First GRS transit of this Jupiter season!

Just timing I guess, I never seem to catch the GRS. I'd done 6 drawing since my first in August, though the general condition of the bands seemed to change I was seeing similar features every time, like I was always catching the same side.

Not so this morning though. There was awesome drama in the bands, and though it looked more like the Jupiter Great Red smudge than spot, it was still real obvious and seemed to be about at the transit point. It seemed like more was going on in the southern pole too. Nice start to the day.

Early AM Jupiter watch

Another beautiful morning for Jupiter, I thought some of the features around the middle were really exceptional. The big guy has looked great every time so far this season, but thought that northern band has been more complex than earlier this year I thought this was extraordinary. Early mornings have been set aside for musical arrangement lately, it was real nice to be able to get back out to the scope.

Ahhhh, its like the return of an old friend whose been gone way too long. I miss drawing Jupiter so much that I beat back the desire to lie in bed when my eyes opened a few minutes before 5:00 this morning. The planet looks better than ever, I saw more bands than previously in the year the turbulence within the larger bands was big as life. What seemed really neat was the band that in this drawing is just below the equator seemed to make a weird dip, it bends down on the right side of the image. That was intentional, not just sloppy drawing! 

I can't believe it took me so long to get around to drawing planets! Wish I started doing this 15 years ago. Thanks again to Bill for turning me onto this. I'll make sure this image goes out to the organizations that can use illustrated planetary imagery.

Steve Gale

Lunt Solar Wedge First Light

"Disclaimer, Viewing the Sun can be extremely dangerous resulting in permanent damage to viewers eye!!!   The Sun is only to be viewed with equipment such as specific solar filters that are known to reduce the Sun's energy to safe levels.  The manufacture instruction's for solar equipment must be followed at all times!" 

Well, I finally obtained my Lunt Solar Wedge for white light viewing of the Sun.  This was after a 3-4 month wait.  The 2012 Venus Transit was to blame given the run on solar equipment since earlier this year.

Lunt 2" Solar Wedge and SV 105 APO

The solar wedge looks like an oversized 2" telescope diagonal.  The wedge attaches to the back of a refracting telescope.   The wedge then allows a safe amount of light from the Sun to reflect up towards the eyepiece.  The majority of the energy from the Sun passes thru a special grating in the wedge.  Since the light from the Sun comes to focus after contact with wedge's grating, no harm is done to the telescope.
The Lunt wedge itself comes supplied with an ND3 filter.

Lunt Solar Wedge and supplied case.

The benefits of the solar wedge are high light-output and a sharper image than conventional film and glass based filters.  For added safety I have purchased a Baader UV/IR blocking filter and 2" ND 0.9 filter to be used when visually viewing the Sun with the wedge.   Without the added ND 0.9 filter the image is too bright to comfortably view.  The UV/IR blocking filter is just an added measure of safety to protect against any UV/IR light that may be left after the light passes thru the wedge and the two ND filters.

From what I have seen so far, the Lunt Wedge, does indeed produce a sharp solar white-light image!  Detail across the solar disk is nice and sharp.  Solar faculae associated with the Sun's magnetic field are easily viewed too.  In one instance I could easily observe solar faculae surrounding Sunspot AR1542 as it sat on the edge of the solar disk.  The wedge can not be used with a reflecting telescope.  But it does allow for ease of use should the owner have more than one refractor.  I was able to use the wedge for solar imaging with my Stellarvue SV105 (4") APO on one day and use it for quick viewing with my WO 80 mm APO the next.

                                           Sunspots AR1542 and AR1542, 8/13/12

The above shot was taken using a SV105 4" APO, the Lunt 2" Wedge, a 2" TV 2X Barlow,  Canon T1i DSLR, and 2" Baader Continuum filter
BackYard EOS was used to collect a 1200 frame movie that was later stacked with Autostakkert2. The final composite image was later enhanced in CS2.

Unfortunately I can see that the 2X Barlow and DSLR was only sharp in the center of the image.
The image is also, not fully illuminated.  On the good side, I believe the lack of focus helps give this particular image a 3D effect.   But, next time a composite/ mosaic image will have to be considered in order to produce a sharper image with this combination.  But this was only a first light.  I hope to use a CCD-video camera at some point in the future to obtain best result.  Recent aquasition of a 4X Telvue PowerMate will also allow for sharpness and even illumination thru-out the image.

There was also a problem reaching focus with the DSLR without the barlow in place.  More in-focus is needed.  But a shorter barrel can be purchased to help bring the camera closer to the wedge.  



William Anthony

Jaw Dropping Solar Activity Sunday

We saw a hard to believe solar prominence this past Sunday. It was this wide, squatty thing over the course of the afternoon, but a little before 5 it exploded outward. At first it took on a shape like crumpled up paper. But then it expanded into this linear filament that just kept going. If you looked at 5 minute intervals it was really different every time! I believe I'm being conservative when I say at its greatest length it exceeded 10% the diameter of the Sun. Vlad and I were the only ones to stay till the end, it disconnected and by 5:20 or so it was an evaporating wisp of a prominence. Been looking at the Sun for years, some times its great, sometime it puts you to sleep. But I'd never seen anything remotely similar to this.

Very sorry to say there was no photographic provision at the time, we were set up to serve the public. All we walked away was observation.

Hey all,

My very first post on this blog and I want to share my experience using RCX and DMK camera for planetary imaging so far this year. Just a week ago I decided to purchase Astra Image 3.0 Pro software which I read good things about for a while. It has multiple deconvolution filters and it combines RGB images plus a ton of other image processing tools. I want to share couple images that I have reprocessed from a while ago. First is Saturn from March 11. For some reason this is the sharpest Saturn that I ever got and I think I know the reasons why and I will share it more in detail next time. Let me just say it had to do with too slow of a fps rate that I was choosing lately. Saturn is dim and I was doing slower than 1/15 at times (even as slow as 9fps and I think with poor or average seeing we need to be using 1/20 of a second per frame which is 20 fps or maybe even faster. Collimation and focusing were also causing "blur" and I know how to fix both (for focusing make it 3 different RGB videos and then post processing pick one with sharpest rings. As for collimation, note to myself to not be lazy and re-collimate on Spica (its next to Saturn) the night of imaging.

Now, here is Saturn image. It is 10% stack, 1.5 drizzle. The Cassini division is fairly sharp but I have seen much sharper from other people, so there is a lot to improve on.

Next is Jupiter from way back in December... This was the only image I took at 27 fps instead of 60 fps (which shows "onion ring" sort of distortion inside the planet and should not be used in the future). The fastest fps our DMK camera can handle is 30fps or maybe 45fps, if there is such option. If you look at Jupiter's moon on the left you can see that scope was not focused and collimated properly, it looks like a triangle not a disk yet and still there is a lot of detail showing on the planet. Small bends are easily see, therefore it should give us hope for a lot of room to improve before Jupiter returns in the early morning sky.

And here is Venus couple weeks prior to the transit.

In the next blog I will go into more details as far as what I think the best settings to use.

Vlad.

So Saturday I had my solar scope out, which is an old Meade 4500 with a full aperture solar filter cap. Sunspots looked just great. Lately I have been telling people how much I miss Jupiter, such a great subject to draw. Then it occurred to me ... the Sun never goes away! If you get into drawing that and it fails to come up one morning, nothing to draw is the least of your worries! So I've found a new model to pose for me.

What I think is neat here is the way the center-most cluster seems to have broken up over a day.