Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

Archive for January, 2015

8 results.

Jupiter 20150130

Jan31

by catz on January 31, 2015 at 10:11 and modified on February 13, 2015. at 09:58

Jupiter

Friday evening, early cause it was getting cold, I went out and was upgrading the learning curve of imaging by switching from the 20cm dobsonian (fl=1200mm) and a drift scan method to a 10cm Meade SC (fl=1000mm) equatorially mounted with a motor that does the RA tracking.

Jupiter was only 17 deg above the horizon at 19:00 EST and the more than half full moon was quite noticeable. What was noticeable was the -15C
But, once Jupiter was in the field of field with an eyepiece, it held centered quite well.
The asi120mc camera went in, replacing the eyepiece, and it took just a little while to get the focus, even with the superstiff focuser knob.

Surprisingly, the optimum exposure was still 5ms, same as with the much larger 20cm dobsonian..
letsee.. area=pi*r^2, MeadeSC would be pi*50^2=7850mm^2
the Skywatcher dob would be pi*200^2=125600mm^2
or x16 as much gross area.

You would think that would affect the exposure in some way!

In ay event, the image is not quite as big (1200mm vs 1000mm) but it is in the field of view much longer (still does drift a little).
I ran 5 sets of exposures, through out three, leaving two. Hey! I can still do arithmetic!

Viewing the raw .avi video (131MB), it looks horrible!
Ran them both through autostakkert! and one was better than the other.

Tested using 10%, 25%, 20%, 75% and 90% of the frames.
We can see a difference in the 10% from the rest. The rest look very similar.
This image comes from 4870 images (gross) and uses 75% of the frames.

So here it is, a 230×230 pixel 9KB image:

Can’t wait to step it even more with
1) a higher in the sky Jupiter
2) start with a x2 barlow

Love this camera!
even with the crappy old netbook (upgraded to 2GB RAM and a 60GB SSD) and a USB2 camera, it can capture near 192 frames/second, or 4800 in 25 seconds (actual exposure).

Comments Off

Imaging Jupiter

Jan20

by catz on January 20, 2015 at 10:16

Posted In: astronomy

Jupiter 20150120 00:50 UT

1st time outside in weeks to do some imaging of Comet Lovejoy.
Total Bust. Managed to find it in the scope but its much too big to see in the field of view of the camera.

Then I tried some imaging of Jupiter. That wasn’t too bad at all. It was early evening and Jupiter was 11-12 deg above the eastern horizon. Not the best at all for imaging but its a work night and I couldn’t stay out too late.. this was in and around 19:50

I was using our 20cm “starbuck” dobsonian, the ASI120MC camera and a drift scan method. No tracking at all, just let Jupiter cross the field of view in the 1200mm focal length over the course of 20-30 seconds or so.

I was trying out the new beta version of firecapture2.4 as the camera software controller and it is not too shabby. The user interface is getting much better!
After a few runs I was getting anywhere from 300-500 images in the 20-30 seconds, each running at 5ms exposure.

Time to pack it in, head inside, and run the 10 sets through processing software autostakkert!.

Of the 10, only 3 were of any good, the rest were overexposed as I was trying to find a good value starting up in the 100ms area.

I am still very impressed by the software… this is the best of the 3 runs processed and this was using default settings to process and basically 3 mouse clicks and 5 minutes each to run on the 4 year old netbook.

Murphy knows how much better the image can get when I learn more about processing and let Jupiter get higher in the sky!

I’ve cropped out the moons (which just barely showed up in 5ms exposures, not at all in 1 and 2 ms).

This was more of a dry run in preparation for Friday nights 2 shadow event and Saturday mornings 3 shadow event.

Comments Off

Infrastructure outages

Jan14

by catz on January 14, 2015 at 11:34 and modified on January 16, 2015. at 06:35

Posted In: life the universe and everything

Amazing… a cable internet failure and a power failure all in one day.

The cable internet (Eastlink) went out on Tuesday 2015 Jan 13th around 18:30 EST.

The power (HydroOne) went out Tuesday around 19:30 EST.

Power was restored around 22:30 EST, about 3 hours out.

Internet was restored around 08:45 EST Wednesday 2015 Jan 14th, about 14 hours out.

The cause of the power outage was power lines down and on fire just west of Harrowsmith Ontario. It was around -22C when this happened and by morning had hit -28C.

Comments Off

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy

Jan13

by catz on January 13, 2015 at 09:47 and modified on January 13, 2015. at 09:48

Posted In: astronomy

Another cold night but at least it cleared.

This is Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy on the evening of Monday 2015 January 12th around 19:29EST taken with a Canon Powershot ELPH 120IS camera on a tripod. It is a 15 second exposure at ISO 1600 and very wide angle, showing the Hyades (lower left) and the Pleiades (upper central) at approx 8.6 mm focal length. It was about -10C with a good stiff wind from the north at the time.

This has been a great comet, becoming naked eye in the dark country skies a few days ago. Too bad it has become -28C this morning and will stay that way for a couple of days. It would be nice to get the telescope imager up and running but this weather and temperature is just not conducive anymore.

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy

Comments Off

Elementary

Jan08

by catz on January 8, 2015 at 13:51 and modified on January 28, 2015. at 14:40

Posted In: life the universe and everything

There is a lot more television out there than there used to be. And sometimes it is actually getting better than it used to be. Elementary is an example of that.

We’ve always been a fan of the Sherlock Holmes genre (except maybe in Star Trek The Next Generation). Robert Downey Jr has done a good job in his two appearances.

elementary

Well, we had heard of this new one but never had time to check it out. That and the fact that we had never heard of Jonny Lee Miller and did not like Lucy Liu too much.

Surprise surprise! After binge watching Season1 we have been very impressed by both actors and the writing of the show. New and surprising twists on a crime drama show where at some point they must show you the guilty person, but not in a way to give it away.

It reminds me a bit of the old Ellery Queen show with Jim Hutton and David Wayne…

In any event, it is a good way to catch up when it is -23C outside with the wind blowing. Not much to do outside.

Now we have another 1 1/2 seasons to catch up on.

Updated: 2015 January 13th.. now 12 episodes into Season 2 and still loving it!
Updated: 2015 January 26th.. finally all caught up. Season 3 seems to have lost its edge/polish. Less and less of what made Sherlock Sherlock.

Comments Off

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy

Jan07

by catz on January 7, 2015 at 13:58 and modified on January 7, 2015. at 14:13

Posted In: astronomy

Finally! A night without horrible cloud cover and snow!

There was a mostly full moon however, but still we were able to visually observe Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy with 10×50 binoculars and took a few images of it with our Canon Powershot camera on a tripod.

Comet C/2014 Q2 Lovejoy

Comments Off

gas gas gas

Jan04

by catz on January 4, 2015 at 17:55

Posted In: life the universe and everything

Some interesting numbers from the past 4 years.

We record information at every gas fillup with our vehicle and we do try to manage the balance between dollar averaging purchases and not having an empty tank (or 1/4 tank in the winter).

But it was very surprising to see the average cost per litre to be so similar over the last 4 years.

Also surprising was the number of km driven. Very close to one another with 2013 being an exceptional year.


Year	2011	2012	2013	2014
total $$	$4,118	$4,140	$4,020	$4,253
total km	28221	28704	26627	28514
total L	3363.8	3425	3275	3374

average $$/L	$1.22	$1.21	$1.23	$1.26
average $$/km	$0.15	$0.14	$0.15	$0.15
average L/100km	11.92	11.93	12.30	11.83

Comments Off

A Light at Night

Jan04

by catz on January 4, 2015 at 13:10 and modified on January 30, 2015. at 13:59

Posted In: life the universe and everything, travel

Upper Canada Village is a heritage park in the village of Riverside near Morrisburg, Ontario, which depicts a 19th-century village in Upper Canada. We first visited it earlier in the summer of 2014 and had a great time.

They reopen for a few weeks in the winter with a spectacular light display, horse drawn wagon rides, a ferris wheel and a miniature train. Our timing could not have been better.

Wednesday December 31st was a bare ground/no snow day. Thursday January 01 was a very bad storm with multivehicle collisions on the 401 highway that closed it down for most of the day. Friday however was a sun/cloud day with the highways cleared and a good 4-5 cm of snow on the ground. We arrived just past sunset and spent a glorius 3 hours walking around in -8C enjoying the marvellous light show, rides, hot drinks in the tavern and much much more.

Yes, we had to look down as well as up as there were live hay burning horses roaming the streets, leaving hot steaming deposits on the roads! All in all it was a worthwhile 2 hours drive and we look forward to going back again next year!