Ogni tanto è bene fare qualche immagini diversa dal Sole. Quando le condizioni metereologiche (e la fase lunare) lo permetteranno tornerò a fare qualche immagine DS. Nel frattempo ho fatto un “full disk” della Luna oggi, poco dopo il tramonto. Non ho usato alcun filtro se non per il fatto che ho lasciato il D-ERF montato. E la scelta conferma la mia esperienza passata: il D-ERF è un ottimo filtro rosso che riesce a mitigare parecchio i problemi di seeing […]
Categories: Other
I’ll be out for vacation for a few days and I had the opportunity to get a Tecnosky 66 ED Apo (ake Baader Scopos 66, aka Skywatcher Evo 66 ED, and many more). I made some test in the past days on the Moon and some wide star field. I also tried it on the Sun with an Astrosolar mask. What can I say… Great! Every single aspect of this scope is perfect. Very good looking, very well made, vey […]
Today I wanted to give a try to the new C9.25 CF. Seeing was bad and the Moon was low… so low that when I ended recording I realized that the C9.25 was half covered by the wall 😦 Anyway… here’s the result of the mosaic (11 pictures) with regular focal length (2350mm) using a Baader Red filter + DMK31 CCD Camera Firewire. The C9.25 is a great telescope. Not easy to manage but really great when there are the […]
Today I didn’t want to “dismantle” the HA setup from the Omni but I also wanted to take a picture of the Moon. In particular I refer to the D-ERF that on the Omni 120 is placed inside the tube. But I tought that a “red” filter is a good filter for Moon. And the D-ERF is a very good red filter 🙂 Here’s the result of the recondings made with this setup (Omni 120 + D-ERF):
Categories: Other
Following the suggestions of two expert friends I decided to make some modify to the Moon mosaic. Here’s the result:
Categories: Other
Every now and then I like to change my “target”. The Moon is surely “easy” but always fascinating. Also I wanted to put on test the Celestron Omni 120 XLT on something different than the Sun. Here’s the result of a “small” (2100×2100 pixels) mosaic made out of 3 images: The images has been taken using the DMK41 with the regular focal length (1000mm) and with the Baader Fringe Killer filter. I’m very happy with the result and it’s surely […]
Categories: Other
Today I tried a very special image: the transit of the ISS over the Sun. I’ve been thinking about imaging that transit since I’ve seen what Thierry Legault has done for the Venus transit: a double transit of Venus and Hubble telescope. He went to Australia to catch that special image. I can’t move to Australia. Not for an image like that and not now. So I wanted to try taking something “similar” by calculating when the ISS over the Sun […]
Categories: Other, White Light
This is post number 101. The blog hosts more than 300 pictures of the Sun I took since Dec 20th 2011 (about 6 months ago). An average of 50 pictures/month. The blog had about 3500 visits so far. More than 700 visits/month. From 41 different countries. I used 4 different telescopes to observe the Sun. On 3 visual bands (plus radio). And that’s the very start. Most of the things I made so far are “experiments”. I just start to […]
Categories: Other
The following are the first series of spectra I took with my DIY USB Sprectroscope. First here’s the lamp I’m using as a source of light for the spectrum: Definetly not a “True Light” but not that bad 🙂 That has to be taken into account. The peak you see at 825,0 nm is nothing less than the end of the image so not related to the spectrum. I have to find a way to avoid that 🙂 I have a […]
Categories: CaK, H-Alpha, Other, Spectroscopy, White Light
With Spring I decided to have a semi-fixed telescope setup. I used the metal tripod with the HEQ5 and covered everything with the Geoptik Telescope cover. It is a nice and quite protective cover. It reflects the Sun and it’s water resistant. Here’s how the setup looks like with and without the Geoptik cover: When a few days of rain are expected (like now) I store the tubes inside 😉 Better not risk too much. I only leave the HEQ5 […]
This is the first picture of my USB Spectroscope. It looks ugly I know… but it works 😀 The Spectrometer is made our of a 1000ln/mm diffraction grating with a Microsoft Lifecam HD-5000. The slit is made with a couple of razor blades. Everything is placed inside a 2″ short tube and the camera into a 2″ eyepiece holder. The nice thing about the webcam is that it has lens focus so I can do the focusing via software and […]
Categories: Hardware, Other, Spectroscopy
Today I’ve been able to test a few things that were left behind. The Sun showed during all the morning but it was difficult to have even just 1 minute free from clouds. Strong wind created problems taking clouds all around the sky and also making the tubes quite “unstable”. Anyway I’ve been able to do a quick comparison between the Coronado BF5 and the Lunt BF12. Results are not as I wanted them to be. It seems like the […]
Categories: CaK, H-Alpha, Hardware, Other, Spectroscopy, White Light
I’ve been stopped by a problem with my Skywatcher HEQ5 mount. Without the mount I can’t do anything as the tubes (Omni 120 and Vixen A80M) are both too heavy for the other mounts I have. So I had to wait for a new the motherboard to arrive and replace the burned with it. In the meanwhile I decide to go for a semi-stationary mounting setup using the HEQ5 and the steep tripod. I won’t use the Berlebach wood one […]
Observing The Sun