The sky was beautifully clear today, so I decided to try out the QHY5-II camera on the sun:
Camera=QHY5LII, Duration=67.152s, Frames captured=953, ROI=1280×960, FPS (avg.)=14, Shutter=2.240ms
Sunspot close-up 2015-04-19
Sunspots 2015-04-18
Today the sun had some nice sunspots and offered a good opportunity to test the new mount I have on loan from the VAA, my astronomy club.
Planets
In 2015 I got a planetary camera for my birthday, so I started taking pictures of Jupiter again. I am still very much working on refining my processing workflow, therefore the images turn out quite different each time…
Jupiter 2015
09.04.2015 Rotation of Jupiter
Solar Pinhole Observations
Most people don’ t realize that the bright spots below a tree in the grass are actually images of the sun formed by small holes created through overlapping leaves in the tree’s branches. Because the sun is a sphere, the images are also circular (depending of the angle of the surface).
A similar situation occurs when the sun shines through the small holes in blinds – round images of the sun are projected against the foor or wall. The images become interesting when the sun’s disk is obscured by something, e.g. the moon during a solar eclipse or trees when the sun is rising or setting on a wooded horizon. Read More
Rima Hyginus et. al.
Rima Hyginus and Rimae Triesnecker
The Bright and Dark side of the moon
On March, 24th the young moon was visible in the western sky. The clear air provided a good opportunity to capture the dark side of the moon which is actually illuminated by the earth which is big and bright in the lunar sky.
Partial Solar Eclipse – 20.3.2015
While travelling to the Faroe islands or to Svalbard was out of the question, I was able to take a day off for the solar eclipse of March 20th 2015.
The Vorarlberger Amateur Astronomen (VAA) organized an eclipse observation in cooperation with the Pfänder-Bahn at the summit of the Pfänder mountain above Bregenz. Thanks to Kurt Gattnar, who managed the organization from the VAA side, we had a very enjoyable experience. Even carts for our equipment were available! Read More
Lunar Terminator 2015-02-25
The moon is always a very regarding target. Even though the slow frame rate of the QHY5 (3FPS!) and the missing IR-Cut Filter do degrade the quality of the final image, some nice detail is visible in this mosaic of three individual avi files. 100 frames out of 400 were used for every frame.
The trio of Theophilus, Cyrillus und Catharina craters at upper left and the Ariadaeus Rille at lower right are prominent features visible in this image. On the floor of the Mare tranquillitatis at lower left some subtle mare ridges are vsible.
Moon, Venus and Mars
Tonight the western horizon is dazzlingly beautiful as the Moon, Venus and Mars shine brillantly in the clear air near the horizon.
M81, M82 and Jupiter
At first I had to wait for about two hours until the floodlights on the adjacent soccer field were turned off, then I had trouble locating the galaxies as the 6×30 finder is not really adequate in a light polluted sky, then came problems with the connection from BackyardNikon to the camera, and when everything was set up correctly, the guiding was not working properly, resulting in trailed images… so quite a lot of effort went into this picture, but of course a lot has been learned.
