Venus in Calcium K
Venus 2020-02-16
Venus, false color
So I imaged Venus and deployed the technique describen earlier: the Calcium K-line got cyan, the visible light’s RGB got orange, and the false color outcome is featured here. Because I noticed that the ASI 178 tends to run at ambient plus 10-15 degrees Celsius, I made it a cooler, quite similar to the one on the ASI 224 MC, and reached ambient t – 5 degrees and maybe way less noise. Though imaging Venus like this, from a hole in a wall, on the daytime sky with two instruments may sound easy, or I may make it sound easy, it wasn’t. It was almost as hard as doing it for the first time.
HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (uv/ir filter, cooled), and ASI 178MM (Calcium K filter, cooled), home observatory, mountpusher
The Cloudy Venus 2020-02-09
Venus, false color
Now with the Calcium K line filter at hand, and some decent sky, I imaged Venus. The first problem was finding it, from my hole-in-the-wall balcony and not an exact polar alignment. To be able to pull such a feat, I had to build something: from some arduino modules, I put together an inclinometer to get the tube’s altitude, and then look for the planet at the suspected orientation for the given azimuth.
I used my usual gear, with the mentioned enhancement, with a mono camera and the Baader K-line Calcium filter, HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 178MM, Calcium K-line, and ASI224MC with the UV/IR, home observatory, mountpusher
The clouds of Venus 2020-02-01
Venus and its clouds
The literature tells us that it’s UV filters through which the clouds of Venus are visible. A Calcium K line filter is en route to me, but till then I still fired up my balcony observatory: it’s weekend, I am at home, and Venus is visible, so let’s take a shot. Actually, I took five shots with different settings, and then tried my best to squeeze out some clouds, cause why not. Initially, I thought the results were artifacts, but they were consistent on all five shots, even though I adjusted the ADC in the meanwhile. I was hoping then that someone else was imaging Venus at around the same time as me, so if the features proved to be consistent, then it’s no artifact. And so it happened, xcsabesz from asztrofoto.hu imaged Venus, through a filter, and the two pictures overlap nicely.
Venus – 2020-01-24
The planetary equipment, used these month mainly to hunt down binary stars, turned to Venus this time, barely visible from the buildings blocking the western horizon.
HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher
Binaries, third balcony survey
Trapezium Region, with planetary gear
It has come to my attention that English doesn’t really have a word for self irony. Well, Hungarian does, and it is a word needed when mentioning balcony-observatory-survey all together. So this is my home observatory I really like, but due to several factors, it’s all I’ve got. HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher
So, I continued looking at binary stars, after the first and second surveys. This third post comprises of the observations made since the second one. The processing is the same, some artistic license is applied, so the vibrant colors and the shape of the stars is the result of editing – those colors are there though, just not that vibrant.
Though the Trapezium started out as a “binary” ie planetary-technique, it has become deep sky, but with the very same gear.
And all the binaries I have photographed so far are these.
Trapezium Deepsky with Planetary Gear
Trapezium Region
So I’ve been hunting binary stars, because reasons. The Trapezium Cluster fits nicely into the field of view of the gear I put together last year for Jupiter. HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher so I turned my tube and… as usual, I play around with exposure, and I noticed that, in spite of the urban, heavily light polluted sky and the ginormous-for-deep-sky effective focal length and thus f ratio of the scope, colors start to show up in the background. So I gave it a try, till the clouds came, oh yeah, so basically half of the mosaic I planned didn’t get recorded. Here’s the half that’s been.
My encoder based focuser
So after I built a focuser controlled by a joystick, and considered it a usability failure, I built one based on an encoder, and modified the soapbox accordingly, maintaining backward compatibility. This encoder based hand controller has its own arduino, and connects to the soapbox, and through it to the PC to receive commands from the desktop app — but this connection is optional, it is fully functional as a standalone device. Below is the block diagram, explaining how it optionally fits into the soapbox daisy chain. Most variables are hand tuned for the DC motor + reductor gear box in use, as the source code reveals.
Rupes Recta 2017
Found this picture in my archive, 2017-09-29
My Astrophotos 2019 – Barangolások a végtelenben
I didn’t include the videos, see my channel: http://youtube.com/user/varadinagypal/videos
