cjbrankin

Hi Some images of the eclipse were captured using a samsung galaxy s6 attached to 40mm eyepiece on 90mm skywatcher refractor. The file of images was then put into slideshow mode and the screencast captured to show the eclipse progress. Unfortunately the time interval between images was not regular and neither was the exposure. Cheers Chris 20221025 partial solar eclipse.mp4

Hi Everyone Such a pity clouded out on the 21st but here is a capture from the 19th .. smartphone on 15mm eyepiece on 90mm refractor. Jupiter's moons (LtoR): Callisto, Ganymede and Europa Clear Skies (haha!) Chris

Many thanks abram Clear Skies Chris

Hi again everyone As a follow-up to yesterday's SATURN post here is a clip and stacked image of JUPITER taken on the same night and same set-up back in July. Processing again done with SIRIL. Cheers Chris 20200712 Jupiter.mp4

Hi and back to July when Saturn (and Jupiter) were better placed for observing than now. Attached is a short clip of Saturn captured on a Samsung Galaxy S6 through a 6mm eyepiece on a 200mm Dobsonian mounted Newtonian telescope. SIRIL was used to stack the frames and tweak the final image which is also attached. Clear Skies Chris 20200712 Saturn.mp4

Thanks again for your interest and comments Dave and all the best to you too Chris

Hi again Dave So to cut a long story short I have two laptops, one runs Windows and the other Ubuntu. It occurred to me last night that I had done my startrailing stacking on the Windows laptop last April and sure enough there in the recycle bin were the subs! So I can oblige your request and shown below is the full stack complete with two vapour trails! Sods law dictates that one went straight past the pole star .. while as you can see the other leaves like a scratch running down from the top just left of centre. It is a moot point whether to keep the vapour trails or to have the gaps in the star trails. I prefer the gaps especially in this case where the region around the pole is effected. Cheers Chris

Hi Dave Many thanks for your kind comments. Before I stacked the images I scanned through each one looking for any trails and found only two or three . I then removed these before stacking the rest (you can see the little gaps in the trails where an exposure was removed). I never stacked the whole lot so don't know what it would look like. Now once I am happy with the stack I usually dump the subs in the recycle bin, which I rarely empty in case I want to try again. Unfortunately on upgrading Ubuntu my recycle bin got emptied so although I'd be happy to try a full stack I can't! So sorry I can't oblige Dave. Chris

Hi Everyone At least the lockdown meant that very few planes were flying and leaving behind vapour trails which are liable to spoil astrophotos. Here is a one hour's worth startrail (13s exposures) with only a very few frames spoilt in this way and which were left out of the stack. Taken early in the lockdown on 11th April. Chris

Hi Back again, this time to late May and a short clip of a lovely First Quarter moon captured with a Samsung Galaxy S6 through a 25mm eyepiece on a Skywatcher Evostar 90. An added bonus was being serenaded by a blackbird which sang throughout the lockdown. Chris 20200530 Moon and Blackbird.mp4

Hi Everyone Back to the 24th April and early use of Samsung Galaxy S6 to capture a 30s clip of the naked eye double of Mizar (left) and Alcor (right) in The Plough's handle. Mizar itself a lovely double. Shot through 25mm eyepiece on a 200mm Newtonian. Clear Skies Chris MizarAlcor.mp4

Thanks Harshn. The adapter is just a bog standard plastic smartphone adapter off ebay for about a tenner. Set phone camera to Manual Focus at infinity and low ISO cos Mars bright. With the phone attached to the eyepiece via the adapter, mount on the telescope and use eyepiece focusing control to finetune the focusing. Record video clip for as along as suits (my scope is Dobsonian mounted so Mars drifts across field of view in a few seconds!). Then preprocess (PIPP) and process (SIRIL) and postprocess (GIMP) as described above. NB The clip and stacked image both show Mars as a nearly white blob but CURVES and LEVELS in GIMP rescue the detail. Clear Skies Chris

Stack of 600 frames from clip off Galaxy S6 phone shot through 6mm eyepiece attached to 200mm Newtonian. MP4 file was preprocessed with PIPP software to produce SER file. SIRIL then used this to stack frames and finally GIMP used to postprocess resulting stacked image. Chris