Comet C/2023 A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is a long-period comet, with an 80,000-year orbit around the sun.
We were south of Newburgh Monday night, had the first camera image at 19:12 EDT but did not know it.
This is one of the fun ones, where the plane suddenly altered course to avoid collision with the Comet! 🙂
We did use the contrail to help each other find it visually and in binocs.
75mm f4 zoom, ISO 1600, 3.2sec exp taken at 19:22 EDT
From the overnight of Thursday/Friday 2024 October 10/11 about 40km northwest of Kingston Ontario.
This is from the formerly known as allsky1 camera system, now aimed to the north and called the auroracam1.
It is a raspberry pi3, a ZWO ASI290mc camera inside a 4″ housing with a 2.1mm lens.
The sequence runs from 19:03 to 06:40 EDT
Note that the exposure varies based on the brightness.
The SCGO Allsky1 camera has not been allsky for a couple of years now (wide angle lens failure) so it has been repurposed/reaimed at the north to record aurora instead.
So the new name is: auroracam1
This is one of the first in a long time and best of the night aurora images captued Sunday overnight 2024oct06.
We had just cleared a thunderstorm with ltos of cloud as well.
One can make out the Big Dipper aka the Plough at the upper right of the image, Polaris the North Star near the centre, and the Constellation Cassiopeia to the lower left.
With a little imagination one can make out the Andromeda Galaxy, M31 to the lower left off Cassiopeia, and the Pleiades Star Cluster off to the far left.
Video of the entire night of Sunday/Monday Oct 06/07:
This imaging session was #2024-50.. the 50th of the year. In 2023 I had a goal of reaching 50 imaging sessions and I reached it.
This year I had a goal of at least that many… we will be there in one more session.
This morning temperatures at the observatory reached +2.8C, with dew everywhere.
This was the first imaging session in over a week, and the first after Serenity Observatory interior renovations (mainly a bunch of shelving).
Jupiter was high up and the first image around 04:50 EDT showed the moon Europa transiting Jupiter left to right. The Great Red Spot is also about to rotate out of the field of view.
Pointing continues to be a little off… less than 5 arcminutes and tracking is not too bad either.. maybe a nudge every 10 minutes.
I used an ROI of 1200×1200 and firecaptures cutout box of 800×800. This process continues to give better results than just an ROI of 800 and autoalignment turned on.
The last image around 05:40 EDT shows Europa well away from Jupiter on the right hand side. This also marks one of the first times I can remember imaging Jupiter when it has reached azimuth 180 degrees… ie due south and at its highest altitude. The airmass equivalent of the first image was 1.09. The airmass equivalent of the last image was 1.08
About the best that can be expected!
And last, the 15 run animation:
15 run animation
This is the housing and the mount for Allsky1, a raspberry pi and ZWO ASI camera based system. It has not been truly allsky since the last wideangle lens broke a year or two ago, so now it is more correctly a “partialsky camera system”.
So.. let’s turn it into more of an aurora cam and point it down closer to the northern horizon. Only we cannot because of the existing mounting system of a hose clamp to a piece of wood.
So.. it needs an Altitude-Azimuth mount… do we have any that would work? No..
ok can we build on.. how complicated could it be? 🙂
The answer is: not very hard at all.. these are the supplies… a 2″x3″, and two 5/4×6 cedar leftover pieces.
They were cut to size, approx 5.5″ for the cedar and approx 12″ for the 2×3.
This is the before image of the old mount:
It was removed, the 4×4 post was shortened enough to be able to adjust the new alt-az mount by hand, without the need for a ladder.
A carriage bolt was countersunk from the bottom and 4 long screws were countersunk from the top, to secure the new base.
The rotating section was then added on .. Just a wingnut is used to tighten the az axis. The 2×3 is attached with three long screws, countersunk from the bottom).
a 1/4″ hole was drilled in the side of the housing and a 1/4×20 x3″ bolt with washed was installed from the inside. The bolt head was covered with duct tape so it would not short out the raspberry pi.
another wingnut tightens the altitude axis and the 2×2 piece of wood goes back as a bird diverter landing spot (instead of the dome)
And a side view showing the network, 5vdc power supply cable and the 12vdc power supply cable going into the housing along with the fan hose going in the bottom.
Additionally the amount of sky facing dome has been lessened now that it is pointed downward, so the heat loss and dew issue should also be reduced.
The black cardboard mask has also been removed as it may have been impeding airflow.. and now that it is pointing north, the sun and the moon should rarely if ever light up the camera surface so that it reflects in the dome
A local horizon image was taken to be used as reference in helping to identify any local light pollution.
So.. here is the first midnight image showing the horizon, some local houses and their lights.
It also appears the lens focus was nudged a little too much and will be needing a refocus at the next opportunity.
Well.. these are the final stats. After 4 weeks of hanging to dry in the ventilated garage, the tops and bottoms were cut off, weighed and measured and then stored away in paper bags in the cold room.
This years summary stats are:
harvested total average
# bulbs weight(g) weight(g)
total bulbs 1007
min 5 65 11
average 21 581 27
max 55 2529 54
last year summary stats were:
total bulbs 1320
min 4 116 15
average 18 669 35
max 59 3705 103
harvested total average
Name # bulbs weight(g) weight(g)
Roja (2019 fa) 31 1668 54
northumberland 18 872 48
mennonite 54 2529 47
Armenian(2015) 18 825 46
newfoundland (2019) 25 1091 44
northern quebec 11 478 43
Rosewood(2015) 27 1101 41
Fishlake Ted F30 33 1327 40
italian purple (2019 perth) 27 977 36
russian red 22 781 36
Koji (2019) 12 386 32
Sicilian Gold(2016) 17 543 32
yugo red (2018) 12 380 32
Kostyns Red Russian 6 186 31
crème de la rasa 2019 16 482 30
lakota 16 481 30
wild garlic 18 534 30
Saltspring Select(2016) 12 354 30
Hungarian(2015) 55 1598 29
Marino(2016) 24 671 28
Fishlake Ted F3 39 1064 27
Fishlake Ted F40 42 1090 26
railway creek (2019) 27 688 25
artichoke formidable 22 532 24
italian lorenz 13 299 23
silverskin40 22 499 23
Fishlake Ted F21 22 488 22
transylvanian 11 241 22
inchelium 23 503 22
polish jenn 16 348 22
spicy korean 25 529 21
lucian sicilian 14 292 21
spanish antihelion(2015) 29 603 21
german red 11 218 20
ttv5 10 194 19
Georgian (2018) 10 191 19
Fishlake Ted F1(2015) 24 454 19
Wettergren(2016) 10 187 19
purple glazer 23 419 18
italian sicilian (2018) 11 193 18
F3V 18 311 17
genki 23 385 17
Chesnock 12 197 16
german white 12 185 15
red rezan 18 244 14
garden 3 unknown 6 81 14
Fishlake Ted F23 36 474 13
port au george (2019) 5 65 13
Fishlake Ted F7 19 215 11
total 1007 28453
min 5 65 11
average 21 581 27
max 55 2529 54
And another run of Jupiter from this morning from about 04:30-05:30 nice.. no mosquitos! Lots of dew though but the dew heater strap around the corrector and the foam dew cap continue to work well.
This is the best 5% of 8K frames at 3ms each over 180 seconds. Io can be seen in the lower left and Callisto to the upper left of Jupiter. This is also using the older workflow without Cutout boxes.. because I forgot. When you have a refined process that you have used for months if not years, it is tough to change and to remember the change. So this is an 1800×2000 pixels that was drizzles/upscaled x1.5
So the first 6 runs were the old workflow, without cutout box and the one below is the best of 13 runs using the cutout box.
This shows only the moon Callisto to the left of Jupiter.
No GRS is seen. Transparency was poor especially with the near full moon in the sky, and seeing was poor to average.
Below is the animation of approx 40 minutes of runs
And for the 2nd 4am getupandoutside call in a row… Jupiter with great altitude at 57 degrees and an airmass of only 1.2
This is the best 5% of 15k frames at 3ms each using firecapture ROI of 1200×1200 and a Cutout Box of 800×800.
Io is the moon on the lower left, this time moving away from Jupiter right to left. Also nicely centred is the Great Red Spot.
Just over one hour of imaging runs are animated below, shoing how fast the planet and the GRS move.
Another nice clear morning to get up and out around 04:00.. but did not actually start imaging until 04:40 or so.
BUT… the sun is coming up so much later I was able to do imaging runs clear through until 06:33..
so that is 33 runs of 3 minutes each with a 30 sec gap to allow the computer to catch up if needed.
In addition, I was using a feature of Firecapture that I have not used before.. a Cut Out box. and it worked well.
It reduced my chances of having Jupiter drift out of the FOV and ruin that run.
In the upper right is Io, moving away left to right.
On the bottom left is Europa moving in left to right. And another serendipitous event.. Europa shadow transit! Very nice.
The animation is large so will be posted on starlightcascade.ca a little later.
So far I am very happy with how this is working out. a dew heater is on the corrector plate and a dew cap is over that as well.
Another early morning imaging session before work.
This time a rebuilt styrofoam dew cap went over the heat strap on the front correct plate of the C9.25 SC. It worked!
No dew or fog this time!
This is still using my old registax wavelet settings, and I still have to sit down one day and work on new ones for the new optical setup. This shows Jupiter (no Great Red Spot) and the moon Europa moving right to left behind Jupiter.
I’ll post the animated .GIF of the session on the website starlightcascade.ca/jupiter a little later
The coarse focuser has some issues, so I still can’t use the x3, x2.5 or
x3 barlows.. this was taken with the x1.5 antares barlow. A little softer in focusing and contrast but a pretty darn big image scale. Overall however.. not too bad. seeing and transparency were both bad Tuesday morning.
After rewatching (again!) the BBC Masterclass in imaging, and doing some more research, I have found out what may turn out to be an even better method of ROI (region of interest), tracking and FPS (frames per second). Once I get caught up on sleep and get another clear morning I will try it out!
I also have to measure the Outside Diameter of the assembly so I can order a bahtinov mask to aid in focussing.
Below is the animated .GIF on the session. You may note that Europa disappears then reappears.. that is the telescope mount not tracking correctly and Europa dipped outside of the FOV for that imaging run.
Greetings!
We have a 9.25″ full aperture baader solar film filter, in a neat aircore mount that just force fits inside the rim of the Celestron C9.25 Schmidt Cassegrain telescope.
After trying to use it for imaging, we discovered that is is so much overkill that we got no useable images. The full aperture brings in sooo much light that the zwo asi585mc camera was at its minimum exposure and everything was still overexposed.
So then we built another aircore layer with two 2″ subaperture holes to act as a mask.
Then we needed safe storage for it and built this aircore storage based on the one built for the 10″ Douglas dob 15-20 years ago.
Original 10″ Douglas Dob full aperture filter storage
closed with velcro
The C9.25 full aperture filter
The two 2″ subaperture mask
The C9.25 storage just neeed some sticky velcro
We will add another image of the solar filter itself.. the smaller inner bottom ring is what force fits into the end of the C9.25, then the film then the top ring, which overlaps the C9.25 end.
A reminder that Saturn opposition 2024 is tonight/tomorrow and this is a good chance to get your best planetary observing/imaging of the season. At approx 01:00 EDT Sunday, Saturn will be az: 177 deg, alt 38 degrees
of course the weather is not cooperating:
I will try in any event and perhaps get some sucker holes to shoot through… I only need 30 or 60 seconds! for each imaging run.
This image was from Friday morning just before dawn, unfortunately veryvery low in the west, only 18 degrees of altitude.
This makes seeing very poor and also drops the effective magnitude.
Saturns’ diameter was 19 arc seconds and this is the best 10% of 7700 frames of 23ms each.