Saturn 2021 July 30

Aug01
by catz on August 1, 2021 at 11:59 and modified on August 1, 2021. at 11:59
Posted In: astronomy

This is one of a few imaging runs of Saturn taken Friday evening. The new mount is still not polar aligned, so there was more drift than I was happy with. This is the first time the x2 antares barlow was used. Focus is still quite soft (I still do not have a full length extension on the electric focus controller) and that will get better.

Again, the camera would not come to focus with the x2 barlow, but it did with the 90 deg diagonal. So I am still all confused up as to orientation, flipx flipy choices. I had to go into stellarium to see what Saturn should look like and edit it after the fact.

This was a 240 second run with 60ms exposures. The best 25% of 3970 frames were used. I love the scale of 3600mm focal length… Saturn is actually larger than a pinprick!

So, altitude was still very low and Saturn was still in the Kingston SkyDome… so this again is a benchmark image, where future ones can only get better 🙂

Also attached is an image from Allsky1pi (with its new wider angle lens) camera system actually showing Saturn at the same time as the telescopic image was taken, approx 22:53 EDT Friday evening. Saturn is 19deg altitude and is located centrally in the Kingston SkyDome. If I had better prepared with a nap, I could have gotten up around 02:00 or 03:00 when it would have cleared the light pollution.

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Jupiter 2021July24

Jul25
by catz on July 25, 2021 at 20:02 and modified on July 26, 2021. at 08:12
Posted In: astronomy

“It’s been a long time.. gettin from there to here” – Star Trek Enterprise

More specifically related to astronomy… my first substantial mount and telescope are here installed and working.
The SCGO Serenity Observatory was renovated to allow them to be used, and the first light was this morning, Saturday, between 03:00 and 05:00 EDT.

The Mount is a newtome used Skywatch AZ-EQ6GT in equatorial mode, sitting on a brand new concrete pier, and a newtome used Vixen VC200L, a 200mm f9 cassegrain telescope.
The ZWO ASI290MC camera I have had for a few years now, but was only using it on a small 102mm Schmidt Cass telescope.

This is the first light image, a 30 second run with Firecapture (no autoalign) on the mount which has not yet been polar aligned or three star aligned, just roughly polar aligned by eye in the daytime and manually driven to Jupiter. It had 2975 frames and stacked with Autostakkert! 3.1.4 and the best 5% of the frames were used. (about 150).
Regixtax wavelet processing was next where the rgb colour was balanced as well.

Annotation of the 25 images that resulted followed, and then they were combine into an animated .gif image, seen below.
All in all, a great first light. Seeing was good, transparency was poor (the Full Moon was nearby), focus was rough (using an electric remote focuser hand controller for the first time, at some distance from the display).

Tracking was excellent for a mount that had not yet been really setup. The next run will be even better from lessons learned Saturday morning.
Image exposure increased over the 95 minute session, probably due to brightening twilight sky.
Near the end, at an 11ms exposure, a Jovian moon makes an appearance.

This was the baseline imaging session, with the native F9 focal ratio. barlows will come next in the progression.
Interestingly, the asi290mc camera does not come to focus with the telescope. a 90 deg diagonal was used to bring the focusing point further out, as will a barlow.

animated 25 frames GIF

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Allsky1pi camera system update

Jul05
by catz on July 5, 2021 at 16:55
Posted In: astronomy

The Allsky1pi camera system is slowing coming back to normal. It stopped working a few weeks back, from a suspected overheating of the camera and the raspberry pi. The housing was cut open and an open mesh was installed at the bottom to allow for better airflow.
Configuration files were also changed and changed back and changed again.
Last nights run was reasonably successful, back up to 60 second exposures with no moon up, one image every 60 seconds, and the sensor temperature not wildly obscene.

Still to come are more and better dark frames and to figure out some way to automate dark frame processing into the system, based on the sensor temperature.
That should really clean up the hot pixels.

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Jupiter 2021July05

Jul05
by catz on July 5, 2021 at 16:50
Posted In: astronomy

This is the best image from this mornings run of Jupiter, from 03:58-4:40 EDT.
Meade LXD55 Mount, Meade 102mmSC fl=1000 plus a x2 barlow and the ZWO ASI 290MC camera
180 seconds of imaging run at 13ms exposures for about 13500 total frames.
Processed the best 25% of them with autostakkert!3 and registax for this image of Jupiter and its moon Callisto.
My annotation system is in ruins, so no annotation on the image today. North is up rotation is left to right.
Seeing was poor, transparency was poor.
Possibly, for the first time *ever*, I think I may have used dark frames to help process this. It’s hard to tell with firecapture… I took dark frames but am then unsure if firecapture itself subtracted them away from the realtime light frames or not. The dark frames got stored as .dark files that do not look like any image file format I have seen, and autostakkert! cannot load them in as dark frames. Ditto for flat frames. took them.. don’t know if they got used or not, again stored as .flat file types that cannot be imported into firecapture.

Just went through the firecapture video tutorials and did not come across any useful info

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Today’s Adventures at Starlight Cascade Garden’s

Jun22
by kim hay on June 22, 2021 at 11:05
Posted In: gardening

Well the beans have disappeared again!

The Tendergreen, Sungold Wax and even the Scarlet Runner beans have the leaves missing. So if the baby bunny can squeeze itself out of the chain link fence in the back yard, is it fair to say that it can squeeze itself into the Garden’s of 4& 5 to enjoy the fresh leaves?

There will be some screening going over all the beans. This is the first year we have had this issue.

Two hard shell potato bugs found and terminated and one patch of eggs- smooshed.

Picking up debris from yesterday’s wind storm.

Will be weeding more grass from the flower beds.

But on the bright side I did get some mulberries from the tree, but now have to get them before the squirrels, who were seen this morning on the top of the tree enjoying a fruit breakfast.

 

 

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ISS transit of the Moon 2021May20

May28
by catz on May 28, 2021 at 10:23
Posted In: astronomy

This is my *single* frame capture of the ISS transit of the moon on Thursday 2021 May 20th at 23:58:08 UTC.

The ISS is the little lighter blotch in the lower left of the frame. You can imagine two major solar panel components.

If we had better cameras with bigger FOV sensors/pixels, lower focal length of the scope or a better predicted path over the moon itself, I would have framed this and capture many more frames as it crossed.

Specs: Meade 102mm SchmidtCass FL=1000 f10 on a Meade LXD55 mount captured with zwo asi290mc camera with firecapture software. Focus was manual of the primary SC mirror using the Yoga “warrior” pose, reaching into the toosmall observatory, under the counterweights, around the camera and finally to the coarse focus knob

Processing: load up the .avi in irfanview image viewer, select options; extractallframes. It turned the 1242 frames into 1242 .bmp files. I then went through them one by one to identify the single ISS frame and kept one before and one after and deleted the rest. Then with irfanview again, changed them from .bmp to .jpg and then annotated with irfanview.. wow.. that program is becoming my goto software!

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drip irrigation is pretty awesome

May26
by catz on May 26, 2021 at 11:32 and modified on May 26, 2021. at 14:12
Posted In: gardening, Heirloom & Heritage Tomatos


This is our drip irrigation system that we bought last year (kit form), just laid out a week ago when we transplanted the heirloom tomatos. This year the plants are 24″ apart and the rows are 36″ apart. We would like more spacing between rows but the fenced garden is not big enough for the number of plants going in.
There is a mechanical timer associated with this vegbed and typically we come out in the morning or evening and turn it on for 1 or 2 hours.
All of the supplies came from irrigationdirect.ca


Other components are a vaccuum breakers, a filter, and a pressure reducer. The system worked very well last year and so far so good this year. You can tell by the narrow strips of wet earth that it is much more efficient in getting water to plants than a sprinkler and much more conventient than hand watering with a hose and nozzle.

Lastly yet another signage system. In past years we would staple these laminated laser printed names onto a 2×2 stake, which also supported the tomatos. This year we are not putting in the 2×2 stakes right away, rather later on when the plants are well established and much larger. So instead we tried this… gluing the names on popsicle sticks for now, and transferring them to the 2×2 later on… still haven’t quite worked out how that will work, but at least the letters are running left to right instead of sideways uptodown as in the past 🙂

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spring gardens

May20
by catz on May 20, 2021 at 10:39 and modified on June 18, 2021. at 10:42
Posted In: gardening, garlic


A quick snap of Vegbed5 for historical records… Approx 960 garlic cloves were planted on 2020 October 25 & 28 in the eastern section (left side of image). Potatos went in to the southern section (center of image).
The black composter was moved in about a month ago to provide ease of access and maybe it would get more use.
The garlic was covered with straw for the winter. We will be removing it shortly to lay out the drip irrigation lines and may put it back again soon afterward.

vegbed5 north to south east to west +5C
Row 1 Oct 25 50 dibbles * 6 = 300 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
armenian x2
artichoke x3
barcelona red x1
bubbas chesnock x1
carpathian x1
chesnock red x1
chilian x1
creme delarose x1
czech x2
dujanski x1
F3V x2
Fishlake Ted F1 x2
Fishlake Ted F21 x3
Fishlake Ted F23 x6
Fishlake Ted F3 x4
Fishlake Ted F30 x8
Fishlake Ted F40 x2
Fishlake Ted F7 x2
French x2
unknown x1
genki x2
georgia crystal x1
georgia fire x1

Row 2 Oct 25 51 dibbles * 6 = 306 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
georgian x2
german red x2
german white x2
hungarian x2
inchileum x3
italian purple x3
italian sicilian x2
japanese
japanese sikua
khabar
koji
korean purple
kosytns red russian
lakota
lucian sicilian x2
magnificent
marino x2
mennenite x6
metechi
music x4
newfoundland x2
northern quebec x4
northumberland x2
omas
persian star
phillipino
polish jenn

row 3 oct 28 44 dibbles * 6 = 264 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
port au george x2
purple glazer x3
railway creek x4
roja 2019FA x2
rose de la trec x2
rosewood x2
blank russian red check notes
russian red x2
russian red 2019 x2
saltsrping select x2
seversky palisek x2
shouldice
siberian marble
sicilian gold x3
silverskin40 x4
slovak x3
solent wight
spanish antihelion x3
spicy korean x2
sweet candy x2

vegbed7 early garlic (planted apart from main crop) 8 dibbles * 6 = 48 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
aglio russo creo x1
acropolis greek x1
chiliean silver x2
italian lorenz x2
mexican red silver x2

vegbed10 last of early garlic (planted apart from main crop) 7 dibbles * 6 = 42 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
red rezan x3
spanish roja x3
tibetan x1

Grand Planting Total 2020 = 300 + 306 + 264 + 48 + 42 = 960

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Lunar Werner X 2021may18

May19
by catz on May 19, 2021 at 12:32 and modified on May 19, 2021. at 12:34
Posted In: astronomy

We went out last evening around 21:00 edt and attempted to get some images of the Werner lunar X. This is from a Canon T7i on a tripod with a 300mm f5.6 zoom lens. Focus is not sharp at all (used live view and max zoominess)

So.. neither the 500mm mirror lens nor the 75-300mm lens do the feature justice.

Was going to use the telescope… but… even though the black flies majorly diminished in yesterdays heat.. were replaced by locusts of mosquitos. swarming was too kind a word out back in the field. Yet Kim inside the SCGO reported very few of any flying insectoids.

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Darkside of the Moon

May17
by catz on May 17, 2021 at 11:43
Posted In: astronomy

One of the better dark side of the moon images taken 3days old, positioned low to our horizon between some power lines. This was a 2 second exposure on a tripod, unguided at 300mm f5.6 and ISo3200. The one second exposure also showed the dark side details but they were… dark!

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Nova Cas 2021 (V1405Cas)

May17
by catz on May 17, 2021 at 11:35
Posted In: astronomy

Our first confirmed image of Nova Cass 2021 (V1405Cas) taken with a DSLR on a tripod for 30 seconds of unguided exposure at ISO3200 and a 75-300mm zoom lens at 75mm

The hardest part was to actually find a starmap that showed its accurate position.

As it turned out, did not need that… Stellarium v0.21 automatically updated and the Nova appeared in it!

So, using a ruler to measure the distance on stellarium between Shedar and Caph and then to the Nova, I did the same on the image itself to get the general location, then starhopped from M52. Compared it against the next star to the lower left and it all looked good.

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First Light – allsky1pi new lens

May12
by catz on May 12, 2021 at 13:46 and modified on May 12, 2021. at 13:50
Posted In: astronomy


This is the First Light image from the new wider angle lens for the allsky1pi camera system.
The old lens came along with the ASI ZWO120MC camera and was a 2.1mm focal length.
This new lens is a 1.55mm focal length and as seen in this image, does come to focus (our biggest concern) and also shows more of the sky. Focus is not perfect at the moment, but the fact that it can come close means it can get even better!
The camera is still mounted biased towards the north, as one of its primary goals is to image aurora, often low in altitude to our north. North is up, East is left, West is right. Not all of the southern horizon is showing, possibly because of the tilt bias but also because of the small chip size.

Sensor: 1/3″ CMOS AR0130CS(Color)
Resolution: 1.2Mega Pixels 1280×960
Pixel Size: 3.75µm
Bayer Pattern: GRBG

Older image from the 2.1mm lens

From here we will let it run overnight and see if the night sky is in sharp focus or not, and also decide on whether to change the angle bias at all. It looks pretty good right now down to the horizon and just a little bit more.. and that may be good as is.

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