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...

March 2023

March 30^th 1120 GMT Sun

It now seems that April showers have now moved to March, with recent climate change. Despite a very wet and cloudy morning, there was a clear spell at lunchtime. With a bad back and hips, I was unable to carry my telescope, so a binocular scan it was and I saw two sunspots, rather down from previous days. Still, at the time, I was grateful to get a look at anything outside Earth’s atmosphere.

March 27th 1915 GMT Moon and Mars

The moon was close to Mars in the dusk sky. I zoomed in ten times on my phone camera but left the other settings at default. I was not happy with the presentation of the Moon but it was nice to capture something on my camera phone, despite my residual cynicism about them.

March 26^th 1910 GMT Moon and Venus

 

This was my first astronomical session since the change to British Summer Time. The day had been cloudy, wet and windy but, at dusk, I walked our dog and saw the waxing crescent moon. Venus joined in the view, too. It was a while before I got outside. I started with the Moon with my Mak and DSLR at 1.54 metres focal length, ISO 100 and 1/100 second exposure. I took a few shots, with the idea of stacking five of them.

I made an amusing mistake when going in for close-ups. I connected my camera to my Barlow lens, to reach a focal length of 4.62 metres. However, I forgot to take the lower lens cap off before inserting the assembly into the telescope! I got past that and set the exposure to 1/20 second and shot away, taking sets of shots, with the intention of stacking them. Some stacks worked, others didn't and the results were not as good as I hoped.

 

I moved on to Venus, which had started to shine brightly. Through the viewfinder, I saw a gibbous eyeball shape, not unknown when viewing Venus. I have noticed that the phases of Venus are not necessarily the same as the Moon.

 

Cloud had started to roll in again. It had not been a prolific weekend for astronomy and astrophotography but it was better than a complete whiteout and I was looking forward to processing and posting the images later in the week.

March 25th 1120 GMT Sun

I could say that this was rather strange. Despite the weather forecast, there were a couple of clear spells. Unfortunately, the first one did not last long enough to get my telescope outside but I left it assembled in the hope that I might get a second clear spell.

I had some false alarms but I had enough time to get a set of shots of the full disc at 1.54 metres focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure. Some photos were ruined by cloud but I managed to stack five of them in Autostakkert and finished in GIMP. The result showed that, although I could capture sunspots in binoculars, I could get a much better result with a half decent telescope and decent camera.

March 24^th 0745 GMT Sun

 

I arrived at work in bright sunlight. The three sunspots from the day before had changed shape and intensity. It was amazing how the Sun could change in just 24 hours. It is why it is my favourite astronomical object.

March 23^rd 0755 GMT Sun

 

It came to pass that, on this memorable day, the clouds parted long enough for me to see the Sun. As I was about time to start work, I aimed my binocular and filters at this rather strange, bright object that I had only seen fleetingly throughout the month. I was greeted by two large sunspots and one small one, indicating a rather active Sun. I did not see any faculae (bright spots), as I had been through my telescope but it was nice to see something after four gruelling days of hurt, since my last observation.

March 19^th 1020 GMT Sun

March was turning out to be somewhat of a washout, whiteout and greyout, with very little opportunity to see or photograph anything in the sky. A brief spell of sunlight enabled me to do as solar shoot, on my birthday. I stacked 5 images to get a decent full solar disc. All of the activity was on a small part of the Sun, having rotated on from the far side.

I gave my optics a good clean before taking a close-up of the active region. I made the awful mistake of under-exposing the shots, forgetting to increase the exposure time from 1/500 to 1/50 second. This was probably why the images didn't stack. Instead, I processed a single frame and the dust motes were far enough away from the active region. Underexposure, well, yes, but processing gave a nice view of the sunspots and faculae.

March 14^th 1650 GMT Sun

 

There was a clear spell of sky in the late afternoon leading up to sunset. I had not been out for a while, mostly due to weather. I could see just two small sunspots, which was 2 small sunspots more than I had seen for a week. Needless to say, despite the optimistic weather forecast, I was unable to see more than the odd star winning a short battle with the clouds but losing the war.

March 7th 2050 GMT Moon

There are times when I doubt my own sanity but, considering multiverse theories, there must be a large but finite pasts, presents and futures, where, indeed, I go mad. This could be one of them. Conditions were so poor that, at no time during the photo shoot that the Moon was clear of cloud. I stacked 3 images to get a "cloudless" one.

March 7th 1950 GMT Venus and Jupiter

Venus and Jupiter had diverged since the last viewing, with Jupiter sinking towards the horizon. I used a variety of ISO settings and exposure times.

I also caught Venus, showing a slightly less than full phase at 300mm focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure.

March 2^nd 1910 GMT Venus and Jupiter

Regular readers of my blog and, indeed, my books will know that I am rather sceptical about camera phones. You will also be aware that I have made efforts to photograph the Moon that have shown the phase and no detail. Yet sometimes, we can be surprised. I reduced the ISO settings, as well as the controls allowed me to and ended up with something approaching DSLR quality, after a bit of adjustment in GIMP.

March 2^nd 1630 GMT Sun

 

I waited until after finishing work to check the Sun though my binoculars and filter. I could see two sunspots.

February 2023

February 26^th 1100 GMT Sun

 

The weather was slightly better this time but there was lots of moving cloud. After a few attempts I caught the Sun with my binoculars and filters and saw three sunspots, two close. I was hoping for a bit more solar action over the weekend but, with the weather being rather poor during February, I should have been a bit more grateful.

February 25^th 2120 GMT Moon

 

The weather forecast was good but the local microclimate dictated otherwise, with plenty of cloud of all thicknesses. I snapped the Moon with my Mak and DSLR at various settings, the best seemed to be 1.54 metres focal length, ISO 100 and 1/200 second exposure.

Various stacking attempts failed, so I processed a single frame.

February 24^th 2120 GMT Binocular and Photo Session

I started off by a bit of binocular scanning. I used the Moon as a focussing object. It was a waxing crescent and showed a lot of detail around the terminator. I also checked out the Pleaides and Hyades star clusters, both showing well. I found Comet 2022 E3 ZTF in northwest Orion. Spectacular it was not but it was great to see a fuzzy object, bearing in mind that comets reaching binocular brightness are not common.

I had photographed the Hyades and Pleaides with the month before and the result was OK-ish. I started off shooting darks with my DSLR at 35mm focal length, ISO1600 and 15 seconds exposure.

I did a similar shoot in the area the comet was in, the shield of Orion. It hardly showed at all but I also caught something strange to the left of Orion's belt. It was probably a slow-moving, rotating satellite, possibly geostationary, or almost.

The next shot was another stack of images of Canis Minor. The constellation was at the bottom of the photo and shows a faint star near Procyon, the brightest star in Canis Minor.

The Orion shot was worse than the day before, possibly because I had too much star trailing to the left and right. Possibly I had stacked too many frames, having seen similar problems with Deep Sky Stacker.

The final shot was of Cancer, the centre of which is marked by the Beehive star cluster. After that, clod ruined any further action.

February 23^rd 2100 GMT Orion

 

I checked Betelguese. Despite the colour contrast, it was definitely fainter than Procyon.  My estimate was a magnitude of 0.5., showing a fade.

 

I took some lights and darks of Orion at 35mm focal length, ISO 1600 and 15 seconds exposure.

February 19th 1225 GMT Sun

There was thin haze around and I thought a binocular scan might produce some decent results, as in the recent past. However, I could only find two sunspots.

February 14th 1800 GMT Venus and Jupiter

 

Venus had started moving eastwards faster than the Sun was and was setting a bit later each evening. Jupiter was also nearby and the distance between them was decreasing.

 

This photo was taken using my phone camera. Although I still felt sceptical about them, at least I made a reasonable effort with this.

February 14^th 1230 GMT Sun

 

I bin scanned the Sun in a clear sky and saw even more sunspots and a changed pattern to the day before.

February 13^th 1210 GMT Sun

 I bin scanned the sunspots in clear conditions and saw four prominent ones.

February 7th 1750 GMT Jupiter and Venus

Venus and Jupiter were in the west. I snapped them individually then together. The Venus shot showed a phase change and that was all I got.

February 7^th 1200 GMT Sun

The Sun had apparently awakened and it showed a few sunspots. I took some full disc frames at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/500 second exposure. I stacked 8 images and processed the result in GIMP, showing faculae, as well as several sunspots.

February 6th 2100 GMT Moon

The Moon was in a cloudless patch of sky. I had found that the file settings that worked so well for constellation shots were not so good for other shots. I needed to use Sequator or another (unidentified) tool to convert them to TIFF so I could stack them using Autostakkert. I changed back to JPG to make stacking easier.

I took one set of shots at 1.54m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/250 second exposure to capture the full lunar disc.

I stacked other sets of shots at 4,62m focal length, ISO 100 and 1/30 second exposure to capture some close-ups of the lunar disc.

Unfortunately, the stacks did not work as they did for the full stack image, so I processed the individual images. The first one shows the walled plain Grimaldi at the bottom and the rayed crater Kepler at the top left.

The second photo shows the rayed crater Copernicus.

The third close-up shows Mare Crisium.

The fourth close-up shows the crater Tycho, a young crater a mere 114 million years old that has the largest ray system of all.

The fifth close-up shows the Sea of Tranquility, the site of the first moon landing.

The sixth and final close-up is another view of Kepler.

February 6th 1900 GMT Betelguese

The sky was mostly clear, with the Moon covered by streaks of cloud. I checked Betelguese against the usual comparison stars and it suggested a magnitude of at least 0.3 and possibly as high as 0.2.

February 5th 2050 GMT Binocular Session

 

It was  little over two hours since the full moon and it seemed very bright. I had not seen any claims of it being a "supermoon" but it seemed brighter than average.

 

The moonscape was dominated by the Ray systems of Tycho,  Copernicus and Kepler. I could not see any edge, or terminator, so could see no other craters, just the "seas" and some lava-filled plains, such as Plato and Grimaldi.

 

Elsewhere, there was little to see. The Orion Great Nebula showed, whereas the Pleiades star cluster showed only about a dozen of the brightest stars. The Hyades showed better. I saw the comet 2022 E3 ZTF but only a very small nucleus. Like the other objects, it appeared drowned out by moonlight.