it from the seafront, in the same place. 

The only thing I can think of is maybe a meteor seen end on? Which would explain the absence of any apparent movement or a trail. Does anyone else have any other suggestions? 

I've been there several times for the Return of the Garrison event in May, when a horde of us imperial troops descend on it. Great fun,and usually some special guests too.