Posts Made By: Paul Hyndman

Hi All,

I got a Baader solar filter from Jim (Kendrick) when I was at the NEAF, only to later discover it was about 2mm too small. I checked with Markus, who was in the next booth down with Allan Chan (APM Ger/USA) to see if they knew the exact size of my MN86, but like a fool, I didn't listen to him when he offered that he thought the diameter was about 254 mm... Of course he was exactly right (Doh!)

But...

I called Jim a few days later and he sent me the next size up which ***CAME TODAY***!!!

With only about 15 minutes to drag out all my cra... er, "gear" and set things up before the Sun was lost in the trees, I fired off a few shots (well okay, maybe 60 or 70... you know me! ) but didn't have time to putter much with the focus etc.

Anyhooo... here's its first light of AR9973 (I'm told that's what it is)

Geeze... maybe I can start getting to bed earlier now (not!)

Oh... Scope 8" Mak-Newt, camera Nikon CoolPix 995, EP 17mm Nagler.

Cheers,

Paul

PS: Thank you Jim for such great service and thanks Markus for good information, even though I was to dumb to use it!

Today's Solar images were so-so (clouds were mucking about), but using the wise advice of several astro-e-friends, I reprocessed yesterday's images (and it proved very rewarding!

I brought the finished image into PhototShop and converted it to grayscale and also an extracted Green channel image from Images Plus. Each one was a tremendous improvement over the RGB version, but the grayscale image seemed to have more fullness than the Green while the Green channel had deeper resolution than the grayscale. No problemo... I combined the two, with the top layer at 50% opacity, and Voilá... Nirvana!

See whatcha' think....

The original version followed by the grayscale/Green:

http://astro-nut.com/sun-ar9973.jpg
http://astro-nut.com/sun-ar9973may30.jpg

And for the sake of inclusion, today's muddier AR9973:

http://astro-nut.com/sun-ar9973may31.jpg

Methinks I'll be shooting Solar in color and then grabbing/converting the channels for now, doing a conversion/combination as mentioned above.

Now I want to go back and steal the Green channel at the *beginning* of the IP process, doing my 30 Richardson-Lucy's (and 10 hail Mary's ) on it *alone*... filtering out the crud on the front end.

My sincere thanks to Ginger and Ken from the Digital_ Astro group!

Cheers,

Paul

Hi All,

My Solar images from yesterday and today are still in the mill (AR9973 came out very good on both days), but I did finish a full-disk Solar image of yesterday's Sun (NO!!! Not a mosaic... sheeesh! )

I'm having a difficult time adjusting to "Baader-Blue" or "Gruesome Gray" so used a little poetic license on this one with the Adobe color palette! )

Cheers,

Paul

I've mentioned on several occasions that airporter golf club travel cases make super good scope cases and are available at dynamite prices right from your local sporting goods store, but never took any pics of mine before. While loading the car for a public observing session tonight, I decided to take a few shots to show how well they fit and work out.

This one is for my f6 8" Mak-Newt (the OTA is a whopping 10" in diameter and 48" long w/fan but w/o the dew shield). It works and looks like a million bucks, but was super inexpensive (typical prices here run from about $40 to $150).

They are round-shaped, foam padded (please... no outgassing threads! ), have wheels, handles, and protective hard shells! The compact size allows for easy packing, even in small cars like my wiener-mobile. In fact all the garba... er, "equipment" in this pic, including the table and two equipment cases, was tucked inside the trunk along with it:

http://astro-nut.com/MNCoolpix2a.JPG

An extra battery pack was tossed in the trunk as well, although a smaller 600 mount/pier was packed instead of the 900.

Paul

PS: I did have to "bump out" the shell near the focuser end to allow for the larger dual-speed rotatable focuser, but most scopes would not have that problem.

Hi All,

I'm still shaking out the Vermont dust from my knickers, but have had a wonderful time at this year's Stellafane convention. Several familiar faces were in attendance and, despite the crowd (which seemed a little lighter this year), I was able to meet up with several friends from ASNH/Yale (my local club), and during the course of the weekend visited with a host of other friends and e-aquaintences. One of the club members brought along his home-made 12" Dob, and generously shared the views with another friend and myself till the wee hours... great views through a terrific scope! Unfortunately, another friend had to leave by late Saturday afternoon to due to other commitments, so we did not get a chance to peek
through the home-made 20 inch truss Dob (with a side-mounted 8 incher) he brought up.

I've not yet checked all my messages but have started to sort through a few of the shots I took. The preliminary results may be seen at:

http://www.astro-nut.com/stella2002.html

Although only the first few shots have active links to the larger sized images so far, the thumbnails are good-sized and you can get an idea of the goings-on. I'll activate the links and add info as time permits.

Catch you all later,

Paul


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Hi All,

It's been cloudy here... my Coronado H-a filter arrived, so this was not unexpected! To avoid doing any actual work around the house, I've frittered away some time trying to breathe a tad more life into a recent M31 image.

I wanted to try a few other techniques, and started by applying a PhotoShop de-vignetting mask on the processed image stacks (three panels... upper left/center/lower right) before combining them into a single mosaic. This provided a little more overlap area to choose from than from my previous mosaic, giving a slightly more seamless look (less blotchy transitions). The flattened panel then went back to Images Plus for processing and back to Adobe PS for finishing. I was preparng the image for an egroup where the images are limited to a 480x480 display size, so I rotated the image to make better use of the space.

Taken with an 8" f5.9 Mak-Newt and Nikon CP995, direct-coupled to a 31mm T5 Nagler. It is a three panel mosaic, each panel consisting of 5 adaptively added images, each image at ISO800 and 60.1 seconds.

Perhaps not *the* best, but one of my best stabs at it so far (and I actually learned a little bit in the process... go figure)!

Paul

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Hi All,

I just processed some of the today's images from my Coronado's first light. Well almost first light... it arrived Friday amidst the clouds, so while I was able to grab a few quick "wowie-ka-zowie!!!" peeks, there was no time to read the instructions (my eyes... my Gawd, my eyes!!!) or take any snapshots. Ditto on the crummy weather for yesterday, and work held me hostage today until the late afternoon, but....

I did get some visual time in with it (Oooooooh!!!) and managed to snap off a few pic's. There's gonna' be a little bit of a learning curve in approaching surface detail vs prominences... I thought the latter would need longer exposures than the surface, but it seems that just the opposite is true!?! The brighter levels needed to pick up the surface details seem to overwhelm the prom's (during imaging... not visual, where ya' do see it all!!!), which are still quite visible in exposures shortened sufficiently to reduce the surface glare. No biggie... I just have to tweak my approach.

You can view two of the reduced size images at (SolarMax90/T-Max with BF30 on my 5" Tak'):

http://www.astro-nut.com/sun-25-aug-02.html

Catch y'all later,

Paul

Hi All,

I just processed some of the images from my Coronado SolarMax90/T-Max/BF30 first light. Well almost first light... it arrived Friday amidst the clouds, so while I was able to grab a few quick "wowie-ka-zowie!!!" peeks, there was no time to read the instructions (my eyes... my Gawd, my eyes!!!) or take any snapshots. Ditto on the crummy weather for Saturday, and work held me hostage Sunday until the late afternoon, but....

I did get some visual time in with it (Oooooooh!!!) and managed to snap off a few pic's. There's gonna' be a little bit of a learning curve in approaching surface detail vs prominences... I thought the latter would need longer exposures than the surface, but it seems that just the opposite is true!?! The brighter levels needed to pick up the surface details seem to overwhelm the prom's (during imaging... not visual, where ya' do see it all!!!), which are still quite visible in exposures shortened sufficiently to reduce the surface glare. No biggie... I just have to tweak my approach.

You can view two of the reduced size images at (5" Tak', Nikon CP995, and 9mm Nagler EP):

http://www.astro-nut.com/sun-25-aug-02.html

Catch y'all later,

Paul

Hi All,

(I apologize for the cross-posting for those who may have seen this elswhere)

I just processed some of the images from my Coronado SolarMax90/T-Max/BF30 first light. Well almost first light... it arrived Friday amidst the clouds, so while I was able to grab a few quick "wowie-ka-zowie!!!" peeks, there was no time to read the instructions (my eyes... my Gawd, my eyes!!!) or take any snapshots. Ditto on the crummy weather for Saturday, and work held me hostage Sunday until the late afternoon, but....

I did get some visual time in with it (Oooooooh!!!) and managed to snap off a few pic's. There's gonna' be a little bit of a learning curve in approaching surface detail vs prominences... I thought the latter would need longer exposures than the surface, but it seems that just the opposite is true!?! The brighter levels needed to pick up the surface details seem to overwhelm the prom's (during imaging... not visual, where ya' do see it all!!!), which are still quite visible in exposures shortened sufficiently to reduce the surface glare. No biggie... I just have to tweak my approach.

You can view two of the reduced size images at (5" Tak', Nikon CP995, and 9mm Nagler EP):

http://www.astro-nut.com/sun-25-aug-02.html

Catch y'all later,

Paul

Hi All,

I've started to go through the lone batch of H-alpha solar images gathered Sunday. Part of my learning curve includes determining the effects of various exposure levels and processing techniques. If anyone is interested, the results are posted at:

http://www.astro-nut.com/sun-processing.html

via Coronado Solarmax90/T-Max, 5" Takahashi, and Nikon CP995


Bon apetit!

Paul