lukebl

Simple. To get more frames over the same period and get better quality. Also, with Jupiter to capture more frames over a shorter period so effects of its rotation are less noticeable.

Thanks for the imput folks. I'm not sure where to find these parametres, though.

It's just writing to the built-in drive. No idea what sort of drive that is. How do if find out, and can I use an alternative to speed things up?

It's the USB 3 cable which came with the camera, and plugged into the USB3 port

Can anyone tell me how to increase the frame rate on my ZWO ASI 120MC-S. Even with a ROI of 288 x 276 (when imaging Mars) and an exposure of 3.2ms I can only get a frame rate of around 90fps. Surely I should get at least 200? Admittedly, the camera isn't the fastest, and the laptop is a bit old, but I would hope for a faster frame rate. I'm using Firecapture - is there anything in the settings I can improve? The laptop spec is : Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6700HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.60 GHz, 16.0 GB RAM. Thanks, folks.

It's better than mine!

Here's short animation of part of the transit of Io on the evening of 19th November 2022, captured in very variable seeing. I had captured the whole transit, but the first half were spoilt by dew. Later solved with a hair dryer. Everything was absolutely dripping with dew like rain. 12 frames captured about every 4 minutes, 60 second videos of around 3000 frames. ZWO ASI120MC-S cam, 5x Televue Powermate, 250mm f/4.7 Newtonian.

Are we alone in the universe? Maybe yes, maybe no. Will we ever find out? No, I don’t think so. The universe is way too big, we’re way too small (intellectually and physically) and everything’s way too far away. Well, that’s my honest two penneth. You can see why any attempt at discussion with me doesn’t get very far.

Just noticed this amazing prominence on the NASA website. This was it at about 9:45 UT. Shame about the clouds Looks to me like a rat pouncing left to right!

I’m off there myself for a few days in January, so I’ll watch this thread with interest. No doubt I’ll report back on this forum if I see anything of interest. We’ll be staying in a cabin close to the beach near the lighthouse at the tip of the peninsular just north of Keflavik airport. I chose it as it will have clear views northward over the sea, free of street lights. The sun is relatively active at the moment, so you should see the Aurora. The downside is that cloud cover is even worse than the UK! I’ve been to Iceland twice before and absolutely love the place, but didn’t see the Aurora due to cloud! Whatever happens, I’m sure you’ll have a great time. It’s a fabulous country.

Update. I'm told by others more learned that me that this could possibly be satellite 2013-024B, a rocket body launched by the US on May 25th 2013, or similar, which swings between 665 and 66,000km from the earth. At that distance it would clearly move much slower than closer objects.

Hi all. Last night I set out to capture an occultation of a bright (mag 7.9) star in Cetus by asteroid (8071) Simonelli. I was under the predicted shadow path but the asteroid is only 8km across and I recorded a miss, which was disappointing. Even at 2x integration with my Watec camera, the star was so bright that it was heavily saturated. Whilst I was preparing for the event, I captured an object moving very slowly eastwards across the field at a rate of about 7.5 arc-minutes a minute at a position angle of about 45 degrees. You can see it in the real-time video below, moving from right to left. The target star for the occultation is the bright one lower centre. The field of view is about 22 arc-minutes across. I assume that this is simply a satellite, but I’ve seen countless satellites drift across the FOV, but never seen one as slow as this one. Even with geostationary ones, and this one can’t be a geostationary as it was at the wrong declination and moving at the wrong angle. In any case, a geostationary satellite, orbiting as they do at about 35,786 km, would take about a minute to cross this star field. Other low-orbit ones would whizz through in a couple of seconds. This one took about 3 minutes. Any ideas about what this might be?

I attempted an animation of last nights double transit of Europa and Ganymede in very mixed seeing and transparency. Hence the sub-optimal quality of the frames. These is the result of 35 captures every 4 minutes from about 1830 to 2100 UT. 250mm f/4.8 Newtonian, 3x Barlow, ZWO asi120mc-s camera, 3000 frames, 70fps, Stacked in Autostakkert, processed with Registax and Photoshop.

Asteroid Lemaitre is just 8 kilometres wide, with an eccentric Mars-crossing orbit. It was discovered on 25 November 1948, by Belgian astronomer Sylvain Arend at the Royal Observatory of Belgium. On the evening of 15th October, I was right under the shadow path of its occultation of an 11th magnitude star (TYC 2908_00765_1), and managed to capture this short footage of the event which lasted just 0.8 of a second. Captured with a WATEC 910 video camera, Timestamped with a GPSBOXSPRITE3, 250mm f/4.8 Newtonian, 0.5x reducer. It is a strange feeling, watching in real time as a tiny invisible rock millions of miles away briefly blots the light of a distant star. Here's its orbit

I'm very rusty, not having done any imaging for a very long time, and a couple of years since I attempted Jupiter. Anyway here's a short capture of Io's transit on the evening of 2nd October 2022. Captured with a 250mm f/4.8 Newtonian, 3x TV barlow, ZWO ASI120MC-S. 12 frames of 60 second captures at about 70fps. 4 minutes between captures. Processed in Autostakkert and Registax.

Shame it’s not further north, as it’s predicted to brighten up to mag 6 on impact. Hopefully, there’ll be some interesting images from Southern Hemisphere observers tomorrow.

Here’s my Moon landing postage stamps, which my dad told me would be worth a fortune when I’m old. Well, I’m now old and I see you can get them for £1.99 on EBay!

The prism on my off-axis guider has come detached. Can anyone tell me what would be a suitable adhesive to fix it? Many thanks, Luke

Fantastic. Great to see a bit of detail on Ganymede too.

I was there! In a field near Dieppe. I distinctly recall hearing Quails calling as totality approached.

Here's my entry. Full Moon rising over Thessaloniki on 13th July this week. Had a short break to this lovely city (well worth a visit) to celebrate my son's completion of his A-Levels. Viewing from our apartment balcony, I'd noticed on previous nights that the full moon was likely to rise behind the distant hill (Λάναρης λόφος, which Google tells me translates to Lanari Hill), and so it did. Canon 700d, Canon 70-300mm zoom @ 300mm A late flight last night meant that we didn't arrive home till 4.30 this morning, but during the flight and on the drive home were treated to the most magnificent display of Noctilicent Clouds I've ever seen. If my companions weren't so tired and grumpy, I'd have stopped to try and capture them!

It bothers me that the diffraction patterns from JWST images form a rather flattened six-pointed star, rather than a neat symmetrical hexagon, if you get my drift. …but I guess that’s a me problem, as my son constantly tells me.

Here's a slightly better ISS solar transit than the one I posted a couple of days ago. They are usually bang on time, but this one was about 7 seconds late. I guess it must be something to do with orbital corrections. ISS angular size: 50.03″; distance: 552.29 km. Transit duration: 0.76 s As you can see, seeing was very wobbly in the heat and it was a bit breezy, with the result that the image is boiling somewhat and the ISS path appears to have a bit of a curve. Coronado PST, TAL 2x barlow, ZWO ASI290MM cam. c0.65ms exposure, c 35fps. Captured with Fircapture.

Many thanks! It won't have been the same transit you saw. As you see here, the transit path was only a few kilometres wide, lasted less than a second and missed Kent!

I set out today to capture a solar transit of the International Space Station with my Coronado PST. It was a close pass, with the station only 485km distant and with an angular size of 57". I thought I'd aimed it correctly, but clearly not. The ISS just appeared in two frames, clipping the bottom left-hand corner. Better luck next time. I find it really difficult to orientate yourself with the sun and predict where the ISS will go, even with the information on transit-finder. Coronado PST, TAL 2x barlow, ZWO ASI290MM cam. c0.6ms exposure, c 50fps.