February 28th 2355 GMT Bootes
I finished the month by photographing the constellation of
Bootes with my phone camera. At least, I thought I did but got my thumb in the <expletive> way!
February 28th 1940 GMT Jupiter and Mars
I photographed Jupiter with Mars with my phone camera at
default settings.
February 28th 1745 GMT Venus
Venus was a thin crescent but, to my eyes without optical
instruments. it appeared more like a line. In the DSLR camera viewfinder, it
appeared as a thin crescent, as it should. I photographed it with my Mak and
DSLR at 1.54m focal length. ISO 100 and 1/250 second exposure.
February 28th 1450 GMT Sun
I had a short period of clear sky in between cloudy periods.
I started off by photographing the Sun with my DSLR camera at 300mm focal
length. ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure.
I took my Coronado PST out and used my 32mm eyepiece to
provide a magnification of 12.5x. I set my DSLR camera to default settings and
used my 18-55mm zoom lens at various focal lengths. I wad going to do some
further shots but cloud rolled in again.
I combined the long and short exposures to form a composite solar hydrogen alpha shot showing prominences and some disc detail.
February 27th 2040 GMT Miscellaneous Shoot
I started off taking some dark frames with my DSLR camera at
300mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 1/15 second exposure.
I photographed Jupiter's moons. I caught two, with one very close.
I photographed the Orion Great Nebula (M42). It didn't work.
I tried to find the Beehive cluster but could not. I think
there was mist on my lens and too much haze.
I photographed the double star Algeiba in Leo.
I switched to 18mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 6 seconds
exposure.
I photographed Jupiter in Taurus.
I photographed Mars in Gemini.
February 27th 1910 GMT Venus, Jupiter and Mars
I photographed Venus with Jupiter with my phone camera at
default settings.
I photographed Jupiter with Mars using my phone camera at
default settings. I got my thumb in the way of all shots, proving I still had a lot to learn about using phone cameras.
February 27th 1815 GMT Venus
I snapped Venus with my DSLR at 300mm focal length, ISO 100
and 1/500 second exposure. The focus was off.
February 27th 1650 GMT Sun
I snapped the Sun with my DSLR camera at 300mm focal length,
ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure.
February 26th 1810 GMT Venus
I snapped Venus with my DSLR at 300mm focal length. ISO 100
and 1/250 second exposure. The stack did not work and the images were a bit out of focus.
February 26th 1535 GMT Sun
I bin scanned the Sun through my filters. I saw what looked like a
single, large sunspot but was probably a group of smaller sunspots.
February 25th 1740 GMT Venus
It was around sunset, possibly just after. Venus was quite
high in the west. I snapped it with my Mak telescope and DSLR camera at 1.54m
focal length, ISO 100 and 1/250 second exposure.
February 25th 1300 GMT Sun
It looked clear when I went out but clouded over before I
could do much. I saw a bland solar disc in my Coronado PST. Enough said!
February 25th 0915 GMT Sun
There was thin cloud but I had a go at photographing the Sun
anyway. I used my Mak telescope and DSLR camera at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100
and 1/400 second exposure.
February 24th 2110 GMT Jupiter and Mars
I checked the sky in case there was anything worth
photographing but there was lots of cloud. Jupiter, Mars and some background
stars were about, so I snapped them with my phone camera at default settings.
February 24th 1805 GMT Planetary Shoot
Venus, Jupiter and Mars were all visible at dusk.
I snapped Venus with my DSLR camera at 300mm focal length.
ISO 100 and 1/400 second exposure. This showed the phase.
I lengthened the exposure to 1/200 second for Jupiter. This showed just a fuzzy disc.
I set the exposure to 1/50 second for Mars. I did two processing runs, one with the green data and one with the red data. Neither was convincing.
February 24th 1120 GMT Sun
Despite the weather forecast, there was some sunlight
getting through. The intervals where I could get a clear look at the sun were
very short, so I checked out the sunspots with my binoculars and filters. I saw
three, although the professional observatories showed that each of them were
groups of smaller sunspots. I hoped it would not be too long before I could
photograph the sun with my telescope.
February 22nd 2145 GMT DSLR camera shoot
I tried to capture the faint constellation of Lynx at 18mm
focal length, ISO 1600 and 30 seconds exposure.
I tried Orion at the same settings. There was some distortion around the edges of the cropped image, so I cropped it.
I snapped a single frame of Leo.
February 22nd 1850 GMT Phone Camera Shoot
I was in a local supermarket car park and took a series of
shots with my phone camera at default settings.
I used 10x zoom to photograph Venus. No, it didn't work but I was experimenting.
I used 1x zoom to photograph Venus and Jupiter.
I used 1x zoom to photograph Jupiter and Mars.
I used 1x zoom to try to capture Orion.
I used 10x zoom in an attempt to capture Jupiter's moons. Admittedly, I only did on one photo and it required a lot of processing but I finally cracked it.
February 18th 1025 GMT Sun
The Sun was out but the sky was a bit hazy, so I used an
exposure time with my Maksutov telescope and DSLR camera of 1/400 second,
instead of 1/500 second. I used my normal focal length and ISO settings of
1.54m and 100.
February 17th 1745 GMT Venus
Venus was high in the west. I had a session before it set
below our fence.
I took one set of shots with my Mak telescope and DSLR
camera at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure.
I took another set of shots with my Mak telescope and DSLR
camera at 4.62m focal length. ISO 100 and 1/20 second exposure.
Although the disc was larger in the longer focal length, the image was sharper in the shorter focal length image.
February 17th 1355 GMT Sun
There was a lot of moving cloud but I managed to see a sunspot
through the gloom.
February 16th 1955 GMT Jupiter, Mars and Orion
It was still a bit hazy, especially to the east. I used my
phone camera at default settings to photograph Jupiter and Mars. It did not work, as only Jupiter registered on the camera.
Despite the conditions, I was brave (stupid??) enough to
photograph Orion with Jupiter in the top right corner and Sirius in the bottom
left corner. It did not work properly, as the stack did not align. Jupiter and Sirius turned out to be just smudges, so I cropped them out.
February 16th 1810 GMT Venus
The cloud from the morning and afternoon had broken up,
somewhat!
I snapped Venus with my DSLR at 300mm focal length and ISO
100. I tried various exposure times from 1/500 to 1/100 second to see what
worked best.
February 13th 2140 GMT Moon
After a week of cloud, conditions improved enough for me to
see the Moon. There was a lot of cloud around, so when I took some photos, I
used an exposure time of 1/500 second, with my DSLR camera, instead of the
usual shorter exposure I use for the Moon near its full phase. I used a focal
length of 300mm and ISO setting of 100.
February 6th 1940 GMT Moon with Jupiter and Mars
I photographed the Moon with Jupiter and Mars with my phone camera at
default settings.
December 6th 1820 GMT Moon and Planets
I took some shots of the Moon with Jupiter with my DSLR
camera at 135mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure. I processed the Moon in GIMP and brightened Jupiter.
I tried again with my camera set to 70mm focal length. This did not work
I took two sets of lunar shots with my Maksutov telescope
and DSLR camera at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure.
I photographed Venus with my DSLR camera at 300mm focal
length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure. It showed the phase quite well.
I changed the exposure to 1/200 second to photograph
Jupiter. I caught the disc but no cloud belts.
I changed the exposure to 1/50 second to photograph Mars. Against all odds, I caught some features, quite rare with this setup.
I set my camera to 300mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 1/30
second to attempt Jupiter's moons. I caught two.
I overlaid the Jupiter image I took earlier to produce a better representation.
February 6th 1325 GMT Sun
I photographed the Sun using my Coronado PST and DSLR camera
used afocally. I used a 32mm Plossl eyepiece.
I took some shots on automatic settings at automatic
settings and various focal lengths from 35mm to 55mm.
I repeated this with manual settings on my camera at ISO 400
and exposures of 1/40 to 1/20 second.
I combined the two images to form a composite showing surface and edge detail.
February 6th 1110 GMT Sun
I photographed the Sun with my DSLR camera and Mak telescope
at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure, as usual.
February 5th 2350 GMT Jupiter and Mars
I took several shots of Jupiter and Mars with my phone
camera at default settings.
February 5th 2345 GMT Moon and Jupiter
I snapped the Moon with my DSLR camera at 300mm focal
length. ISO 100 and 1/500th second exposure.
I snapped Jupiter with my DSLR camera at 300mm focal length,
ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure.
I photographed both at 70mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 1/200
second exposure.
February 5th 1910 GMT Moon and Jupiter
I photographed the two objects together with my phone camera
at default settings. under hazy conditions.
February 5
th 1200 GMT Sun
I checked out the sun with my binoculars and filters and saw that
the sunspot pattern had changed from 2 days before.
February 4th 2100 GMT Moon and Jupiter
I photographed the Moon with my Mak telescope and DSLR
camera at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/320 second.
I changed the settings to 4.62m focal length, ISO 100 and
exposures from 1/30 second to 1/8 second to take some lunar closeups.
I attached the star diagonal to take some full disc shots of
the Moon at the previous settings.
As both stacked images (with and without the star diagonal) chopped off parts of the moon, I processed a single image to capture the full disc.
The star diagonal worked well with Jupiter and solved the
problem I had a few days ago when Jupiter was too high in the sky. I took some
shots of the disc at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure. Although I captured a nice, round disc, I did not catch any cloud belts.
I took some further photos at 1.54m focal length, ISO 6400
and 1/15 second exposure to try for the moons. It sort of worked and I stacked about 12 images from 30.
I produced a composite of the two images.
I could not use the same method on Mars as the finderscope
and camera got in each other's way!
February 4th 1915 GMT Moon and Jupiter
I photographed the two objects together with my phone camera
at default settings.
February 3rd 1930 GMT Planets
I set my DSLR to 300mm focal length, ISO 6400 and 1/40
second exposure. I took several photos of Jupiter, hoping to catch some
moons.
I set my DSLR camera to 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and
1/250 second to try and catch Jupiter's cloud belts.
I increased the exposure to 1/160 second in the hope of
catching something on Mars.
I did not capture anything useable.
February 3rd 1720 GMT Dusk Shoot
The Moon and three planers were clearly visible in the dusk
sky. I shot the Moon with Venus, the Moon with Jupiter and Jupiter with Mars at
my phone camera default settings.
I shot the Moon with my Mak telescope and DSLR camera at
1.54m ISO 400 and 1/320 second exposure.
I shot Venus at the same settings.
I shot Venus again at 4.62m focal length, ISO 400 and 1/30
second exposure. Unfortunately, the images were out of focus.
February 3rd 1420 GMT Sun
After a cloudy and, sometimes, wet morning, I was able to see the
sun through my binoculars and filters. I could see one large and two small
sunspots.
February 2nd 2235 GMT Jupiter and Mars
The sky was not clear but I was able to capture Jupiter and
Mars with my phone camera at default settings.
February 2nd 1515 GMT Moon
The clear conditions persisted into mid-afternoon. I
photographed the thin crescent Moon with my DSLR camera at 300mm focal length,
ISO 400 and 1/250 second exposure.
February 2nd 1245 GMT Sun
It was the first outing of the year for my Coronado PST. I
used a 32mm eyepiece and my DSLR camera at 45mm focal length afocally at
automatic default settings. I saw a filament and plage, with some sunspots. The filament and sunspots did not appear in the photo but I caught some small prominences and spicules.
February 2nd 0850 GMT Sun
I kicked off the month with a photo shoot of the Sun at
1.54m focal length. ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure.
