Mars!

This is an image of Mars taken last night with the 14 inch. The camera was an ASI 120MM. I took 2000 frames of Red, Green, and Blue channels. Seeing was horrible, but the polar cap is clearly visible at the 11 o'clock position as is atmospheric cloud.

Moonwalk! 11-12-2013

Images taken last night in terrible seeing--mostly 1-2. ETX-125 with ASI 120MM. AVIs stacked and processed in Registax 6. Final processing in Photoshop.

AR 1890 on November 10, 2013

AR 1890 is still a cracking maelstrom!

A Crackling Sun!

Captured yesterday, these images show how much solar activity has increased over the last week or so. We have X-Class flare producing regions and multiple long, dark filaments. The first image shows the swirling maelstrom that is AR 1890. This region produced an X-1 class flare yesterday.

AR 1890

There are a number of other active regions, indicating that this SolarMax seems to be of the "double peak" type; there could be lots more to look forward to! The image below show a string of multiple active regions (AR 1888 and AR 1889) and a prominence on the edge of the solar disc,

AR 1888 & AR 1889 plus prominence

Finally, there are so many filaments on the disk at the moment that I'm almost spoilt for choice. Here is a shot of some fine examples to finish out today's post:

Snaking filaments (unfortunately marred by Newton's Rings)

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.