February 2013 Full Report

This is the last full report, as I will be doing one large monthly report from now on.

1^st

I reprocessed a full disc lunar photo from August 24^th 2011.

2^nd

My first observation of the new month was a binocular scan of the Sun showing a single large sunspot.

At 1245GMT I viewed and photographed the Sun with my PST, having been reunited with it following my business trip to Lisbon. The standout features were the sunspot, some prominences and a large filament.

I decided to have a go with the webcam and Startravel 80 from 1930 GMT to 2000 GMT when a dizzy spell ended the session. The main idea was to try using a focal reducer with a webcam to get more of the Pleiades. It didn’t work due to focus travel problems and I thought of a potential workround later.

The Pleiades looked superb through the eyepiece and I took several shots at various exposure settings and areas of the cluster.

I also took some runs of Jupiter with its moons. 3 were visible and the best run showed some background stars.

 

4^th

A morning solar bin scan showed 2 sunspots.

I nipped out to do a quick zenith shot at 2200 GMT. This is a simple shot that involves pointing a camera straight upwards for as long as it will expose (8 seconds for my compact digital camera), then fetching it in when ready. A little but of tweaking using Paintshop Pro and GIMP brought out rather more detail.

5^th

There was thin cloud about, so I wasn’t able to do a pre-work photo shoot. It cleared enough for a bin scan for me to pop outside for a minute and see the sunspots had moved.

It cleared for a while at lunchtime. As I had to go out to pump up a car tyre, I took 2 digital cameras out to photograph the Sun in hydrogen alpha light at 1215 GMT. The Sun was much quieter than at the weekend, with only a sunspot and prominence the stand-our features.

The full disc shot showed some prominences and some minor surface details.

6^th

I reprocessed a constellation shot of the Plough taken on August 26^th 2011. Ursa Minor is visible near the top.

7^th

 I reprocessed a full disc hydrogen alpha shot from August 28^th 2011.

 

8^th

I reprocessed the first quadrant photo of August 28^th 2011.

9^th

I reprocessed the second solar quadrant from August 28^th 2011.

10^th

I reprocessed the third quadrant from August 28^th 2011 and found a nice filament near the limb that didn’t come out in the original processing.

11^th

The final quadrant from the Sun on August 28^th 2011 revealed a nice prominence.

12^th

 I combined 9 images from August 28^th 2011 to form this picture of Perseus.

 

 

13^th

A further 6 shots were used to obtain this shot of Andromeda, also showing the Square of Pegasus, Aries and Triangulum.

14^th

Clear sky at last! I binned scanned the Sun during a break in class and saw just a single sunspot.

At 1125 GMT I checked the Sun in hydrogen alpha light with my PST. The surface was rather bland, apart from a prominence, a filament and the sunspot I had seen in “white light”. Viewing and photography was difficult because of moving cloud.

At 1740 GMT I did some full disc shots of the Moon using my Skymax 127 and compact digital camera. The idea was to take several frames and combine them, as I usually do but only one frame was usable. On the other hand, the result didn’t look too bad.

At 1810 GMT, I snapped the Moon with Jupiter but Aldebaran also came out in the photo.

 

15^th

I bin scanned the Sun before work and saw that the single sunspot had apparently shrunk from the day before.

I checked the Sun in hydrogen alpha light with the PST at 1235GMT. There was some haze about (that dissuaded me from trying the Moon as well) but I could see a nice prominence, the sunspot and a filaprom (filament joining up to a prominence) clearly.

At 2315 a patch of sky cleared around Jupiter. I’d been itching to try out a new method of webcamming at F/2.5 (yes, I mean F/2.5) by using the Startravel 80 and Antares focal reducer. I started off doing Jupiter’s moons then moved on to the Pleaides until the battery ran out at 2340 GMT. On stacking the images, I found that Registax 5 worked better on the longer exposures than Registax 6. The Pleaides shot was composed of about 11 imaging runs.

16^th

An alternative processing method for the Pleaides from 15^th, showed more stars but no colour.

17^th

The final shot from August 28^th 2011 shows Pegasus. I tried to combine it with the Andromeda shot but it failed.

I bin scanned the Sun with small binoculars (7x30) (from Brest, France) especially taken for travelling at 1630 GMT but didn’t see any sunspots.

I popped out at 2015 GMT before dinner to do a quick photo shoot. I caught the Moon with Jupiter and Aldebaran.

I also snapped Auriga, directly overhead.

18^th

I did a photo shoot of the Moon and Jupiter at 2045 GMT, after a lot of fiddling.

I stacked four frames of Orion to produce this image.

19^th

I snapped the Moon with Jupiter at 1800 GMT (1900 local time) in twilight.

 

At 2001 GMT, I attempted to snap the Plough but only caught the handle! Still, it made a nice sight with the foreground trees.

20^th

Conditions were much more hazy than the day before, so I just snapped the Moon with Jupiter. The faint traces of Aldebaran and Betelguese can also be seen.

28^th

My first session after my dad’s accident was a quick shoot of Orion and Jupiter in Taurus.