New Video file.

I made a short 7 min. video file of some of the pictures that are on this Blog site and my Astro web site:-




http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mickhyde/images/blogvideo.ram

I used Sony Vegas 6, video editing suite (brilliant). The original format was in DVD, so I converted it to Real Video for the web. You'll need broadband for a decent stream rate.
The editing took me a couple of hours to do on Sunday, but I'm in the process of refining it, and will produce a more polished version soon.

Saturn 28th Jan

I used a barlow extension on this image to increase the maginification of my 2X barlow. The corrector plate was dewing up, even as I was capturing this image. :-(
Seeing is not as good tonight, but the wind has died down a bit.
There's also a strange thing in the centre of the globe, just above the dark ring. I don't think it's an artifact.

Mars 28th Jan

Here is Mars tonight. It's looking very small in the EP now compared to a few months ago.
The image was bouncing around all over the place due to the atmospherics, very windy tonight.
I've come to the conclusion that when it is windy, the seeing is usually bad for imaging.
This was produced from a 2500 frame avi, using the 4xImagemate and Toucam.

Funny picture of the month...

I love this picture of a lil ol' Toucam on a telescope that's a bit larger than mine:-

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~rhill/test/100_2884.jpg

Saturn 26th Jan

This image is derived from a 1400 frame avi, that I managed to catch in between some rather large clouds.

Saturn on the 25th Jan... err I don't think so!

Isn't it funny. I looked out last night about 10:00pm and it was perfectly clear. So I put all my gear on and collected all my equipment and went out to do some observing.

Now that I have my scope setup in my new observatory, it only takes about 10mins to get everything setup. And would you believe it, the minute I put the EP in the scope and started looking through, it started clouding over. Timed down to the second.

I still managed to do some observing of Saturn, (it's amazing how much you can see, even looking through what looks like very dense clouds), but I really wanted to capture some video, because it was a lot clearer than it had been on previous nights.
It was not to be. I stayed out for another hour or so waiting for the clouds to clear, but they didn't and that was that.

So here's a detailed drawing that I did instead:-

Saturn on 24th Jan 2006

Here is Saturn again, but taken under worse seeing
conditions than the 21st. I processed the image straight after
I took it, and by that time (an hour later), the sky was completely
fogged over. I think a small amount of fog/mist helps though to
stabilize the seeing. But the gain of the Toucam had to be
increased to about 75%, hence all the noise in the lower image.

The top image has wavelet processing and some colour
correction/noise reduction/sharpening in Paint Shop Pro.

The middle image is straight out of Registax with no processing,

The bottom image is an average single frame taken from the
3000 frame AVI file. Some were lighter and some darker.

Best 40% again, using 4xImagemate, Toucam Pro...
and Registax/Paint Shop Pro.

Saturn best yet 21st Jan 2006... Slightly brighter

3000 frame avi, best 40%, Toucam Pro, 4x Imagemate, Registax.

Saturn best yet 21st Jan 2006

Hyginus Rille

I love this Rille, it's a real good test for a telescope and seeing conditions. As you can see the seeing conditions last night weren't very good... either that or the scope needs a tad more tweaking in the collimating department.

This image is a mosaic of two images.

First Jupiter 21st Jan 2006

This is the first time that I have observed and imaged Jupiter in my new scope.
Seeing wasn't very good and it was very low in the sky, but it looked amazing through the EP.

Saturn tonight 20th Jan 23:38

Here is Saturn captured tonight. 2000 frame AVI, 4xImagemate barlow, Toucam pro II, Registax. Very windy night, fair amount of turbulance in the air.

I also captured some Mars images earlier on, not sure if they're worth posting though, it's getting very small.

First clear night for bloody ages!!!!!

Time for bed...bong!... I'll be doing some Moon stuff tonight if it is still clear. Must remember to wake up at 3:00am ;-)
The new observatory seems to be working though, it's nice to out of the wind and not walking about in mud all night long. The camera is on it's way back from repair, so they'll be some pics of it soon. Bet ya can't wait can ya?

The new Swindon Observatory 18th Jan

I've built an observatory in my garden. I'll have pics of it as soon as I get my camera back from repair, I dropped it in the dirt :-(
I've erected a corner shed and sunk in a steel pillar, no messing.
I did it arse about face though. I Erected the shed, cut a hole in the floor and then dug a hole for the pillar, just to be awkward. I reached two feet deep, and then came across the water table. That was nice.
Tell you what though... I've had enough of mud!!

Had first light tonight, though it was a bit murky out there. I managed to have a quick squint at Mars, boy is that looking small now.

... More from 11th Jan

Schickard


















Sinus Iridium

Schiller

Prinz & Montes Harbinger

Tycho

Moon pics from 11th Jan

Plato

Moretus

Kepler

Helicon & Le Verrier

Hadley Rille

Gruithuisen

Gassendi

Copernicus

Calvius and Tycho

Clavius

Aristarchus

Aristarchus

Crater Copernicus central peaks

I've constructed a montage of Orbiter 5 images. It shows the boulders on the slopes of the central peaks in the crater.
The peaks are over 3000 ft high.

Detail:-

http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/Projects/LunarOrbiterDigitization/

The Moon tonight 4th Jan 2006

New web site

I've created a new web site using my NTLWorld web space.

It's at:- http://homepage.ntlworld.com/mickhyde/