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Hawksmoor
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Everything posted by Hawksmoor
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From the album: Mars
Having messed about with one of my blurry images of Mars for most of the afternoon, I may have captured the clouds over Olympus Mons or otherwise I've managed to organize 'noise' into a clump. -
From the album: Out and About
Truth is my arty side overwhelmed my scientific bent and so I combined my conjunction images taken from a bedroom window with my image of Southwold Harbour Breakwater in a full on technicolor 'mash up'. Made for a more dramatic picture! -
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Hi Reggie what a great image! Yes I can see the "eye" and Olympus Mons. Brilliant! I was hoping to have another go tonight but the weather is currently poor. Wishing for a break in the cloud cover to move in from the west by evening. I agree with you, 'seeing' is definitely all when imaging planets and the Moon. 'Clear skies' George
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Thanks Reggie. If the weather is ok I will have another go tonight and hopefully the upper atmosphere will be a bit more stable. Did you see the crescent Moon, Jupiter and Saturn altogether last night - quite beautiful. Have you been able to capture some more images of Mars? Best regards George
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An unexpected clear night. Went outside and looked up. The Milkway is directly overhead running from Auriga in the east, through Cassiopeia and onto Cygnus in the west. Looking south Pegasus and Mars take pride of place. With the street lights off, M31 is visible to the naked eye. The Pleiades cluster is now quite high in the South-east and Betelgeuse is just visible over our hedge. Winter is on its way!
Nighty night stargazers.
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From the album: Mars
Night of the 9th October 2020. A clear night but unfortunately the Jet stream conspired to make images wobble like jelly on a plate! A stack of 9mins of RAW video clips. 127mm Meade Apo Refractor with 3x Barlow and QHY5-11 colour planetary camera. The best of a poor set of clips. -
Yes I was out last night and watched the image of Mars on my laptop screen 'shimmy' about. Haven't tried stacking any of my video clips yet but would be pleased to have something as good as Trevor achieved. It rained in Lowestoft in the afternoon and then cleared by 21:00. Usually this portends 'good seeing' but not last night. Tonight there is cloud from horizon to horizon. So in bed. Regards from George on the East Coast.
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Weather terrible but Metcheck advises me that there is an imaging window of opportunity in Lowestoft between 22:00 and 2:00 tonight - so going to set up at 21:00 and hopefully capture some more Mars video clips. I have become so stir crazy that I've started buying air plants. on-line and am making little rock, driftwood and Tillandsia tableau.
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Hi Reggie. I did go for it and the weather was compliant. The 'seeing' was not as good as on the 19th September. The image on my laptop was wobbling all over the place due to atmospheric turbulence. Managed to take a lot of video clips and am currently processing them. I have been trialling Topaz AI Denoise software and it really helps if applied to the stacked image before any other processing is used. I am likely to purchase this super smart software.
Hope you are getting clear skies and managing to capture some great Mars images .
Stay safe George
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Mars 19092020 00_21_27_g4_ap9_Drizzle15
Hawksmoor commented on Hawksmoor's gallery image in Member's Album
Thank you for your kind comment. Best regards George -
Decided to try out Topaz Denoise AI - Quite impressed by use on a couple of planetary images. Will have a go with some widefield photos tomorrow. Think I may well be investing $99.99 of my 'paper-round' money in this software. If so there will be no more astro investments until 2021.
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Wonderful detail and an explanatory write up. An all round top post.
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Brilliant image!
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Still grim astronomy blight weather here on the East Coast but on the whole a productive day. Made a metal sleeve from a bit of scrap stainless and fixed it over a crack in the ABS on Mrs Hawksmoor's Jenome sewing machine. Said crack was preventing the cotton from moving correctly and this in turn was causing stitches to be dropped and some stitches not to work at all! Generally it is a well made machine but why use ABS in a location where a moving thread over time is likely to wear a groove and mess everything up? It now works Igor! and I am in her good books. The other 'result of the day' was addressing the stripped thread in my x2.5 Barlow. Overtime and due to my real fear that one or other camera was going to drop out and fall to its doom on the concrete paving, I had overtightened and stripped the thread in the soft aluminium. Yet again the £5.99 Tap and Dye set from Lidl's middle aisle has saved the day. I await the M4 al thumb bolt from my friend Mr Amazon Prime as I now have a new M4 threaded hole awaiting its company. Now this small engineering feat may not rate with all you proper engineers but for an ' itinerant artist and bodger' like me, this is a "small step for man but a giant leap for Hawksmoor"
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Glad you are doing well. I had a look at your post. Very nice image of Mars you captured! Weather has been poor in the UK over th last week. Particularly bad where we live on the East Coast. Had gale force winds and torrential rain. Still plenty of cloud about tonight but I can see the Moon and a few stars. Maybe a chance of imaging tomorrow night. Fingers crossed! I am well but my partner has not been so good. She has developed a form of arthritis which is related to her immune system malfunctioning. Thankfully the hospital has put her on medication that seems to be working. Covid 19 is on the rise again in the UK so we are social isolating as a matter of course but we miss seeing our grandchildren. Stay safe where you are Reggie! Hope you get clear skies for opposition and look forward to seeing your images. George
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Have started re processing some of the videos I captured on the 19th September adopting a less technicolour and over sharpened approach. Have abandoned Autostakkert3 and gone back to Autostakkert2 +Registax wavelets and all is crash free. This is my favourite effort so far. Saw a little bit of blue sky today so hopefully I might get to capture some more M\ars videos soon. cheers George
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Hi Reggie thanks for your kind comment. How are you? Hadn't seen any of your posts for a while so wondered if you were ok. best regards George
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From the album: Mars
A stack from another AVI video taken on the 19th September 2020. 127mm Meade Apo refractor and x3 Televue Barlow, QHY5-11 colour Camera. 3min video best 500 frames. Taken on board Pete Presland's advice - muted colour and less sharpening. Also reverted to Autostakkert2 plus Registax6 wavelets. -
Please send a bit of Sun over we are going rusty! Best wishes from George next the sea.
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The focal length of my refractor = 952mm with a F Ratio = 7.5. I was using a x3 Televue Barlow so the image was taken at F22.5 which is about max from my location on a stable night otherwise I use a x2.5 Barlow and image at F18.7. The clips were 3 mins long and I captured 2848 frames of which I stacked 500. ( approx 17.5%) Cheers George.
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Hi Tony Thank you so much for your assistance. regarding the position of the volcanoes (out of sight). I really have difficulty in finding my way around Mars. Mind you some days I have difficulty finding my way around Aldi. Thank you also for your kind comments regarding my images (its not for nothing that they call the process 'lucky' imaging'). Hope the weather improves for you in Jersey and you get a crack at Mars in good conditions. I have to say the weather was spectacularly good when I imaged Mars on the 19th. The live view on my laptop was quite amazing and unlike anything I've seen whilst imaging the planet since 2014. The long suffering astro-widow - Mrs. Hawksmoor was even impressed when she came out for a look. The last couple of days here in Lowestoft have been absolutely terrible with gale force winds and torrential rain which has only abated this afternoon. Lets hope we get some clear skies before Mars goes spinning away. I shall definitely be too old to lug my hefty refractor out and fix it on my NEQ6Pro by the time Mars presents such a large disk. again. Thinking about my last sentence, that is probably the most upbeat spin I can put on it! Best regards from George in a rather moist Lowestoft
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Hi Pete Thanks for your kind and helpful comments. The enlargement is definitely over-sharpened. I have a tendency to over colour all my images not sure whether this is my artistic bent , badly adjusted laptop or failing eyesight in old age . Yes I did use the Registax RGB Align and Balance. In particular, I find the RGB Align function particularly useful whilst many of the planets are so low on my southern horizon. Best regards George
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Nice aurora display over the Shetlands last night. Good views from the new webcam location at Eshaness Lighthouse as well as from old faithfull Cliffcam 3. All at www.Shetland webcams.
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Hi Pete Yes Sharpcap does give you the option to capture and save in a SER format and I have tried this. It does seem to capture at a higher frame rate but I struggle to achieve as good an image when I process it. In the past, I have taken two videos one after the other of the same planet (Jupiter) one in AVI and one in SER and then processed them. Invariably what ever I'm doing seems to look worse on the SER version. I use a colour camera with an infrared blocker rather than a mono camera with filters maybe that is an issue or maybe just my processing? I have added two images the Registax Stacked no wavelets applied image and the Stacked Image plus wavelets that I then heavily processed to produce the accentuated clouds image previously posted. Best regards George
