Jupiter Saturn 2020 Aug 13 UTC

Aug17
by catz on August 17, 2020 at 08:35
Posted In: astronomy

Another night of developing imaging workflow for the Meade 102mm SC. Tonight was with a x2 barlow, taking it from FL=1000mm to 2000mm.

This small Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope has only a small coarse focus knob to move the primary mirror in and out.

That combined with a x2 barlow, cut down the exposure times by x4, meaning every time you touch the focus knob, everything shakes and blurs and does not settle down for a few seconds.

So, focus was not the best. After last nights RASCKC weekly chat, I expect everyone to be out making Hartmann masks today… I know I did 🙂

This is the last or 2nd last image of the night, before I switched over to Saturn.

Jupiter was 21 deg alt, with a diameter of 46 arcsec. The Great Red Spot was appearing… I did not see that at all in the raw imaging. North is up.

I hope tonight will see a noticeable improvement in the initial focus… that helps all the way down the processing/ workflow chain.

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Jupiter 2020Aug12 02:48-03:14UTC

Aug12
by catz on August 12, 2020 at 10:48 and modified on August 12, 2020. at 10:51
Posted In: astronomy

Imaging Jupiter last night during the Perseids, waiting for midnight to come for hopefully better and more meteor displays.

These are before and after Registax v6 wavelet processing, to show the power behind wavelets, and the fact that I still do not have what I consider ideal settings 🙁

Seeing was average

Transparency was good but got worse

Sky Quality Meter reading: 21.48 mag/arcsec^2

Meade LXD55 mount tracking below average

Meade 102mm SC F10 FL=1000mm plus a x1.5x barlow, effective FL=1500mm
No dew shield or dew heater on the Meade 102.
North is down (I normally do up)
Thesee are the best 50% of the images.

Start of run 02:48UTC

End of run 03:14 UTC

Before wavelets

After wavelets

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Perseids, Saturn, Jupiter and Sagittarius

Aug12
by catz on August 12, 2020 at 10:28
Posted In: astronomy

This is the only Perseid meteor captured on the DSLR camera, a 20 sec exposures of the southern sky last night, just after setting up no less! This one is from 22:06 EDT. I’m finding the sweet spot for the Canon T7i to be ISO3200 for saturation, and shorter exposures for less star trailing (no tracking).

Saturn Jupiter and Sagittarius and the Milky Way were the targets of about 150 images before the lens dewed over around 23:06 EDT

We packed up the camera gear and observed with eyeballs from 00:10-01:00.

Our counts were between 10-20 for that time, over half being Perseids, the remainder sporadics.

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Comet C/2020 F3 Neowise

Jul21
by catz on July 21, 2020 at 10:26 and modified on July 21, 2020. at 12:15
Posted In: astronomy


And from this morning, Tuesday 2020 July 21st, just after midnight.
Very low to the horizon and soon to disappear behind the trees.
Catch it if you can after sunset once it gets dark enough.
Awesome comet. again, first naked eye comet in a generation.
It does seemed to have peaked in brightness and is just starting to fade a bit.

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Comet C/2020 F3 Neowise

Jul21
by catz on July 21, 2020 at 10:20
Posted In: astronomy

My first good (in focus!) image of the first naked eye comet in decades! Taken Wednesday July 15th from outside Yarker, Ontario

The image specs are in the filename. Nice! Naked Eye.. possibly a little bit dimmer than other sightings, but it has moved west a lot into the brighter sky, and higher as well.

Another closer up image

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Jupiter at opposition 2020 July

Jul18
by catz on July 18, 2020 at 17:49
Posted In: astronomy

Greetings!

I have been looking forward to the opposition of Jupiter for *ages*. Unfortunately I do not yet have my dream setup and am cobbling together anything that will capture photons.

Last night was 1st light with an old Meade LXD55 tripod and mount, an old Meade 102mm F10 1000mm FL, a newer asi 290mc camera.

I do not have the cables to talk to the mount yet (its a serial 4 wire cable with a narrow RJ9 jack, not the “regular RJ11” standard phone style jack). It would have been nice to be able to command the mount from inside the house as the mozzies were insane last night. We were decked out in bug jackets along with long clothing and still they were biting through.

Attached is the processed (pipp, autostakkert!, registax wavelets) image of Jupiter at 02:37 UTC today (22:37 EDT) that shows not too abd detail using Christopher Go’s wavelet settings.. a little overblown but it does show the surface features well.

For comparison, also attached is the stacked but not yet processed in registax for wavelets.

These are 120 second exposure runs at 21ms/frame and these are the stacked best 25% of the frames.

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More air needed

Jul06
by catz on July 6, 2020 at 10:57
Posted In: astronomy

A few things happened over the last few days of *NOTWORK*. Gotta love those things called “holidays”!!!

The SCGO Observatory was getting a little hot in the days of the heat wave. It is a tall roof (another story) and has vents along the top but they are mostly semisealed with rubber foamies with even small holes… so not a lot of air movement.

We added two large vents with insect screen in the SE vertical sidewall, but you really need to match this on the other side for any kind of real airflow. Of course, could not find the large rectangular vents to match, so instead installed two 4″ diameter screened vents in the NW vertical sidewall. Any little bit helps!

Next weekend we hope to add powered 12vdc computer “muffin” fans to exhaust air out and put a 5watt solar panel on the roof to run them. This setup seems to work well in the tardis observatory, knocking down the peak temps a few degrees C.

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More wheelz!

Jul06
by catz on July 6, 2020 at 10:54
Posted In: astronomy

Some time ago I had asked if anyone had done an elementary physics experiment in friction.

Does adding more wheels to a rolloffroof observatory reduce the static (starting) friction and the rolling friction?

All else being equal, more wheels would be a lower PSI on each wheel and the support surface under it, but there would also be more axles then before, generating more friction.

Well, things came to a head here at SCGO and I had the opportunity to get four more wheels of the exact same type.

The existing structure is an 8 foot long mounting surface with 5 wheels, approx 14″ apart with the first and last wheels also being 14″ from the end of the support.

start-space-wheel-space…..wheel-space-end

| 14 W 14 W 14 W 14 W 14 W 14 | (1st image)

when in the closed position, all 5 wheels were in contact with the bottom surface (an upright 2×8).

Interesting discovery when the roof went into the open position… only the two end wheels were in contact, with the middle three free wheeling! That meant that when moving the roof, at some point, all of the weight was on only those two wheels! They may not be rated for that much, and the PSI is certainly much higher than thought and that is tearing up the surface of the bottom 2×8. Aha!

Either the 16′ of track (made from two 2″x8″x8′ sections) had issues, or the roof changed its shape or a combination of both.

strange. when the roof is fully closed, it is completely on a single 8′ board. the same when fully open, only on one board. So even if the 16′ were not completely level, it is still not straddling two boards.

Its like most of the roof mass/force was mostly coming down on the ends of the 8′ supports.

So I added an extra wheel at each end, approx 9″ from the previous end wheels. So before the roof support overhung the last wheel by 14″, now it is 14-9=5″.

start-space-wheel-space…..wheel-space-end

|5 W 9 W 14 W 14 W 14 W 14 W 9 W 5 | (2nd image)

So far so good. It *seems* to be behaving better but it may take the wooden structure some time to change its shape and force loads, especially in the hot weather.

This of course required moving the end stops so the roof could properly come to rest in the correct position to connect the holddowns. hmm… now that I think of it, I only replaced the closed position stops… forgot to do the open stops!

Lastly, the final touch to help reduce the force needed to move the roof, some kind of hard cladding to cap the weakened 2″x8″x8′ top surface.

I know many of you said, go get some angleiron! But is is never that simple. local supplier? limited hours of operation? transport issues (only have tiny car now, no minivan), cost of materials, will they fit the existing wheels without binding?…

In any event, I am confident that now with at least *4* wheels in contact on each side, it will be an easier roof to move. Hopefully with the extra wheels on the end, the middle wheels will come down into contact as well.

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astronomy! At Last!

Jun18
by catz on June 18, 2020 at 12:06
Posted In: astronomy


This is an image of the imaging laptop screen while I was imaging Jupiter on Sunday morning at 03:32 EDT. Yes.. before sunrise!
I am using an ASI ZWO 290MC camera (uncooled, Usb 2.0) with the program firecapture 2.6.08 64bit on a laptop that is at least middlin’
This was using a 40cm (16″) telescope using only a 12cm (5″) aperture mask. Even so we were getting 29ms exposures at the rate of 34 frames per second (fps) with a total of 4153 frames over a total of 120 seconds.
Seeing was poor, transparency was poor.
autoalign and debayer are turned on.
On the display one could hardly see any surface details.

A little while later I moved on to Saturn. Here the exposure time was 127ms with a fps of 7 and a total of 940 frames.
You can barely make out the Cassini division in this image. Post processing looks a lot better!

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Too Hot?

Jun18
by catz on June 18, 2020 at 11:56 and modified on June 18, 2020. at 11:57
Posted In: gardening

We are now into mid-June, only days away from the summer solstice. It is also Day 2 of a 5 day heat wave, with temps at, near or above 30C.
Having just transplanted the last of our peppers into the ground, we thought it might be a good idea to protect them a bit from the heat, at least at first. Here is our pepper VegBed6, with a Lee valley bulk insect netting (about 13’x20′) covering them.
https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/garden/pest-control/insects/71937-bulk-mosquito-netting

“This netting can serve multiple purposes.
Though primarily intended to create a bug-free environment, it can be used as a tent for partial shade; a single layer blocks 35% of incident light, while two layers block 57%. It can protect delicate plants and crops from direct sun or prevent damage by birds or animals.
Made of polyester with tape-bound edges, the netting measures 4m × 6m (approx. 13′ × 20′) and weighs about 0.84kg (1.85 lb).”

We also threw one onto a part of the tomato patch in Vegbed5.

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Spacex Crew Dragon and ISS

Jun01
by catz on June 1, 2020 at 06:24 and modified on June 1, 2020. at 06:27
Posted In: astronomy

On Launch day, Saturday 2020 May 30th, we observed a late evening pass of the International Space Station (ISS) and the SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft.

We used Heavens Above which stated the Crew Dragon was to come first. We had heavy intermittent cloud and did not see Dragon. A couple of minutes later around 21:51 EDTthe ISS appeared and we started imaging it, 5 second exposures at first (it was still quite bright outside), then 10 second exposures with the Canon T7i DSLR at 800ISO.

ISS and Crew Dragon

Just the 2nd last shot with the ISS descending into the eastern horizon and cloud, we spotted another bright object on the same orbital track. This is the best image of the two together in one frame. The ISS is the brighter of the two objects and closest to the horizon. The Crew Dragon is the dimmer and is higher up in the frame.

After hearing from the rest of you, we believe the ISS was leading and Dragon trailing. Heavens Above was possibly wrong due to Dragon firing engines to change orbits multiple times and HA was not uptodate?

Crew Dragon Flare

One more image, this of the Crew Dragon flaring. Probably just a reflection on the solar panel, probably not an engine firing as I think those would be too dim to see. We both saw this visually as well.

Reviewing the Allsky1pi camera captures from last night, we find two hits!

20 sec exposure with the ISS only (near center) and

25 sec exposure of the last bit of the ISS and the Crew Dragon behind it (lower left)

good showing of all of the intermittent cloud we had. at times it completely blocked out the moon.

ISS only

ISS and Crew Dragon

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Irrigation rocks!

May25
by catz on May 25, 2020 at 17:48 and modified on May 28, 2020. at 12:47
Posted In: gardening, garlic

Over the weekend we installed out first irrigation system, the Irrigation Direct Canada “Drip Irrigation Watering Kit for Row Crops”.
We installed it in vegbed4, where the fall planted garlic crop resides.

A standard system of garden water hoses takes water to the vegbed. From there is:
a cutoff valve
a mechanical timer good for up to 120 minutes
a vaccuum breaker/backflow valve
a filter
a pressure reducer
an adapter to connect to the main line tubing.

From there were tried out two methods, one line down the centre of a garlic row, each row consisting of 6 cloves/plants and running approx 20-25′. We did this on two of the rows.

single line irrigation tape

The tape looks to be pretty heavy duty with a water drip emitter every 8″.
Because of this spacing we also tried out another method on three of the rows, that being two tape lines down each row.
If we find that the single tape lines do not deliver enough water, we can easily move the two singles into a double line and install a new double.

double line of irrigation tape per row

We have enough to run another system in vegbed5, where the tomatos will be transplanted into in a couple of weeks

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