PhotoGav

Amazing, I love the speed estimate for the falling plasma at 100,000 mph!

Thank you for your comments, all. @tomato - I just looked on spaceweather archives for the time lapse, but couldn’t find it (they do have a lovely time lapse of comet SWAN on there today though!). Any ideas where it is please? @Macavity - I use Genika Astro for capture and run a sequence on repeat. It makes that bit much easier, though I suffered from hard drive lag (despite it being an SSD) and lost quite a few videos. The tracking with the Mesu200 wasn’t too bad, but it was moving off centre a bit. Irritatingly I forgot to shoot a flats sequence and there are a few wandering spots that spoil the finished article. Nevermind! The processing is not too difficult, but it does require large quantities of patience. ImPPG is very good for the frame alignment. Get out there and give it a go. The weather is set to turn colder with northerly flows which should settle the seeing down a bit, I hope. Good luck!

Here is a time lapse of the beautiful prominences on the off going limb yesterday. It shows 64 minutes in 6.2 seconds. I captured two 8 second videos, one for the limb and one for the disk, about every minute for the duration. Kit used: Lunt LS50T Ha with Chameleon3 and a 2.5x PowerMate. Processed with AS!3, ImPPG and hours in Photoshop to make the animation! Depsite the poor seeing and subsequent wobble, I think this is my best effort yet at a time lapse. It's one heck of a hassle having to combine two images for each frame though - what's the shortcut to achieve this kind of timelapse with just one shot per frame?

Thank you! thank you. Photoshop didn’t manage the stitching, so I tried Microsoft ICE and it did it straight away. It’s a bit soft in places, but acceptable. I think I know what I will be using to stitch in future! Thank you!

This was taken on Sunday 26th April with a Lunt LS50THa scope and Chameleon 3 camera. I tried making a mosaic for the first time using a 2.5x Powermate. The image consists of six panels for the disk and nine for the limb. I'm pretty happy with the result, though I need more Sun to work on the technique! That's AR2760 in the lower left portion. How lovely to see a bit of action on the disk for once!

*Update* QSI support have been very helpful and said that they would send me two replacement fans for me to splice in place of the old ones. I dropped them an email a few days ago asking for an update... ‘haven’t you received them yet? We sent them out a couple of weeks ago...’ was the reply. So, they have obviously been locked down somewhere en route. Drat! I decided to take things into my own hands and trawled the web for replacement fans that could be delivered immediately. That was no easy task, but I found a company that had two almost identical* fans in stock. I jumped on them. They were delivered this morning and the micro-surgery took place a short while ago. The result might not be the prettiest bit of splicing ever seen, but there is a glorious hum coming from the back of my lovely QSI again!! * I hope that ‘almost identical’ is near enough and they manage to deliver the required air flow to aid the cooling! Fingers crossed. Stay safe folks and how great are all these clear skies?!

Just looking on GONG and saw this latest image from Learmonth, Oz. Let’s hope for clear skies and steady seeing all day!

Aaaaarggghhh. It’s hard enough without those kind of issues. Good luck, I hope this story has a happy ending, eventually.

Thanks Dave. Is it because you can see the strings?!!?

Yes, it is breaking up, such a shame, but quite interesting to see how it develops over the coming weeks.

Thanks Steve. No wonder they only have all the ‘cheap’ stuff... I borrow kit from them for outreach and there’s never any of the really good stuff available. Now I know why!!

Thank you Andrew. It’s a bit different, but shows the changing morphology quite well. I really ought to add a time and date stamp to each frame.

This is eleven days in the life of Comet ATLAS. Despite it unlikely to be 'the comet of the century' now following its nuclear breakup, it is giving us all something fascinating to watch unfold in the sky. And isn't it amazing that we actually have clear skies in the UK to enjoy for once... perfect timing! The data is from 02, 04, 06, 09, 10, 11, 12 & 13 April. It's interesting to see how the chunk at the front of the nucleus is beginning to brighten again. I will be continuing to follow this comet with great interest over the coming nights and hope to add some more frames to the time lapse. All frames are 240s exposures with QSI 683, Lum filter through a Celestron EdgeHD 8".

Hi Steve, just out of interest, is this warehouse the one in Thatcham?

Looking excellent... and just three weeks in!! It gets quite adictive, the Sun is surprisingly dynamic, despite it being in the deepest depths of a deep solar minimum! The forum should manage video, so don't know why it hasn't worked for you? Is it a very large file? Out of interest, what equipment are you using for these shots?

Excellent work, I love these.

I use Sky Safari and have the Galaxies add on pack.

Excellent job too, Dave. Love the colour image. And that cheeky distant galaxy (PGC 20526 at 89 Mly)!

I just shot a 240s sub to compare with 2 days ago... 2020-04-04 2020-04-06 It doesn't look too different. Perhaps a little dimmer? I rather like the galaxy at top right!

Thank you. I’m flattered! Good luck. It will be interesting to see if it has changed at all. I was looking forwards to watching this comet develop over the coming weeks, so it would be a real shame if it disintegrates.

Thanks Helen. I’ll have a look at your FT data. It’s not tooooo tricky to put a time lapse together. Takes a few bits of software though - align all the frames, bit of a stretch, crop to size and then string together as an animated gif. Is that within the educational target audience’s grasp? I’m interested to know how you would approach this.

Interesting stuff about the change in ATLAS. I wasn’t going to open the obsy tonight, but now I think I’ll have a peek!

Definitely, in fact, I reckon you deserve a whole pack of Jaffa Cakes!!

It’s speed on its orbit during this time. As much as it is possible to estimate it with the data given.

Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) is on its way towards the Sun, reaching perihelion at the end of May. It’s fairly dim at the moment, around mag +7 or so, but will hopefully brighten over the coming weeks. This time lapse was taken on the night of 4th April 2020 over about two hours, using a Celestron EdgeHD 8” scope with a QSI camera. It consists of 33 frames of 240s each. Seeing as we all have a bit of time on our hands, here’s a challenge for you: Use the following data to calculate the speed that Comet ATLAS is travelling towards the Sun. First Observation: Time: 21:01:35 UTC Pixel Position: (1747, 882) Distance from Earth: 1.032550 AU Last Observation Time: 23:19:03 Pixel Position: (1665, 1297) Distance from Earth: 1.032245 AU Image scale: 0.524 “/px 1 AU = 1.496 x 10^8 km Good luck! Stay safe folks.