Csillagtúra

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.

(tovább…)

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.

(tovább…)

Rupes Recta 2017

2020.01.04. admin

english saját asztrofotóim

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hold moon

Found this picture in my archive, 2017-09-29

My Astrophotos 2019 – Barangolások a végtelenben

2020.01.01. admin

english saját asztrofotóim

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I didn’t include the videos, see my channel: http://youtube.com/user/varadinagypal/videos

A shell script to help the mortal photographer

When working with registered and aligned images that are of different size, I use imagemagick to frame the 16 bit tiff files, with this little script:

#!/bin/bash
OUTPUTRES="4300x2900"
mkdir output
for filename in *.TIF*; do
     convert "$filename" -background black -gravity center -extent $OUTPUTRES output/"$filename".out.tif
done

for filename in *.tif*; do
     convert "$filename" -background black -gravity center -extent $OUTPUTRES output/"$filename".out.tif
done

Szaturnusz 2019-10-24

HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher

Sun – 2019-12-22

2019.12.22. admin

english saját asztrofotóim

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hidrogén alfa Nap

After a longer overcast period, I managed to image the Sun in Hydrogen alpha, using my solar setup: HEQ5, Lunt LS60T Hα, B600, ASI 120MM

HD 33802

2019.12.19. admin

english saját asztrofotóim

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binaries

I had both some time and clear skies to image yet another colored binary. I used the HEQ5, N250/1200, TSO ADC, ASI 224MC (cooled), home observatory, mountpusher setup well known by those who follow my posts, and the heavy processing described here. The main issue with these binary stars is that they are faint, and their companions are even more so, so even my mountpusher has a problem following the target — the mountpusher needs at least two-three frames per second to not beep and have the time to apply the needed corrections.

HD33802, HIP 24244 [* in Lep] 3Iot Lep, B8V, 232ly 4.45^m [simbad] [photo-planner]

Photoplanner: Close Neighbors

2019.12.12. admin

english

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programming programozás

So I’ve been thinking about this: what if I want target proposals for objects that have a nearby neighbor. Like the Double Cluster, or M81 and M82, or M35 and NGC 2158. So I came up with a generic filter in the photo planner that narrows the search results based on whether a particular result has a neighbor. The search switch is conjunction, and the unit is degrees, defaulting to 1 degree. Some searches (like an unpolite naked :conjunction) may still result in a server error (low memory), so the switch works on already specific queries.