Spring at last!

Tonight's Sunset with image taken with my Canon 350D.

Spring at last...today the Sun shone and temperature reached 17 degrees, beautiful day! I even took my children on the field at school to play cricket this afternoon...gorgeous!

On Sunday I went out into the garden with my Skywatcher ST80 and SLT mount. After aligning the GoTo scope I connected my new copy of Starry Night Pro 5 with the RS232 Interface in the hope of getting the software to connect, find and guide objects in Starry Night. I must admit...I was astounded...it worked perfectly! I can point and slew to any Deep Sky Object in the Starry Night database with pinpoint accuracy!

Did a bit of housekeeping work over the weekend, tightened the SLT mount to stop my camera from moving the scope and got the power supply working with the mount. I can now control the telescope from both the handset and the Laptop. I'm not sure whether to add an electronic focus unit to ST80...still working on that one!

Spring Moon!

A lovely image of tonight's Cresent Moon and Earthshine.

The Moon was quite low in the Western sky, so it was difficult to take a picture using my Skywatcher ST80. Instead, I used my Canon 350D DSLR with a 200mm zoom lens fitted. It was a bit hard keeping the image perfectly still, even with a small tripod.

It's the first day of Spring tomorrow! (Spring has sprung?) The weather is bitterly cold, clear and crisp, temperature tonight dropping to -4 degrees! Yesterday it snowed, this happened last year and we had the hottest Summer on record, could this happen again?

Venus and Cresent Moon!

A beautiful sight - Venus and the Cresent Moon low in the Western sky.

The 'Earthshine' which is the part of the Moon not lit by the Sun, but from our Earth, can be seen plainly. I think tonight saw the best Earthshine ever and I wanted to capture this by using my DSLR Camera. It took a bit of patience and experimenting, but managed to take some great images!

This week I invested in a huge 320GB External Hard Drive so that I can store and catalogue my AVI's and Photos. I have astro stuff all over the place, including CD ROMs of early AVI's and particularly those of Mars which can be re-processed using new techniques and software. So I am now working on moving my images onto the new hard drive which can be accessed from both my desktop computer and Laptop.

I have also bought a copy of Starry Night Pro 5 which was on offer from Pulsar Optical. It arrived today so I am hoping that I will be able to control my SLR go-to mount from Starry Night. I think I may have to download some updates, but these should be free...watch this space!

Nice Night!

A wonderful night on the 12th and 13th March. Venus shining brightly and the sky clear. Orion looking spectacular in the Western Sky!

My target on the 12th March was Saturn with my Skywatcher ST80 and Toucam Pro II with IR (Infra-Red) block filter fitted. The image was taken with an Antares 3x Barlow lens, which took quite a while to set up! When the image was processed I used a stacked reference frame. The best 50 frames were stacked in Registax and then used this as a reference to align and stack the rest of the frames. Works really well!

Blood Red Moon!

Here is the latest processed image of the Moon in totality (completely eclipsed in shadow)

A beautiful blood red colour which lasted during the time that the Moon was in shadow.
Again, this was taken with the webcam and ST80 Telescope.
Enjoy!!

Lunar Eclipse with the webcam

The top image shows the beginning of the eclipse, the bottom image shows the Moon in totality.


Captured lots of still images of the lunar eclipse with the DSLR camera, but at the same time I was also capturing AVI's with my webcam fitted to the Skywatcher ST80 with focal reducer. With this I was able to track the moon manually and shoot during cloud breaks.

I spent most of yesterday processing these images using PaintShop Pro and Registax. I'm really pleased with the results!

The lunar eclipse has caused quite a stir, probably because the sky was so clear and gave the best views of a total lunar eclipse for many years. Even the BBC showed it on the news!

Lunar Eclipse

Last night was brilliant, Total Lunar Eclipse probobly the best for years. From about 7.30 to 9.30 the skies were clear and the Moon was full - a wonderfull sight! Took my Canon 350D out to set up the camera and take some images of the full moon, set up the Skywatcher ST80 telescope and Toucam Pro II webcam. Managed to get everything set up and ready for the eclipse.

A lovely night, cold but calm.

As soon as the eclipse started in came the clouds...would you believe it? Well...I managed to take images between the clouds and got some nice results.
When the Moon reached totality the skies cleared and revealed a wonderful sight of the Red Moon!

Certainly worth waiting for!