Sun 3-30-2013

Decently warm day with some slight wind gusts, got lucky and recorded a 300 frame video between the major gusts.  Stacked 144 best frames to a good result.

Moon 3-27-2013

Crisp cold, but almost no wind.  Tested out the Astromaster 114 with the Neximage 5.  Rather poor seeing, and still rather low, barely above the thin clouds,  so I stacked 29 out of 30 frames, and adjusted levels in Photoshop CS2.  Would have imaged Jupiter too, but the humidity wasn't cooperating, nor was the seeing.

Solar 3-27-2013

Kinda breezy with poor seeing and the software would record undebayed frames in avi so had to use debayered frame capture.  Stacked 260 hand picked frames and came out with some pixel grid lines, but tolerable if you don't zoom in too much.  Actually in natural color instead of grey scale.  Time to figure out what went wrong with Ic Capture or the video codec.

The Moon 96% Full 3/25/2013

243 frames stacked in Registax 6, levels adjusted in Gimp, orientation flipped in Irfanview.

Panstarrs C/2011 L4 3/25/2013

Spent some time waiting for the comet to show up on the screen just nearby Alpheratz.  Taken with the R80 at f/2.1 using the Neximage 5.  The comet had just passed the trees and was only a couple degrees from a streetlight causing a bright reflection off the inside of the dew shield.  Greyscale conversion and level adjust done in Irfanview.

Cold Crisp 3/20/2013

Had a high temp of 14f, but very little wind, broadcasted from 12:45 til 2:30pm when the wind started picking up a bit.  This was the best shot with 398 frames stacked.  Next step is trying to get the brightness and contrast more consistent in my images.

The Dakota Skies Portable Obervatory

Finally remembered to take a couple pics of my current setup, notice the comfy seating I'm gonna deal with til better weather.

Cloudy 3/14/2013

Not the best shot, thin clouds the whole time, but I did get in a 2 1/2 hour broacast on nsn through the clouds.  Only 43 frames stacked so the image is a little noisy, but better than I was expecting.  Also got some odd reflections in the form of 4 dark spots, must be from using longer exposures and higher gain, and the stacking didn't blend them out either.

Very first image with the Neximage 5

Kinda bad order of implementation, but this is the first image I took with the Neximage 5, it's a single frame with simple level adjustments in GIMP.

Solar 3/11/2013

A little better than my first image, still the same setup. 133 frames stacked.

First stacked image with Neximage 5

My first stacked solar image using my new Neximage 5 cmos camera attached to my Ioptron E R80, using ND5 Baader Astrosolar Film.  Taken 3/10/2013.  198 frames preprocessed in PIPP, stacked in Registax 5, levels adjusted in GIMP.