Aurora Borealis!? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen!? Yes! This is a timelapse captured from my allsky camera on May 10/11. The real show was right after dusk, and it faded as the night went… Continue Reading... "Aurora Borealis"
Solar Eclipse
I finally got to see an astronomical event! The clouds tried, but I was able to see the entire eclipse. I used the big scope to take a timelapse of it, with an exposure every ten seconds. Continue Reading... "Solar Eclipse"
Sunspots
I was finally able to figure out how to take some semi-decent flats when doing solar. All I needed was a trash bag! I used Sharpcap to do calibration on the fly with darks and flats, then processed as normal in Autostakkert and PixInsight. The seeing was pretty terrible, so… Continue Reading... "Sunspots"
Sunspots
With the beautiful clear weather this week, I have been able to leave my telescope at the ready for several days in a row. I decided to plop on my aperture mask that has a 50mm offset aperture with Baader solar film taped to it. I’d really like to get… Continue Reading... "Sunspots"
Full Sun
I received my new Starlight focuser in the mail and was desperate to try it. Nights are still forecast cloudy, so I had a quick go at Sol using my Baader UHC filter to try to increase contrast just a bit. I stacked 500 images in Siril, though something seemed… Continue Reading... "Full Sun"
First try at the Sun
Since I left the scope out overnight for a long imaging run, I decided to try the sun this morning. I took 70 images at a fast shutter speed of 1/10 of a second. I used some Thousand Oaks solar film taped behind the peep hole in the dust cover… Continue Reading... "First try at the Sun"