Black Blob and Friend - white light, 17th Nov.

[Luke]

I am surprised that this one seems to my eyes have come out okay, the seeing was pretty bad when I took this shot, so I stacked fewer frames than normal and it seems to have made it out the other side better than I was expecting.

The seeing got worse and worse and after a few grabs I got the eyepiece onto it so I could see the spot directly in its full glory. It was just a fuzzy black blob by then. Amazing how quickly the seeing can fall off, from poor to pointless in a few minutes! Thankfully I got a brief but much better view in the next day! Oh, and I have been moaning lately about having not had an airplane transit for ages. I have now had two in the past week

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17th November
Tele Vue 60, Lunt 1.25 Herschel Wedge, Solar Continuum filter, UV/IR cut filter, Grasshopper 3 camera (ICX687)

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice captures. Like the one with the plane too.

[tingting44]

wow, that plane pic is amazing! id love to get one like that if im ever lucky enough, very nicely done!

[Montana]

A nice little glider I love the plane transits, a great looking black blob too :)

Alexandra

[Davey-T]

Nice pic', so that's the Sun looks like

Dave

[Pete Presland]

that has come out very well and that plane is in fine focus!

[Iainp]

Wow, I expect to see the plane one on the front page of a magazine soon.

[Luke]

Thanks, all!

Pete, I don't know what everyone else does with planes but I try to stack them if I can so they can take a fair bit of sharpening. I crop each frame around the plane, try to blow out the solar disc to be pretty white against the black plane, then manually line the plane images all up with each other, then stack them with Registax 6, using about 10 alignment points around tips and corners of the plane. Maybe that's what everyone else does or something better. I ended up blurring the plane a bit in the end as it came out so sharp after using Smart Sharpen (I was lucky to get 17 frames of the plane to stack).

A downside of my technique is I'm not too sure what to do about contrails yet, though I kind of liked the peaceful look for this one anyway

[Luke]

Wow, I expect to see the plane one on the front page of a magazine soon.

Thanks, Iain, I shall try contacting the Beds Post   Your image looked so cool in your local paper

[David Smith]

Love the colours Luke. Seem to be a lot of planes about at the minute. Everyone must be trying to escape from this dismal weather.

[Luke]

Thanks, David! I love plane transits, nice to see a bunch on SGL recently. I had a near miss too, one shooting over while I was repositioning things. Made me jump a bit, nice and big silhouette! Yes, I think they are jetting away to better weather

Night time has been so bad here that for a moment I thought about selling up the DSO gear and sticking to solar and lunar, but I got a nice hour in on Thurs night. I had forgotten how beautiful DSO's are, even if there was fog/cloud on and off! Will hold off the plans to sell especially as I won't be needing a SolarMax 90 or similar thanks to the Quark

No joy here this morning, I am writing the day off already, but will rush out with the SolarMax 60 and tripod in the unlikely event it does clear up briefly.

As Sarah has been talking about his and her Quarks, we were considering selling our remaining SolarMax 60 to fund a second one, but we think we are going to keep the SM60 after all. We would ideally both like to keep the SM60 to share, and have a Quark each. So I guess we just have to save up some pennies a new Quark... I think days like today the SM60 is first choice. Wouldn't want to be putting the goto mount, a big scope and Quark out with the threat of rain and probably a blank all day anyway... One slight minus of the Quark is the connector you plug the cable into, it looks a little vulnerable to me so I daren't put a scope cover over...

Good luck everyone to catch a few rays! Especially anyone who hasn't seen the big beastie yet, my fingers are crossed for you!

Love the colours Luke. Seem to be a lot of planes about at the minute. Everyone must be trying to escape from this dismal weather.

[David Smith]

I know how you feel, had one solar session in the last 14 days and night sessions are rarer than hens teeth at the moment. Forecast for this weekend is just as bad but a possible clear sky tomorrow evening (I'll believe that when I see it).

Probably a good call with keeping the SM60, you need to be opportunistic at the moment.

[DrRobin]

Nice one Luke.  Those pesky planes just add interest.

I caught a bird of prey today hovering against the sun in Ha, looking for it's next meal.  It won't stack but would make a nice 20 second video if I can reduce the size.  The image had to be re-took for the mosaic.

Robin