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lukebl

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Everything posted by lukebl

  1. Thanks folks. I’m sure the sensor is dusty, so I’ve ordered a cleaning kit.
  2. This is a single frame from my Canon 700d, captured with a 75-300mm zoom set at 75mm. 15 seconds, f/5.6, ISO1600. There's a dark fuzzy blob in all of the images which I assume is some sort of dust mote, although it's quite large and diffuse. Any suggestions as to where it is in the image train and how to get rid of it?
  3. I’m planning to go to Canada in April to view and capture the total eclipse. Normally I like to travel light, with just a cabin bag to avoid the hassle of hold luggage. However, this time I’ll be taking my AZ GOTO mount as well as a normal hefty camera tripod, so I’m going to have to take it as checked-in hold luggage. I’d like to simply just use the 12v power cable connected to the hired car cigarette lighter, but on a recent trip where I hired a brand new car (a VW, I think) it didn’t even have a lighter socket. My question is, can I take my 12v 7Ah Skywatcher power tank on the plane or is it forbidden? Alternatively I could take a little power pack comprising 8 x AA batteries. Any idea how long that would power the mount?
  4. Despite it blowing a hoolie, I had a go at capturing the shadow transit of Ganymede this evening. Almost impossible to focus with the scope bouncing around in the wind, but at least I managed a short capture although not the sharpest view. It was very nice visually. The shadow was nice and crisp in the eyepiece. Wide view, 250mm f/4.8 Newtonian, ZWO ASI120mc cam. c 5000 frames @ 2ms, c.110 fps, Left to right: Callisto, Io, Ganymede, Europa. Closer view. 250mm f/4.8 Newtonian, 5x Televue Powermate, ZWO ASI120mc cam. c 5000 frames 7ms @ c.45 fps,
  5. Thanks for the input. I had a go at capturing Jupiter last night using Sharpcap instead of Firecapture. Conditions were pretty poor with bad seeing and the results weren’t good. However, I seemed to be able to get shorter exposures and a higher frame rate with Sharpcap, and the initial results don’t seem to show those artefacts. So it might just be the capture software that’s a problem. I’ll try again when conditions are good.
  6. Here's a quick capture from this evening showing Jupiter's moon Io and its shadow, along with the Great Red Spot (nowadays it's more like the shrinking beige spot!) appearing lower left. 250mm f/4.8 Newtonian, 5x Televue Powermate, ZWO ASI120mc cam. c 5000 frames @ c.50 fps, 17ms exposures. I'm not happy at all with the image. For some reason, when processed in Autostakkert the image shows some horrible artifacts making it look like it's made with oil brush strokes. I've managed to reduce it in Photoshop but at the cost of loss of definition. I used the same setup with previous apparitions of Jupiter and Mars and got excellent results, so I've no idea what's gone wrong. Any suggestions as to what's gone wrong would be welcome. I'm using the latest version of Autostakkert and capture with Firecapture.. This is an image before softening in Photoshop: Here's a detail showing the artifacts:
  7. Hi Alan. Thanks for the advice, but I’ve looked at the settings and loaded the defaults but still have the problem. I’m thinking that it might be an idea to completely uninstall and reinstall EQMOD, but haven’t tried it yet as it took ages to configure it in the first place!
  8. My NEQ6 mount is controlled via EQMOD on my laptop. It's recently developed an odd fault when the wired gamepad controller (used to manually go L, R Up or Down) is plugged in. After slewing to a chosen object, it immediately starts doing a spiral search and won't stop. It only does this when the controller is plugged in. I've tried a different controller, but get the same issues. What on earth's going on?
  9. Here's a singularly unimpressive video! Actually, I like it. It's a capture I did last night of the occultation (lasting 4.1 seconds) of an 11.7 magnitude star (TYC 1183-00432-1) by the 123km-wide asteroid (602) Marianna. Marianna is 13.6 magnitude and you can just make it out during the occultation. The asteroids fascinate me, and I find the sight of a distant small object passing in front a vastly more distant star in real time literally awesome! The star is the one just below the centre. This was captured with a WATEC-910 video cam on my 250mm f/4.8, with a shutter speed of 0.08 seconds. 2024_01_19_19_13_25 edit.mp4
  10. Hi. I just wondered if there was any free sofware out there to annotate movie files (e.g. avis)? I particularly wanted it to place an arrow on a footage of a field of stars to indicate the position of a star being occulted by an asteroid.
  11. Musk's vanity project passed over here this evening. I showed it to my son who was most impressed, but I can't help feeling there's something sinister about it all, bombarding the planet with the internet and filling the sky with more junk. In the olden days it was megalomaniac dictators who controlled the masses of nations. Now it's the fabulously wealthy who control all of us. If that isn't straying beyond the forum's guidelines. Anyway, I capured these images of it with a Canon 700d and Samyang 8mm lens at f/3.5. I set it to take 6 second exposures every 3 seconds at ISO 1600, but the gaps between exposures is obviously longer. I guess that's because of the time taken to write to the disk. This is a stacked set of 48 images, stacked in Startrails Version 2.3. See how the trails disappear into the earth's shadow when they approach Perseus. The bright thing is the moon! Single frame: Here's a video. One frame every half second. The neighbour's car illuminates the trees and house half way through!
  12. Hi all, I've been attempting to capture Jupiter with my 250mm f/4.8 Newtonian, 5x Barlow and ZWO ASI120mc cam. This is around 4000 frames. Unfortunately, after stacking with Autostakkert the image has these strange markings and streaks. Any idea what's causing this and how to avoid it? It happens with all captures, including ones with considerably more frames.
  13. Io and Europa were performing a nice little dance this evening as they almost simultaneously disappeared behind jupiter. I braved the cold and captured this sequence of 21 x 45 second captures about every 3 minutes from 18:15. 250mm f/4.8 Newtonian, 5x Televue barlow, ZWO ASI120mc cam. c. 4000 frames each capture. Captured with Firecapture, processed with Autostakkert, Registax and Photoshop. Europa is the upper one.
  14. Not the best of images, but I managed to capture most of Io's shadow transit this afternoon. I captured 45 second exposures every 140 seconds from 15:55 (when the sun was still above the horizon and the sky was bright blue), til about 17:53. 39 captures of c. 6000 frames at 3ms, ZVO ASI120mc cam, 2x Barlow, 250mm f/4.8 Newtonian. Captured with Firecapture, processed in Autostakkert, Registax and Photoshop.
  15. Hey folks, there’s a double shadow transit by Europa and Ganymede this evening. There’s only a short window when both shadows are on Jupiter, between about 19:20 and 19:50. This will be the view at about 19:30. Should be a nice viewing/imaging opportunity. Unfortunately I have a social engagement so will have to miss it.
  16. For my first bit of imaging for ages I though I'd try an animation of Io and its shadow transit last night (1st December). Unfortunately, freezing fog and high cloud rendered the images useless after the first five. However, I thought I'd do an animation anyway. 250mm f/4.8 Newtonian, 2x TAL barlow, ZWO ASI20MC-S cam. 5 images of c.7800 frames captured every 200 seconds.
  17. It was clouded over here for the whole event. But once the clouds cleared it was amazing how easy it was to see Venus in bright sunlight with the naked eye. This was a snapshot at around 11:20.
  18. It looked promising at 6 here in Norfolk, but clouded over just after 7. Here's the view at about 7 just before the clouds rolled in.
  19. Same here, and the next one visible in the UK isn't for another 67 years! The last one here was in 1999. I saw that one too, but in France not on home territory.
  20. In know it's a bit early, but who's planning to go for the total eclipse on April 8th next year? I meticulously planned the August 2017 trip to be in the spot which I reckoned would have the best weather, deepest Wyoming, and sure enough the weather was near perfect apart from some high cloud. And the landowner did warn me to beware of rattlesnakes! This time, budgetary pressures mean I've got to go for the cheapest option which is to fly to Montreal and thence to Magog near the centre line. Unfortunately, this area is also potentially the most cloudy along the whole route! But fingers crossed. And I've never been to Canada. Here's a couple of images I captured of the 2017 event in Wyoming. The star to the lower left is Regulus. Me and my sons during the eclipse. You can see the shadow as it traverses the sky.
  21. I had a quick go at capturing Venus this afternoon in colour to capture something of what it looks like in the eyepiece. It really is a beautiful sight in the eyepiece right now against the blue sky and only 2.8% illuminated, and only 14 degrees from the sun. The atmosphere was doing a wicked shimmy, so the image isn't particularly crisp. ZWO ASI120MC-S color cam, 250mm f/4.8 Newtonian. c 2000 frames @ 0.5ms. Processed in Registax and Photoshop. Here's an animation of a few of the frames. Focussing was tricky.
  22. This is a timelapse of the night sky from the night of 15/16th August 2023. Two days after the maximum of the Perseid meteor shower, I'd hoped to capture a few meteors, but nary a one was captured. Nice clouds, though. 7 hours compressed into 1 minute and 14 seconds. Canon 700d. Samyang 8mm. 20 second exposures.
  23. Thanks! I also thought it was Mars at first, but it’s actually delta Cancri. Mars is a bit further east.
  24. Venus was passing near the Beehive Cluster this evening. This is 10 x 1 second exposures in the evening twilight, manually stacked in Photoshop. Canon 700d. ISO 1600. Sigma 150-500mm lens @ 300mm, f/6.3. Unguided
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