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...