I put together a rather modest setup: the Canon EF 200mm f/2.8 L II USM telephoto lens with an ASI 120 MM camera, and the CaK filter that has given me so much joy while observing Venus, all mounted on the EQ3. The goal wasn’t to image something never seen before, but just to blow the dust off my astronomy gear. I am lazy so I don’t like moving the dovetails around, and I had a piece of hard wood — a dovetail it became.
Just an early morning Jupiter, with my usual planetary gear, HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher Acceptable seeing but poor transparency.
NGC 5746
In today’s astrophotography world there is this tendency to make stuff “internet-beautiful”: nice(?) colors, but oversaturated, sharp, applying HDR three times too many and so on. However, I like the images with a feeling of retro, with that of the pioneers, when it wasn’t about checking out a google image and then pressing buttons with a gear worth a fortune. When there was a sense of new, exploration, experimentation, challenge. Having written a photo planning software is not the best approach perhaps, but the city sky, the balcony’s narrow field of view, and the lack of alignment gave enough challenges for this one.
HEQ5, N250/1200, UHC, ASI 178MM
Observing from my balcony, I managed to dig out the M61 galaxy featuring the SN 2020jfo supernova. I used the HEQ5 + N250/1200 with the ASI 178MM and an UHC filter. (tovább…)
Using the instruments in the balcony observatory, HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher, I imaged Jupiter and Saturn, with HD188546 photobombing the jovial family.
Venus, Oiii and CaK
I used my usual Venus gear: EQ3 with the added ST4 port, N150/750, filterwheel, OIII + VenusU and CaK, ASI 178MM cooled.
(tovább…)
OIII-CaK bicolor
Venus: EQ3, soapbox, N150/750, CaK + OIII, ASI 178MM c
Jupiter, Saturn: balcony-observatory, HEQ5, soapbox, N250/1200, ADC, ASI 224MC c
Venus, full spectrum
This time I used a very modest setup: the sky wasn’t promising, and indeed, the seeing was quite bad. So I put together the MC102/1300 with a barlow and an ASI 120 MM with an UV/IR cut, to capture Venus. Otherwise the unguided EQ3 did its job, given the lower magnification.
The gear is the same, but I deployed a new workflow: I start the editing on the raw stack, before applying any wavelets. The reason for this is that Venus has a nasty habit of its edge going easily overexposed. The pictures are through the Venus U and the Ca K-line filters, combined with the OIII filter.
2020-04-22. Venus U and OIII
2020-04-23 CaK and OIII
So the steps:
Same gear, this time I pushed ten minutes into the CaK and also at around ten into the OIII, though for the latter without a particular reason (I forgot to press stop).
