My 1st since Early April. Here I live near too many trees that kick off pollen. Here's my scope in 2012
Anyway, I learned my lesson well, it's sticky, thick and doesn't clean up off the corrector easily so I decided to take my time with the 14" newt and clean and grease the mount gears, center the focuser and scrub the primary during this endless season. I couldn't resist last night and took out the C8 for only the 3rd time in almost a year. I didn't touch the collimation and only wanted to observe Mars visually. As breezy at it was and as poor as the forecast was I was impressed at how much I could see at 500x with a 4mm eyepice. I slipped in the 2.5x PowerMate and color DBK21AU618.AS camera and shot a pair of shots. It's not what I'm used to using the 14" so much but it was fun tossing about running on battery power! Thanks for reading!
EDIT: Thanks all! It was mag 15.4, 30s subs. Moving at 3.65"/min at time of captures.
During the +Virtual Star Party on February 16, 2014 I found Near Earth Asteroid, 2006 DP14.
This animation includes times: 2131EDT to 2154EDT using 30sec subs in Lum in my telescope, +Akule
Type: Custom Home Built Newtonian
Aperture: 356mm (14")
Focal Ratio: f/4.5 / 1,600mm FL
Primary Mirror: Carl Zambuto 14" f/4.5
Mount: Celestron CGE
Imaging Camera: SBIG STF-8300M (monochrome)
Color Filter Wheel: True Technology UK (Tru-Tek) - SupraSlim with Visual Wide Wheel (built in diagonal)
Filters: Baader Planetarium LRGB Telescope Filter Set
If you didn't know my weather at 35 degrees North Latitude is typically pretty moderate. This winter has served up the coldest temps since my move to the area 10 years ago. We've also suffered 2 large snow storms in as many weeks. In between has been wrought with clouds, rain and just very unfriendly astronomy weather.
Some history:
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KRDU/2014/1/01/MonthlyHistory.html#calendar
Undeterred,I am trying to get Asteroid 2006 DP14, the next clear night which may coincide with the +Virtual Star Party February 16, 2014.
It's fading fast and slowing down in apparent motion. Still well within my 14" and SBIG CCD, I hope to get a chance to image SOMETHING again soon.
Via the MPC (Minor Planet Center)
Minor Planet Ephemeris Service: Query Results
Below are the results of your request from the Minor Planet Center's Minor Planet Ephemeris Service. Ephemerides are for the geocenter.
Keyboard operation when the position of the circle is adjusted by hand Arrow keys ---direction buttons for moving the outline PgUp ---increases the size of the outline PgDn ---decreases the size of the outline N --- rotates the outline clockwise P --- rotates the outline counterclockwise Backspace --- rotates the outline by 180 degrees
This night was a lucky night. I had not looked at the weather forecast enough to know it would be good or not. Cold temps aside, I decided day of to setup and go out with the 14" f/4.5 scope ( +Akule ). As an added bonus +Mitchell Duke tipped me off to a transit of the Jovian moon, Ganymede. Looking closer at the ephemeris Io was slipping into Jupiter's own shadow and disappearing behind the disk of Jupiter just a couple of minutes before the Ganymede transit. That stability of the atmosphere, seeing, was also favorable.
I shoot the planets with my 14" f/4.5 (native focal length is 1600mm). I add a 5x barlow which gets me close to 9200mm (isn't not preciesly 5x but varies) Then I add a monochrome Flea3 camera from PointGrey Research. To get color I shoot with filters to give me Red, Green and Blue images. Each color image consists of capturing many frames of each color as fast as I can. I shoot the red at 120 frames per second (FPS), then the same for the green and bit slower for the blue as it's not as sensitive. So for example the red is running at 120fps for 30seconds. That nets me ~3,600 images (stored in .avi video format), again for green and then blue. Wait on second and start another sequence of R, G and B, 30s, 30s, and 30s. So each color image is 90 total seconds of capturing. I capture back to back and if you can believe it, the moon Io (right one) moves so fast in 90seconds I had to adjust the color channels in the final image. I capture many RGB runs back to back for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I use a very sophisticated program called WINJupos to derotate (a method of combining individual images that have rotated to a different central meridian or longitude) all of them. This increases the signal-to-noise present in each of the single RGB runs. I also capture many RGB runs in order to make a cool animation of the moons moving and planet rotating.
Raw frames as promised: Nearly the worst of a single sequence of red filtered images
Best of 3600 frames in Red:
Normally I stack the best 75% of the 3,600 frames in AutoStakkert which uses a process called 'lucky imaging'
After stacking I sharpen using some deconvolution tricks in AstraImage. I also combine the filtered monochrome frames to a composite RGB.
Then derotation win WINJupos.
Then photoshop magic like denoise, color, high pass filters, rgb channel alignments.
I have yet to look at the features on Ganymede to see if they're accurate or if I just messed up in my processing treatment.
Video assembly was done with stills hand processed in Photoshop per the above prescription and then some Photoshop actions for the mundane processing (I highly recommend PS actions!) Then the stills are copied and renumbered to move forwards then backwards with a simple python script. Then, again in python, I used 10 differing frame rates to render 10 separate videos. FPS values are [3,6,9,12,15,18,21,24,27,30]. These 10 rendered videos are then renumbered to start slow and then move faster each time, building to a maximum then slowing back down. I rendered each of those videos 2x times in openshot where I also added the title screens and music that I stumbled upon via http://freemusicarchive.org. It was literally the 2nd song I clicked on in the classical/ambient section and I think matches the video quite well.
Thanks to all who shared their joy with me in this post!
I will be spending some time with this as I've not gotten good images in quite some time. This may just be one of the best shots I've ever taken.
My fatal flaw in the past half dozen times out may have been lack of over-cooling and setting up too near to the warm house in the cold winter. I also had been setting up near my family van, which while cool and not having run for several hours, may have been retaining heat differently than the ground.
So I moved as far away from the house and neighbors house as possible and I think that helped some. I also started cooling the spit out of the mirror, aggressively. Even when cooled for hours in the winter the heat in the pyrex mirror comes back. I think there's a small heat engine inside that beast! I think managing the local thermal conditions at night is a bit of a razors edge and the slightest little change means quite a bit!
I don't often get clear skies for a transit of Ganymede and wanted to make the best of it. So I shortened my capture duration and ran 30 of them back to back with the camera settings embedded in the image Red for 30s, Green for 30s, Blue for 30s, pause a second and repeat. I'm amazed at how much Io moves in 90seconds. The planet's features don't change much in 90s for my resolution, but the inner moon, Io moves FAST!
I have a work in progress animation that will probably get uploaded to YouTube and become an adjunct post to this later on.
Starting in the lower left, you find Earth. A planet we all call home. In the right conditions of day and night, often called dusk, if you look up you can experience the surrealism of our place in this universe. On the cold and breezy night of March 13th, my dad and I took a quick trip to Lake Wheeler to find Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS). It was quite a site above the moon don't you agree+David Phillips
The rest of the full sized, original albums are here:
This year I upgraded to a CCD from DSLR and have branched out fairly seriously into DSO imaging. As a result I also figured out how to use a minor planet / comet detection software package, Astrometrica. This should get me closer to the goal of discovering a new comet or asteroid. At the least I should have plenty more asteroids next year, but this was the year of the comet with record 4 that I imaged in a single year.
Anyway, I learned my lesson well, it's sticky, thick and doesn't clean up off the corrector easily so I decided to take my time with the 14" newt and clean and grease the mount gears, center the focuser and scrub the primary during this endless season. I couldn't resist last night and took out the C8 for only the 3rd time in almost a year. I didn't touch the collimation and only wanted to observe Mars visually. As breezy at it was and as poor as the forecast was I was impressed at how much I could see at 500x with a 4mm eyepice. I slipped in the 2.5x PowerMate and color DBK21AU618.AS camera and shot a pair of shots. It's not what I'm used to using the 14" so much but it was fun tossing about running on battery power!
