All-Sky Cam for November 3, 2013

This is an all-sky cam time-lapse video taken in November 3, 2013. I was hoping to see some Taurids, but cloud and haze intervened. The closest I got was capturing a few aircraft passing over! This is a series of 7-second exposures taken with the ASI-120MM using the Firecapture time-lapse option.

An Active Sun!

Maybe this SolarMax will not be so disappointing after all!  The sun is crackling with activity at the moment. Below are two images taken today with the ASI120MM. As for the Newton's Rings, I seem to be stuck with them. I have tried flats and software moire removal, but neither worked. I will continue to use the ASI for solar imaging because, apart from the rings, it produces superb images!

The area around AR 1879/1877 with a large filament. This group is actively flaring.

Flare Factory! AR 1882 has been torching of X-Class flares over the past couple of days

ASI120MM Test Image: M15 (Stacked and Single Image)

M15. A stack of 15, 7 second exposures

Here's an image of M15 taken last night with my ETX 125 and the ASI120MM. The exposures were 7 seconds with the gain at 60. As you can see, this camera did a very good job. The first image here is a stacked image of 15, 7-second exposures. I stacked in Registax and did a little processing in Photoshop. I kept the exposures short to see just how well this camera would perform. I also kept them short because, although the ETX keeps objects in the FOV for hours with no problems, it does tend to "dither" quite a bit while tracking, which means the object moves around in the imaged field, leading to streaking. I had to select the best 15 frames from the stack of 80 I accumulated for final stacking. What appears to be a satellite trail (visible on only one frame) is visible below M15 itself.

The next image shows the results after simply stacking in Registax:

15 stacked, 7-second exposures

The final image is a single frame capture, unprocessed in any way.

A single, unprocessed exposure of M15

I think these images give a good idea of the performance capabilities of this camera. I can't wait to try it on the 14 inch scope.

Active Areas on October 23, 2013

Here are a couple of images I took today--with the inevitable Newton's Rings. I tried a couple of things to reduce them. As I track the scope manually, I can't take well-registered flats. My solution was to take an original image and add Gaussian blur to eliminate the rings. However, the final, processed product was unusable (all detail disappeared apart from the rings!). I then tried tilting the DS filter using the gold wheel, but that changed only the brightness of the image and the rings remained unchanged. Lastly, I pulled the imager almost clear of the barlow and refocussed the scope. I then tilted it by 4-5 degrees. Depressingly, the rigs remained unchanged. They are also there if I don't use the DS filter, and/or remove the barlow. I will try building on of the "tilting" devices described on several websites to see if I can fix this problem.

Inverted View

Another Washout for the Orionids

The Orionids is a meteor shower made up of debris scattered by Halley's Comet. I was hoping that tonight I might be able to capture a few meteors using the ASI120MM in all-sky mode. But, like last night, after a clear start to the evening, the clouds rolled in by 8:15 or so. This has been the pattern for many nights: clear or very nearly clear days and clear evenings followed by cloud by 9 pm. It has been a frustrating year for astronomy here in Indiana. The video is too large to upload, even in compressed form. Below is a still frame. Click for a larger image.

All-sky capture from my yard

Update--it did clear around 9 pm and I captured more video. No meteors, but you can see Cassiopeia emerging from the trees at the bottom of the image.

Solar Active Areas 10/20/2013

Here are some images taken with the ASI120MM yesterday. They are probably the best solar images I have ever taken, but they are marred by Newton's Rings--the dark banding on the images, which can be a problem when using monochrome imagers with narrowband filters (in this case, a PST-DS). Some internet posts on the subject suggest the problem is due to the use of a barlow lens, but I have found that the bands are there even without the barlow. Ironically, these bands are more of a problem for high-quality imagers than for lower-tolerance devices. There are a number of potential ways to remove them and I am exploring these options.

Time Lapse with ASI 120MM all-Sky Lens

This video is a 2 hour time lapse taken with the ASI 120MM and the supplied all-sky lens. The image is a series of 7-second exposures covering 2 hours (the inevitable clouds roll in a quarter of the way through). The sensitivity is excellent and the noise very low. In the early section, you can see significant faint detail around several of the stars (you have to look carefully in this compressed version). This is the nebulosity of the Milky Way itself. It's quite an achievement to see that with an almost-full moon above the horizon and high-level haze.  This appears to be an excellent camera, and superior to the MC in both noise and sensitivity. (Note--the video is compressed. the artifacts seen here are not in the original video, which is pristine).