New Fisheye Lens

I finally got my 150 degree fov fisheye lens shipped from china, and decided to play around with it today, recorded 100 frames 10 seconds apart and made an animated gif out of it.  Sorry for the dirty window though.....

Cold but clear, and not as good of seeing as I wanted

Cool, but not really cold, about 44f for the high, but nearly no wind by North Dakota standards.  Seeing wasn't that great but not any worse than I've seen before, not nearly.  Not great activity, but still proof we're near the solar max, and not too far below it.  First was 5 after noon, next is two hours later, alt/az mount so some rotation, was interesting to see the new spot to creep around the limb of the eastern limb.

Finally a clear sky, but windy and cold

Nice crystal clear blue sky, but with a high temp of 42f and rather breezy, had to set up out of the wind so only had a couple hours between the trees to broadcast on NSN.

Cold, thin clouds and breezy

Not the best weather today, but I had a day off and had to take advantage of it.  Continuous thin clouds didn't make it easy to get a good image, plus trees in the way now that the sun doesn't get so high in the sky anymore.  I shot 1200 frames instead of the usual 500 just to be sure I could get enough useable frames to stack and reduce the noise somewhat, when I knew it'd be bad with the thin clouds mucking things up for me.

Almost forgot what to do.....

Been a while since I got the scope out, been working full time again and too tired to setup after work, so had to wait for a clear sunny day on a weekend.  Too bad it wasn't clear today, but clearer than I've had in the last couple months, still had to shoot through thin clouds and really variable seeing, but got a decent image out of the effort, along with a nice broadcast on nightskiesnetwork.com with visits by Norm, Hal, and the Last Ecvarian, aka Jim, plus numerous lurkers and guests, so it was a fun afternoon. All pics are from the single full disc capture, the zoomed shots are just cropped from the original high resolution image.

A few spots again

Solar activity has been quite low, and so has my imaging time, got busy building grain bins with the farmers always waiting til the last minute.  Its been cold cloudy and windy lately too so difficult to get a decent image today and it came out kinda noise with only 50 useable frames to stack due to crummy seeing and strong winds.

Hot as heck again

Thank god for long handcontroller cables and long usb extensions.  Computer was in the house with the scope on the front porch, spent a lot of time waiting for a clear patch of sky to catch a decent avi capture while broadcasting on NSN.

Clear, cool and still crummy seeing.....

72F and calm, but the seeing was still rather bad, and the transparency still wasn't as good as the forecast was predicting so a rather noisy image again.

Lunar 8-23-2013

The first is a single frame from the NSN broadcast when the moon was still only around 15 degrees up.  The processed image was around 25 degrees up, a bit of altitude can make a big difference besides stacking and sharpening.

Sharper and lower noise than usual

Was really shocked that I was able to get the noise level down today, considering the poor level of seeing, but then again, the transparency was better than usual.  Included is the broadcast image and the full resolution processed image, there's quite a difference today.

Lowest noise image in awhile

Took a break from cleaning the basement for a bit to get in some solar viewing.  Actually got the lowest noise image I've seen in awhile.

Not bad for thin clouds

Had continuous thin clouds for most of the day, then a few scattered thick dark clouds, stacked 30% of the frames to help even out the processed image.  Included is a screen capture from my broadcast on NSN today colorized using Splitcam and camera controlled by amcap now instead of screen capturing the Ic Capture software, looks a bit sharper this way I think.

Just another average cloudy day

Too many of these partly cloudy days this time of year, making it difficult to get good clear noise free images, it probably won't improve til I have to sit outside bundled up like a snowman, but I'll keep trying.....  It does look like activity might be winding back up again, hopefully the polar flip happens soon so we can see what the effects are gonna be.

Sun and Space Stations

Got in a little solar on the 9th, really poor seeing so didn't broadcast on NSN for long, and the image came out quite noisy.  When darkness fell, I had some fun setting up and aligning for a 1 second view of the ISS and HTV-4 passing by Kappa Draconis.  I had a nice wide field of view with the R80 reduced to f/2.1 so I wouldn't have gotten any real detail so I overexposed a bit to get Kappa Draconis to show up in the frames.

99% Clear

Quick capture right after the clouds cleared out, followed by a 4 hour long broadcast on Nightskiesnetwork.com and only one software crash....... Unfortunately not much activity right now.

Cloudy and breezy, but better than usual lately

Actually got a good straight run of capture, so much less noise in the image than usual, finally an image I can be proud of again.  25% stacked out of 424 usable frames.

Saturn form 7-27-2013

Started out pretty low on the sky and poor seeing, with not much time to grab captures.  Put in a nice long broadcast on NSN, mostly showing double stars waiting for the moon to come up.  Spent a lot of time on the doubles and shivering in the cold only to see the moon come up behind a large tree so I shut down for the night, didn't particularly want to sit in the cold for another hour to get the moon.  But it was fun anyways.

Came back to edit and add a reprocessed image I did later.

A decent day for a change

Nice and cool, but slightly breezy, overall a nice day though.  Got in a 2 hour broadcast on NSN, and a better than average image today too.  No level adjustments in the image today, just stacking and wavelets.

Way too many clouds

Very cloudy and quite breezy, didn't get enough perfect frames, had to throw in some wind distorted ones so theres a slight shadowing around the limb in some spots, but the spot detail came out pretty decent.

Not exactly anything to brag about!

Of course dealing with clouds again, but put something together like usual.  It was actually a bit cooler today but still warm enough to heat up the computer trying to broadcast on NSN.  Did a few short broadcasts til the computer warmed up, then had to shut down, might still try again later.  Here's the image from today though.......

Last Perigee Moon of the Year

Spent several hours broadcasting on Nightskiesnetwork.com, and got a nice clear patch of sky with decent transparency and grabbed a couple hundred frames, stacked the best 100 frames.  Its interesting to note that the lighting angle does change over time, the last super moon image the brighter lit region on the top of the moon was more to the left hand side, last night it was almost directly centered at the top.  Pretty cool huh?

Its not much, but its something.

Not much for spots but I tried getting an image between the clouds and wind gusts, on the 19th.  Also had a nice lunar broadcast til the clouds came in, but clouded out and lost saturn in the trees after having the planet on the screen for a whole 3 seconds after focusing.

Surprised My Computer didn't burst into flames

Finally got out again, its been awhile.  Around 95f and breezy making it difficult to get good captures with the barlow, but I tried anyways since I had the better computer outside for solar for the first time.  Tried to broadcast on NSN, but the computer overheated and shutdown on me twice, so had to give up.  The barlowed captures were tough to get with the wind shaking the scope but did the best I could to process them.  AR1791 and 1793 at 1.5x and 2x both respectively, and finally the full disc at full resolution including the dust bunny on my solar filter showing in one of them, can you guess which one?  Sorry for the noisy images, the wind was rather hectic.