May 2023

May 30^th 1125 GMT Sun

 

The Sun was high in the sky, almost as high as it gets. I saw three sunspots, unfortunately, close to the western limb and due to rotate to the other side of the Sun. I was hoping for the clearer skies and solar activity to continue for a while.

May 29^th 1245 GMT Sun

 

There was a lot of moving cloud around, mostly thin but cloud nevertheless. It was time for an alternative method, so back to the binocular scan.

May 28^th 1055 GMT Sun

 

I had a bad back and hips, so shot the Sun with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/2000 second exposure.

May 27^th 2130 GMT Moon

 

I did another lunar shoot, similar to the evening before, with full disc shots using my Mak and DSLR and close-ups using my Wifi electronic eyepiece.

• I had some trouble with files showing as corrupt but I managed to process all of them, although I had to "normalise" them in PiPP first. Those that did process produced mostly good results.

May 29^th 1245 GMT Sun

 

There was a lot of moving cloud around, mostly thin but cloud nevertheless. It was time for an alternative method, so back to the binocular scan.

May 27th 0830 GMT Sun

 

It was clear, so there was only one thing to do. I like to follow solar activity, so shot the Sun with my Mak and DSLR at my usual settings. It was great to be out in just shorts and T-shirt.

May 26^th 2040 GMT Moon

 

I attempted some full disc shots with my Mak and DSLR at 1.54 metres focal length, ISO 100 and 1/320 second exposure. Due to camera damage, I was have extreme difficulty achieving focus.

 

It was then time for my Wifi electronic eyepiece to see first light. It was a lot easier to use without needing to run cables to my laptop and initial indications were positive.

The early images were slightly out of focus. Also Autostakkert required me to convert the video file in PiPP, then it gave a blurry image. Registax 5 was better.

One image seemed to work.

May 26^th 1200 GMT Sun

 

I bin scanned the Sun in  a clear sky. The main difference between this drawing and the previous one is the earth’s rotation, which produces a 90 degree difference in orientation between the Sun when due east and due south. The sunspots also rotated, due to the slower solar rotation of about a month.

May 25^th 0515 GMT Sun

 

Disaster struck and maybe a lesson for us all! I intended to do a solar shoot and the only place I could get the Sun from was on concrete. My telescope mount crashed, breaking my finderscope and causing some damage to my camera. It was possible that I could repurpose parts of the finderscope. I swapped it for my other one, a 6x30 straight through one but could not find the Sun. My telescope may have suffered some superficial damage but I was able to see some distant trees, using an eyepiece.

 

Despite my disappointment, I did not want to waste a clear Sun, so I did a binocular scan and saw two new sunspots.

May 24th 2030 GMT Moon and Venus

 

It was dusk and the sky was still far too light to see stars. Good thing the Moon and Venus were about, high in the west. I took out my Mak and DSLR and set them at 1.54 metres focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure. I snapped each in turn. The Venus shot did not focus.

 

 

I snapped them both with just my DSLR at various focal lengths at ISO 400 and 1/50 second exposure.

May 24^th 1130 GMT Sun

 

A binocular scan of the Sun showed that the large sunspot had rotated quite considerably and no longer showed double. The presence of smaller sunspots made the view rather interesting.

May 23^rd 2005 GMT Moon and Venus

 

I snapped the Moon, together with Venus from an upstairs window with my phone. Venus was only just visible, as it was soon after sunset.

Unfortunately, Venus did not appear on the photo.

May 22nd 2130 GMT Moon and Venus

 

This was a quick shot of the two together with my phone after the clouds cleared.

May 21st 0720 GMT Sun

 

It was sunny and clear again. The sunspots had rotated since the day before and the group of small sunspots had shown even more members as they rotated from the far side. Great place, the Sun but a bit hot for humans.

May 20th 2220 GMT Meteor Hunt

 

I set my DSLR at 35mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 15 seconds exposure.  I set my camera to take repeated shots automatically and hoped!

The first few frames stacked well to show the northern crown, Corona Borealis.

At 2143 GMT, I caught a faint meteor, probably from the Eta Lyrid shower, as it seemed to come from the right direction.

At 2151 GMT, two faint ones appeared in the same photo in part of the constellation of Hercules.

At 2300 GMT, I caught a bright meteor.

At 2304 GMT, just four minutes later, I caught another faint meteor.

May 20th 2045 GMT Venus

 

It had been a sunny day and the clear conditions persisted into dusk. Venus was still quite high in the west. It was nice again to do a session with summer observing gear of shorts and T-shirt.

 

I took one set of shots at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/100 second exposure. Focus was way off, though.

 

I took another set at 4.62m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/10 second exposure. Focus was a bit off but I sorted it out.

May 20th 0750 GMT Sun

 

I woke up to bright sunshine. In decades gone by I would have thought about catching trout but, for most of the last two decades, my thoughts turned to the Sun. I went out with my Mak and DSLR and used my settings of 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and  1/500 second exposure.

 

The view through my camera was amazing. There was a large dual sunspot I had followed in my binoculars two days previously. There were a large number of smaller sunspots, split into two groups.

 

I had a bit more time, so I took my Coronado PST out for the first time in ages. The dual sunspot was immediately noticeable. After a bit of tuning, I detected a bright flare where one of the sunspot groups was. Alas, my attempts at afocal photography with my DSLR and phone camera did not inspire confidence.

The bright flare showed well in a close-up.

May 19^th 2050 GMT Venus

 

Five minutes earlier, Venus and most of the western sky was covered in cloud. As another bank of cloud was moving in, I snapped the planet at 300mm focal length, ISO100 and 1/200 second exposure.

May 19^th 1130 GMT Sun

 

The viewing conditions were the same as the day before – hazy, with some thin cloud. The Sun appeared to be becoming more active but the reality was not so dramatic. We can only see one half of the Sun at one time, officially. In reality, we cannot see the areas on the solar limb very well. If you don’t believe this, try rotating a circular ball and, if permissible (!), draw on it and rotate it. You will see how objects appear to change shape. What had happened on the Sun on the day in question was that the Sun had rotated and new sunspots had come from the far side of the solar sphere. It made for a rather interesting viewing!

May 18^th 1140 GMT Sun

 

There was a lot of haze and thin cloud about but I was able to see some sunspots for the first time for a few days. There was one especially large one that had just emerged onto the solar disc. I had been following a group of small sunspots online for a few days and could see two of them.

May 17th 2015 GMT Venus

It was a dusky dusk, with plenty of thin cloud and haze. The Sun had set and the Moon was in the morning sky. Fortunately, Venus was visible. Its phases are well known to be visible to telescopes but those of us who own large binoculars can also see the phase, although not as accurately as through a telescope. There is also a very special feeling about being able to browse the sky with binoculars, wearing a T-shirt and shorts.

I could see Venus, quite soon after sunset and it showed a mis-shapen disc, like a gibbous moon showing about a 70% phase in my binoculars. This appeared larger than the 60% phase I caught with my telescope and DSLR camera on 7th.

May 14^th 0010 GMT Binocular Session

 

Conditions were not good, with a lot of haze, especially near the horizon. I had a look round while checking my camera. Venus and Mars had long departed the scene and Leo was starting to tip towards the western horizon. Above its hind quarters was the large open star cluster Melotte 111. I could see its main stars, as it filled my binocular field of view. I could also see another type of object, the globular star cluster M13 in Hercules. I could see a central condensation, while the outer layers were fainter. I did not see any induvial stars, a tough pot, even for my large binoculars.

 

I tried to find the nearby globular clusters M3 and M92 but the haze was too thick. I did a quick tour of the double stars Albireo, Delta Lyrae, Epsilon Lyrae, Nu Draconi, 16/17 Draconi and Mizar/Alcor.

 

It was not a great session but I had few recent opportunities to see much beyond the boundaries of our solar system.

May 13^th 2155 GMT Meteor Hunt

 

I retained the same setup and aimed at Lyra, in the hope of getting some meteors. If I didn’t, maybe I might have got some constellation shots.

I stacked the first 40 frames to get an image of Lyra.

I did not catch any meteors and the first 40 frames were the best and most interesting, the remainder being in between constellations or too hazy.

I retained the same setup and aimed at Lyra, in the hope of getting some meteors. If I didn’t, maybe I might have got some constellation shots.

I stacked the first 40 frames to get an image of Lyra.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/philippughastronomer/52899860272/in/dateposted-public/

May 13th 2240 GMT Venus and Mars

I had taken a photo of Venus with Mars and Pollux, the brightest star in Gemini, 3 days before using my phone camera. This time, I used my chosen method, my DSLR camera. I used 35mm focal length, ISO 800 and 15 seconds exposure. I stacked 6 of 7 images to get this image.

May 13th 1755 GMT Sun

We were out for the afternoon and early evening. The Sun was low in the sky, so I could not use my telescope. I was able to check it with my binoculars and filters and saw two sunspots, one large.

May 10^th 2110 GMT Venus

It was an afterthought, as I had already gone upstairs to bed, having an early start the next day. Venus shone brightly, as dusk was giving way to darkness. I only had my phone with me, so I snapped Venus at 10x magnification. The result, as was frequently revealed on the Jeremy Kyle Show lie detector test was inconclusive. The image showed a suggestion of a gibbous phase but was it just a "round" Venus gone wrong? It looked less convincing than my telescope and DSLR shot 3 days before.

I zoomed back out to full width. Venus was no longer showing a disc but the bright star Pollux (in Gemini) showed. Below and to the left was the planet Mars. Mars was near its faintest, as it was on the far side of the Sun and almost at its furthest from Earth,

May 10^th 0540 GMT Sun

 

The feeling of the Sun’s rays in the morning can be as invigorating as half a cup of coffee, well maybe a quarter. This is especially true if one happens to be a keen amateur astronomer with a special interest in the Sun. I saw several sunspots, with one rather large one through my binoculars and filters.

May 7^th 2005 GMT Venus

 

It was barely dusk and Venus was high in the west. I snapped it with my Mak and DSLR at 1.54m focal length, ISO100 and 1/100 second exposure.

May 7^th 1125 GMT Sun

I was due to miss the best of the solar viewing, so I had to do what I could under the worse viewing conditions at lunchtime. I bin scanned the Sun through moving cloud. I saw a single large sunspot.

May 7^th 0025 GMT Moon

 

It was a case of catching the Moon between cloud. I took some full disc shots at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure. It was low down and lots of thin cloud, so no opportunity to do much else.

May 5th 1935 GMT

There were some breaks in the clouds but not enough to get the telescope out. I snapped it with my DSLR at 300mm focal length ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure, hoping to catch the phase. Fortunately, I did and it was very clearly gibbous.

 May 3^rd 1220 GMT Sun

 

I did a solar binocular scan from work and saw new activity had rotated onto the solar disc. It was nice to see some sun after a cloudy day the day before.

May 1st 1200 GMT Sun

The night of 30th April/1st May was cloudy and offered neither viewing nor photographic opportunities. The bank holiday of May 1st did little to inspire me either but a couple of temporary gaps in the cloud allowed me to view some sunspots with my binoculars. At least, it was a start to the month.

April 2023

April 29th 1020 GMT Sun

There was some thin cloud around but I photographed the Sun anyway. I had left the ISO setting at 6400, so had a lot of processing to do. I manged to catch a few sunspots.

April 28th 2220 GMT Moon and Double Stars

The evening was surprisingly clear but the bright moon, just past first quarter was drowning out most  of the objects in the sky. Not wanting to waste a rare bit of night sky, the obvious target was the Moon itself. It is quite an interesting object and rather photogenic. With a new astro camera, I was not ready to try it out for real and I was not entirely happy with the lunar close-ups I had been doing. Yet I was very happy with the full disc shots I was getting with my Mak and DSLR.

I took a set of images at 1.54 metres focal length, ISO 100 and 1/400 second exposure. I stacked them with Autostakkert and finished in GIMP.

I increased the ISO setting to 6400 and the exposure to 1/3 second. It was a long shot but my first double star attempt was Castor. As it is a close double star, it probably needed a longer focal length, or different setup, as I just got a bright star.

Same with Porrima (Gamma Virginis).

By contrast, Delta Lyrae is a wide double and fitted into the field of view quite easily.

Nu Draconi is a nice binocular double star and showed quite nicely in the image.

As expected, I did not capture the Ring Nebula on camera. That did not mean the effort was a complete waste of time, though. What, optimism from Phil? The positive was that I detected more stars, after a lot of photo processing, than I thought possible with this set-up. Scope for further experimentation.

April 25th 1950 GMT Moon and Venus 

 

The dusk sky was cloudy but I could see the Moon and Venus in the west. Unfortunately, Venus did not register on my phone camera.

Further examination and processing revealed that Venus was there, after all!! It is the bright dot near the bottom of the photo.

April 25^th 1200 GMT Sun

 

It had got to lunchtime and the predicted cloud and rain failed to appear. Well not quite. I took my Mak and DSLR out and set up with 1.54 metres focal length, ISO 100 and 1/2000 second exposure, as usual. My first set of images were affected by thin cloud.

Fortunately, it cleared minutes later and I was able to get some clean shots.

April 25^th 0650 GMT Sun

 

According to the film “Miss Congeniality”, April 25^th is the perfect date because it’s not too hot, not too cold and all you need is a light jacket. Except that in south west England, it was more of a continuation of March, with mostly cloudy, wet days and temperatures below seasonal norm. With the weather forecast to be wet later in the day, I did an early binocular scan of the Sun and saw a single, large sunspot, although the Learmonth images showed many smaller that were below binocular visibility.

April 23rd 2000 GMT Moon

 

I took a quick snap of the Moon and Venus with my phone camera.

April 22nd 1140 GMT Sun

After a wet Friday,  it was dry on Saturday but there was lots of moving cloud. I saw two sunspots that seemed about to rotate to the other side of the Sun.    

April 20^th 1100 GMT Sun

 

I had a rare sunny day, with a very clear sky. Despite only having a short lunch break, I could not resist taking a “proper” set of photographs with my Mak and DSLR. I used 1.54m focal length, ISO100 and 1/2000 second exposure. I could see several small sunspots that I could not see in my binocular scans of the previous two days. I took several shots, with the intention to stack them. It was nice to get something exciting, for a change.

April 19^th 1115 GMT Sun

The conditions were a bit better than the day before but only a little bit. I was able to see that the two sunspots I had seen the day before had rotated and a third, fainter one had come into view below them.

April 18^th 1110 GMT Sun

 

There was some clear sky between moving cloud. I was able to see two sunspots, one especially prominent. It was nice to see anything at all, as the recent weather severely limited any observation or photography.

April 17th 2945 GMT Venus

 

After a cloudy day, the cloud thinned in the evening to show some stars. Venus was low in the North West. I tried to capture its phase using my DSLR at 309mm focal length, ISO 100 AND 1/100 second exposure.

 

I also tried Mars at 1/25 second exposure. I didn't expect anything but sometimes I try things that shouldn't work but do. This time, it didn't work!

April 15th 1935 GMT Venus

It turned out that this Venus session would be my last action of the day. The predicted clear sky did not materialise. I photographed Venus with my Maksutov and DSLR, at 1.54 metres focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure. I tried a longer focal length later but it did only produced fuzzy images.

            

April 15th 1200 GMT Sun

 

There were some gaps in the cloud and a Binocular scan revealed four sunspots. It was nice to see an active sun.

April 15th 0010 GMT Lyra

 

It had cleared a bit, so I took my camera out and snapped the constellation of Lyra at 70mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 8 seconds exposure.

 

 I then tried the Ring Nebula at 300mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 2 seconds exposure. It was a long shot but I thought I would have a go. I did not catch the Ring (M57) but I caught a few stars and a wide split of Beta Lyrae (double star).

April 14th 2220 GMT Binocular Scan

After a wet day, I ventured outside. There were some patches of sky clear of cloud but there was a haze, dissuading me from attempting any photography. However, with night time viewing being near impossible on work days, I could not waste the evening.

Out came my big binoculars (17x70) to have a look round. I started with the easier targets of double stars. As Lyra was up, I saw Epsilon and Delta Lyrae, although (as usual) Epsilon only showed as a double star, instead of the quadruple appearance, seen in telescopes with high magnification. Nearby were the double stars of Nu and 16/17 Draconi. Splitting Alcor and Mizar was easy enough, although I did not split Mizar. Again, that was within the range of my telescope at higher magnification. Finally Albireo split easily into its two components, although the colours were impossible to see at low elevation.

Looking west, Mars had sneaked into Gemini but was too far from Earth to show any detail. I could make the open cluster M35 out from the haze but only just. The Beehive (M44) was covered by cloud but Melotte 111, the large open cluster in Coma Berenices showed clearly. I saw M13, the globular cluster in Hercules easily enough and even saw M92. I remembered the time I saw M92 on an exceptionally clear night and thought I had discovered a comet because I had never seen it so bright. A look at the Cambridge Star Atlas saved my embarrassment! I also found M3, which ois brighter than M92 but harder to find.

April 13^th 1120 GMT Sun

 

• There were some clear patches between the cloud, so I bin scanned the Sun and saw three small sunspots. It had quietened down but I suspected that there was activity on the side of the Sun facing away from us. It certainly beat staring at a blank disc for months on end during a solar minimum.

April 10th 1515 GMT Sun

It was nice to have some good news for a change. We had some morning rain, then it unexpectedly cleared for a while. I photographed the Sun with my usual full disc settings and caught a nice chain of small sunspots plus one larger one. A bit of optimism? Me? Steady on now!

April 9th

I woke with high expectations, as the weather forecast was for clear and sunny weather. Big mistake. It was complete cloud cover and it only partially cleared during the day. Readers of my blog will know that I had been having problems with stacking close-up images of the Sun and Moon taken with my Mak and DSLR. I tried stacking on features rather than the limb of the disc with Autostakkert. It still didn't work. Registax 5 and 6 ran out of memory, so I tried using resized images with the green data only. That sorted the memory problem but it didn't stack properly. I tried a few variations but they didn't work either. Was it a waste of time? In the sense that I did not get a result but at least I tried a few things and could cross them off my list.

April 8th 1035 GMT Sun

The sky was rather hazy but it cleared later and the sunspots had moved since the previous day.

April 8th 2335 GMT Moon

 

So it was that, due to the idiosyncrasies of daylight savings that the date had changed but Greenwich Mean Time was the time from the day before. Of course. I could have solved the anomaly by waiting 25 minutes but I was tired. Compared to the night before. I increased the exposure time for my lunar shot to 1/800 second or 1.25 milliseconds if you prefer it that way.

April 7^th 0920 GMT Sun

 

It was a rare day of bright sunshine and I took a full disc solar shot with my Mak and DSLR at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/1000 second exposure., as usual. There was some minor activity on the Sun, rather than the more recent spotty solar disc.

April 6^th 2215 GMT Moon

 

After a day that weather forecasters have termed “changeable”, since I first remember seeing them on the gogglebox, it finally cleared to reveal a moon that was just past the full phase and a haze that was scattering its light. Nothing else showed. Although Mars had not set, it was too far to show a decent image except in the large professional observatories. So the Moon it was. My original intention was to catch some full disc shots and leave it at that. Yet, I decided to revisit an old idea, which was to take some regional shots of the Moon with my 2x Barlow lens, instead of my usual 3x Barlow.

 

The first set of shots was with my Mak and DSLR at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/1000 second exposure.

 

 

I took further sets of shots at 3.08m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/250 second exposure, although I later thought I should have used 1/200 second exposure instead.

The first set of close-up shots did not stack, so I processed a single frame to show Grimaldi and part of Kepler.

The second set of close-ups caught Tyco and its rays but, again, I processed a single shot.

I caught the region to the right of Tycho, showing several rays.

By that time, I had given up on stacking and the next set of images showed Mare Crisium.

Then there was the Sea of Tranquility.

Then there was Plato and the lunar Alps.

April 4^th 0640 GMT Sun

I bin scanned the Sun in some rare clear sky and saw two sunspots close together. Nice to get an image of my own, much as I enjoyed doing the Cerro Tololo process.

April 3rd Professional Observatory Shot taken at 1834 GMT at Cerro Tololo

Another experiment I had thought about doing was to try processing professional observatory images. In this case I used a solar image from the Cerro Tololo solar observatory in Chile. I applied the usual techniques that I used on my own solar images. This looked rather promising, given that the Sun was very quiet the previous day. The sunspots were probably borderline for my Mak and DSLR.

April 2nd 1510 GMT Sun

The Sun was shining, for as change, so I tried to snap it with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/250 second exposure. I did not capture anything. I also tried using my camera phone with a Baader filter and high zoom but that didn't work either.

A bin scan and a look at the SOHO images confirmed the worst! There were just three sunspots, with only one being of borderline visibility in my Maksutov. The Sun wasn't actually quiet as such. The activity was on the other side. Now if I could turn Earth 180 degrees through its orbit...