Archive for February, 2015

5 results.

Lunar imaging

Feb25
by catz on February 25, 2015 at 16:34 and modified on February 25, 2015. at 16:35
Posted In: astronomy
1st lunar imaging with zwo awi 120mc camera

1st lunar imaging with zwo awi 120mc camera

This is the first attempt at lunar imaging (Mare Crisium region) with the ZWO ASI 120MC camera on a 10cm Meade SC Monday night (2015 Feb 23) in the late afternoon (5:20pm local), so the sky was still bright.

30 seconds got 1698 frames, of which 50% were used to stack this image. It was then flipped (top to bottom) and white balanced to get what you see above.

There were a few mis-settings on the camera software, which will be corrected next time… maybe tonight?

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Conjunction

Feb25
by catz on February 25, 2015 at 16:25 and modified on February 25, 2015. at 16:31
Posted In: astronomy
Mars Venus Moon conjunction

Mars Venus Moon conjunction

A nice grouping of Mars (top, dim), Venus (left, bright) and a crescent Moon on Friday 2015 Feb 20th.

Taken with a small Canon Powershot on a tripod, 1 second exposure.
Looking west after sunset.

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Jupiter & imaging

Feb17
by catz on February 17, 2015 at 10:55 and modified on January 5, 2016. at 14:29
Posted In: astronomy

One of the really nice things about digital imaging is that when you screw up, there is still a chance that you can fix things.

Back on the early morning of 2015 January 24th, there was a series of events on Jupiter, moon shadows and moon transits going across the surface.

I had turned on annotation of the date & time on the actual images for the entire event.
Later as it turned out, the stacking software would fixate both on the planet but also on the text of the date & time and the stacked images looked horrible:


conv_jupiter-20150124-0208EST-070746-5ms
Before

conv_jupiter-20150124-0208EST-070746a-5ms-pipp
After

conv_jupiter-20150124-0209EST-070903a-5ms
Before

 conv_jupiter-20150124-0209EST-070903-5ms-pipp
After

The trick was to find some video editing software that could crop the top few lines of the frame to take the datetimestamp out. Kim found a great piece of software called PIPP (Planetary Imaging PreProcessor) . This not only took out the datetimestamp, but also followed and centered on Jupiter as well, greatly reducing the size of the resulting .AVI file and improving processing times when I opened up the file in autostakkert!

Click here for the complete Jupiter Gallery

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stove accessories

Feb13
by catz on February 13, 2015 at 09:38 and modified on February 13, 2015. at 09:57
Posted In: cats, life the universe and everything

IMG_2938-800
This is our first winter with a wood pellet stove.

It has not been doing too badly at all: a lot less heavy wood carrying frequency; most of it water as it was not as well dried; a lot less bugs and critters coming in with the wood; a lot less trail of wood debris in from the wood shed to the stacking area; a lot less mold and mildew coming in affecting both us and the animals; heat that can be generated all night long instead of just 2 or 3 hours before the old wood fire would go out; almost instant heat when turned on, much faster than the 1-2 hours the old wood fire would take; no more too-hot when the old wood fire really got going and you start to worry about chimney fires.

Please note the accessories that we have:
the fireplace set of shovel, poker and brush left over from the old wood stove
a new, smaller, ash bucket
two cleaning tools
and a GREAT BIG HEAT SINK in the front.
You can feel the heat flow drop when she arrives and settles in.

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The Walking Dead

Feb05
by catz on February 5, 2015 at 12:09 and modified on February 5, 2015. at 12:10
Posted In: life the universe and everything

season5

The much anticipated Season 5, second half of The Walking Dead, our favourite zombie show, is coming up this Sunday evening.
In preparation, that day we will sit down and watch the season’s first 8 episodes:
1. No Sanctuary
2. Stranges
3. Four walls and a roof
4. Slabtown
5. Self Help
6. Consumed
7. Crossed
8. Coda

And from the IMDB comes the description of Sundays
Episode 9:
What Happened and What’s Going On
After all the recent trials that the group has faced, a slight detour might be the solution they’ve been looking for.

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