Archive for March, 2025

3 results.

Total Lunar Eclipse 20250314

Mar14
by kevin on March 14, 2025 at 10:53
Posted In: astronomy

This is the camera setup we used last night for the total lunar eclipse.

Skywatcher Star Adventurer on a tripod

Ball joint head

canon T7i DSLR with a 100-300mm zoom lens at 300mm f5.6

a usb heater on the lens, a dew shield on the lens

an intervalometer programmed for a 60 second interval

a plastic “rain coat” for the camera.

a small 5ah lithium battery pack with 5vdc output (meant to recharge smartphones) to power the heater

I had big problems with focusing.. digital zoom all the way in, focused, but on release of the focus ring, it changed/moved. then also it seemed to change by itself when nothing touched the setup. and then because the star adventurer was only loosely polar aligned and not levelled at all, the moon drifted a little during the hours and I released the ball joint to reposition it… and the focus changed again, even though I was careful not to go near it.

The total eclipse image shows the top edge is much lighter and some stars did show as well. even at 2 sec at iso 800 the image was overexposed.

All that said, I think it is still the best total lunar eclipse image I have ever taken!

whens the next one????

🙂

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Jupiter 20250311

Mar12
by kevin on March 12, 2025 at 20:52
Posted In: astronomy

copyright StarlightCascade Observatory

This is the best image of the run of imaging of Jupiter Tuesday evening. The highlight of the night was a double moon shadow transit, Europa first and smallest and second Ganymede and larger.

Form left to right is:

Ganymede shadow, Europa shadow, Europa, Ganymede

seeing was poor, transparency was poor and winds were gusty. Clouds rolled in before the transits were complete 🙁

This is the best image of the 49 runs, the best 10% 10K frames at 3ms ramping up to 10ms at the end of the 49 runs.

Jupiter diameter is only 38 arcseconds
Below is the animated GIF of the 49 runs.

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Mars 20250311

Mar12
by kevin on March 12, 2025 at 20:46
Posted In: astronomy

Whilst waiting for the double moon shadow transit on Jupiter Tuesday evening, I did a few runs of Mars imaging.

The wind was brutal.. gusting and then not. It did not get a lot better for Jupiter later on.. in any event…

This was the best 10% of 13K frames of approx 1.5ms each. Seeing was poor, transparency was poor and the Moon was nearing full phase.

There is some blur off to the right of the planet.. almost certainly an artefact of processing the wobbly wind blown image. Mars was less than 10 arcseconds in diameter

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