Tag Archives: 14″ Newt

Lunar Imaging Gallery – 16th May 2016

Gallery May 27, 2016 Graeme Coates Leave a comment

Some further lunar work – as before I worked using the ASI120MM in combination with a 2x Barlow lens and the 742nm near-IR filter through the 350mm Newtonian.

A productive evening, with six images of good quality in what was at times fairly good seeing – I would like to try running at a slightly higher scale (by using a different Barlow). i do have a 4x Imagemate, but I’m not sure the quality or the resultant focal length would work quite as well.

As it turned out, this was an evening where I bagged a few of the double ringed (concentric) craters on the moon, as well as some interesting Rille features and domes.

Images are as follows:

Clavius with Longomontanus, Scheiner and Blancanus – a good amount of detail in this image and I’m especially pleased with the detail within Rutherfurd (on the southern edge of Clavius). Street M is visible with a small concentric craterlet within.

Moretus, with some very good detail coming out of the wall and surrounds. The lunar south pole region (with Newton tucked just behind the hills) is to the bottom of the image.

Copernicus – a classic lunar crater, and one where I’ve got a much better result than I’ve previously acheived. I particularly like the collapsed edge visible to the south – perhaps a little more scale might just let me sharpen up the detail within the crater a little… Also visible are the Hortensius domes (to the left in the image) lying just to the north of the crater of the same name – lunar domes are shield volcanoes which often have a small craterlet at the peak.

Rimae Hippalus and surrounds. So much going on in this region – bullialdus by itself is a nice looking crater, and nearby the complex rille structures of Rimae Hippalus cut across Hippalus and the surrounding regions, leading up to Agatharchides. The lunar dome Kies Pi is easily visible and concentric crater Marth in Palus Epidemarium is also present in the bottom right of the image.

Another busy nearby field, showing Pitatus, concentric craters Hesiodus A and Marth. Lots of rilles also visible, including Rimae Hippalus, Rimae Ramsden, Rima Hesiodus, rilles in Pitatus, and Rima Campanus cutting between Campanus and Mercator. Kies Pi is again obvious.

A view north of Bullialdus including the interesting “rippled” texture between Darney and Euclides.

The last two make a rather nice mosaic, though this was a quick job and I haven’t tried too hard to eliminate the edge of field noise, or the slight mismatch between levels.

astroimaging, astronomy, lunar

Lunar Imaging – 17th Mar 2016

April 8, 2016 Graeme Coates Leave a comment

I took the opportunity to do some further imaging of the Moon and Jupiter during a clear evening on the 17th March – as is common, the moon was high, and the transparency wasn’t great for any narrowband work, and as such it gave me an opportunity to work more on some high resolution work.

The seeing wasn’t great, and I took a different approach to imaging this time by using subframes on the ASI 120MM to get a high frame rate and allow large numbers of frames to be captured (thus increasing the chance of capturing good frames).

Images as below are of Clavius, Tycho, Rupes Recta (the Straight Wall) and Rima Birt, and Vallis Alpes (Alpine Valley) with the central rille (just!).

jupiter, planets

Jupiter – March 2016

April 6, 2016 Graeme Coates Leave a comment

Planetary work is not really my strongest skill in astrophotography, but with Jupiter near it’s highest in this and the past few years, it is well placed for photography from the UK.

Additionally, this is one of the first chances I have had to get images with the large 14″ reflector using my ZWO ASI-120MM. I chose to use the Astronomik 742nm Near-IR filter to try to improve the results: on both occasions it has resulted in much better resolution than with unfiltered white light. In addition I used a Meade Series 4000 2x Barlow lens. With regard to conditions, I think I’m a little limited by my observing location where I have to observe over the top of our row of houses – the thermal currents (including from boilers, open fires, etc) are likely to do little to help the seeing here..!

First image is from the 17th March during Callisto’s shadow transit (taken at 23:08UT) – Callisto itself is also visible at about 7 o’clock (and clearly resolved into a disc – at 1.5″ the seeing was clearly not so bad..!).

Second image was taken on 22nd March 2016 – the results weren’t quite as sharp as those from the 17th. Unsure if this is a focus/collimation issue, or if the seeing just wasn’t as good. The processing is a little heavier to try and bring out the cloud contrast where possible too. Collimation of an f4.5 scope is fairly critical, and any slight shift can reduce image quality quickly. Equally, at f9, focusing is tricky with a fairly dim extended object – this is something I need to work on in the future – a Bahtinov mask is on the list of makes for when I have successfully rebuilt this scope.

All images were 2 min videos, recorded using FireCapture, processed in AutoStakkert, Registax 6 and Photoshop CS4.

astronomy, lunar

High Resolution Near IR Lunar Imaging – 22nd Jan 2016

January 23, 2016 Graeme Coates Leave a comment

We’ve had some poor weather this winter so far for astronomy, but we’ve had some clearer nights in the last week, but with the moon at a fairly full phase. So I’ve been working with the 14″ SPX350 in honing my high resolution lunar work a bit.

I had two fairly average sessions working with the ZWO camera in unfiltered mode, but suffered a lot from poor seeing (potentially due to thermals from houses I image over) especially with stacks coming out with “ghost craters”. However, for this run of images, I used an Astronomik ProPlanet 742 filter I have just purchased (this is a near IR filter passing wavelengths longer than 742nm).

This has given a very good set of results – with three images surpassing the resolution I’d previously been able to get – and working at a focal length around 3200mm too by using a Meade series 4000 barlow lens in front of the camera and filter (giving a resolution of about 0.24″/pixel). Previously, I’ve only got good results at prime focus. From a first time using it, it certainly appears that this filter does help with larger apertures where seeing is not perfect. Images, while not totally unaffected by seeing, seemed a lot more stable in terms of high speed jitter or double vision on craters.

Images were taken around 98% illumination so all the images are from areas around the eastern limb of the moon – with limited targets available and with cloud rapidly rolling in, the session was somewhat curtailed!

Pythagoras:

Grimaldi, Hevelius, Cavalerius:

Phocylides, Nasmyth, Wargentin and Schickard:

astronomy, lunar

Lunar Imaging – 20th Dec 2015

December 25, 2015 Graeme Coates Leave a comment

A long time since the last post (and still needing to properly process the lunar eclipse images I took at the end of September) I finally got the 14″ re-mounted and collimated for some lunar work.

Images were taken through an Orion Optics SPX350 at f4.52 (prime focus) using a ZWO ASI120MM. Images were stacked with Autostakkert, processed in Registax 6 and Photoshop.

First up: The South Pole region (including Tycho, Clavius and Moretus)

Copernicus and surrounds:

Rupes Recta in Mare Nubium (also showing Rima Birt and the lunar dome Kies Pi):

Mare Imbrium and Plato:

chromosphere

Tag Archives: 14″ Newt

Lunar Imaging Gallery – 16th May 2016

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Lunar Imaging – 17th Mar 2016

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Jupiter – March 2016

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High Resolution Near IR Lunar Imaging – 22nd Jan 2016

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Lunar Imaging – 20th Dec 2015

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