Venus Transit...of course

Some clouds but we were able to view most of the transit until sunset, about 2 hours. I also got the black drop effect and one vid with a plane crossing the sun. I setup the laptop and a 19" LCD to live view the transit through EOS Movie Record with a a Canon XS, that way we could all see it and I could record video and stack it later. The clouds came and went over and over, so I was having to change exposure and ISO constantly to see the Sun through the clouds. Some of the videos were over exposed as a result, but hey, whatchagonnado?
This is what it looked like 30 minutes before the transit started:

My Gear, notice there are no shadows....stupid clouds...

But I did end up with over 40 vids to process and some single frame shots. It has taken me all day jsut to stack 20 of them in Registax. The 2 below are single frames from videos that would not stack due to the clouds.

The famous "Black Drop" effect below.

Milky Way From Foothills Parkway

7 30 second exposures with 7 MP digital camera and tripod. My 1st Milky Way shot. Sagittarius area.
There is a bunch of deep space stuff in this photo, surprising what you can capture with a cheap digitatal camera. Click link to see all the stuff mapped out- http://www.astrobin.com/12077/

Sun on lunch 5/25/12

Sunspot 1486 is the big one up top.
Taken with a borrowed Canon XS DSLR using "EOS Movie Record" to record an AVI and stack in Registax, best 700 frames....I gotta get one of these cameras....

Sombrero Galaxy

I think the DIY Lightbox will work. Sombrero from last night,
83 30 second exposures unguided.
Canon xs

DIY Light Box

Flats are "flat field" frames taken with the camera to get rid of dust and uneven illumination, my flats have always been terrible. You are supposed to take a short exposure of a perfectly illuminated white flat surface, but you can't take the camera off the scope to do it. So... I googled how to make one and this is what I came up with.
8 sheets of 20" x 30" Foam Core from wallyworld @ 2 bucks ea.
35 W 12V car light from wallyworld @ 12 bucks
Wife donated drafting paper
Duck tape, glue, compass, razor knife.

Cut all the Sheets in half

Then take 4 of those and cut them into 15" squares, so you end up with 5" strips, cut the strips into 1" sections

You now have 4 15x20" sheets for the box and 4 15x15" sheets for the baffles.
The small 1" strips are glued to the outer box sections for support of the baffles...like so.

 The 2 baffles in the middle will have 11" holes in the middle, the top will have will have a hole big enough for the light and the bottom will have a hole just big enough to fit over the tube of the telescope. Tape drafting paper on the tops of the baffles to cover the holes (except the bottom one, it goes over the scope) and tape the whole thing up. I did end up having to cut the width of a sheet of foam coar off the all the baffles so the last section of box would fit flat. I plan to try it out tonight when I borrow the DSLR camera. I left the box taped together with masking tape so I can take it apart and add more drafting paper if needed, or maybe another baffle. When I'm happy I will tape all the seams with white duct tape and it will look great.

M13 from last year - reprocessed

After some tutorials on the net I went back and reproecessed my M13 the Hercules Globular Cluster

Saturn from 5/15/2012

Still haven't tried the new technique on Saturn but was able to capture a few vids, tried different processing to get a larger scale but Cassini division is still elusive.

1476...Day 4

Still going strong after 4 days

Sunspot 1476...Day 3

Still there! That thing is a monster!

Sunspot 1476, Day 2

The big one is still there, clouds cleared (sort of) for just a few minutes, long enough for a 1:00 closeup and 30 second disk.

Sunspot 1476

Shot at 5:00pm est, this is the biggest one I have seen so far.

No Observing Tonight!

Sun 5.2.12

Lunch break Sun

The Sun on lunch break

And a much better process of the close up, only used best 500 frames to stack.

YUK!

A little Sun on my lunch break

The sun popped out during lunch and I captured a few shots. 3 frames combined, 25000 frames each with Rocal Reducer, digital camera and 20mm EP. The brightness plays havoc on the white balance of the camera, it kept switching back and forth. Colorized in Gimp.

A little Saturn in an unexpected clear bit of sky

Didn't get to use the "new" method but still was able to capture a little Saturn, 10mm plossl with barlow threaded to EP.

Mars Afocal 4.19.12

I tried a new technique for Afocal, pretty unorthodox. I found a usb video capture cable on the net for 17 bucks and plugged that into the digital camera. This allows me to use the manual mode on the camera and adjust the exopsure, etc... and see the live results in Sharpcap and to capture the video at 720x480 AVI, instead of the 640x480 mpeg in the camera. Although I was hoping for better, it was a good test. Seeing was not very good, and I still need to experiment with the settings more. It's certainly better than I have been able to get with the digital camera so far.
Sony Cybershot 7 MP
10mm with barlow threaded to bottom of EP
10" SCT
USB capture cable to Sharpcap
Tried a couple of different zoom levels.

Sunspots with a Webcam

Break in the clouds for just a moment, so rushed out and hooked up the webcam for the 1st time and got a couple of quick shots. Focus is a bit off, it's hard to focus on the sun!

1st Solar Image

Da Sun, there were a bunch of dust spots I tried to clean up in Gimp.
 Captured a couple of sunspots, and faculae.
Sunspots 1459 and 1458 4/15/2012

Mars and saturn 4/6/12

7MP digital camera connected to eyepiece, 3 minute videos stacked in Registax

Moon Jupiter and Venus 3/26/12

Digital Camera

Flame Nebula - with a reflection artifact

Manually guided with 60mm refactor - 8 2:00 min exposures

M51 - 1st try

40 30 second exposures stacked in DSS, can't wait to try this one again

Jupiter Mars and Saturn with digital camera

7MP Sony Cybershot 15mm EP with 2x barlow threaded. Afocal.