The forecast was for clear skies this morning which once again didn't eventuate. By the time the clouds had cleared it was a blustery hot wind and not very pleasant at all. We wouldn't have bothered imaging if it hadn't been for the fact that we needed to test a mount set up for our early morning location. The normal mount we used in this location we are selling as it's a good mount but rarely gets used. This meant that we had to resurrect an old alt-az SCT mount of very dubious quality. We have made an DIY wedge for it and have it connected via a Raspberry Pi running K-Stars to make it wifi. This means we can connect to it where ever it is located around the yard for those times that we can't use our proper set up. The mount performed as poorly as anticipated but the pleasant surprise was yet another towering prom, this time just west of north. As it turns out it is the most photographed prom as there are many posts about it already. From our measurements it was about 130,000km tall so approx 10 Earths +/- an Earth among friends
P1100348 gimp cropped small.JPG (904.83 KiB) Viewed 317 times
The seeing was predictably poor at an average of 3.2 arc seconds with a standard deviation of 0.8.
2023-03-16 seeing.png (78.92 KiB) Viewed 317 times
So here we have full disk mosaic in Ha and a full disk in 393nm.
2023-03-16 full disk mosaic small.JPG (190.94 KiB) Viewed 317 times
2023-03-16 full disk mosaic white bg with scale.JPG (1.46 MiB) Viewed 317 times
2023-03-16 full disk mosaic white bg colourised.JPG (3.24 MiB) Viewed 317 times
2023-03-16 full disk 393nm colourised.JPG (2.55 MiB) Viewed 317 times
Nice Imaging Clare and Peter, I once tried a Nexstar on a wedge ,I wasn't impressed either.
H alpha : ,Skywatcher 120mm F8 open frame refractor, a tilted 2" 7nm H-alpha filter as a sub energy rejection filter, Baader TZ4 telecentric focal extender, Player One energy rejection filter, Combo Quark Chromosphere, Naked PST etalon for double stacking, ASI74mm camera
Martin_S wrote: ↑Thu Mar 16, 2023 11:16 am
Nice Imaging Clare and Peter, I once tried a Nexstar on a wedge ,I wasn't impressed either.
Thanks Martin
Yeh, some of these companies should stick to their optics and leave electronics and mechanical items well enough alone.
It'll do the job when we can't use our proper location.
Beautiful captures Clare and Peter, the days full disk is really nice with so much activity all around. I think I must try more mosaics too, these look so nice! Nexstar mount really brings back old, imaging wise not that good memories
Thanks Eric, James, Petr, Petrus, Alexandra and Maurits for your kind comments
Yes Petrus, the NextStar mount is certainly nothing special, but we have it there and may as well get some use out of it. If nothing else, it makes you appreciate a better mount
http://brierleyhillsolar.blogspot.co.uk/ Solar images, a collection of all the most up to date live solar data on the web, imaging & processing tutorials - please take a look!
terrific images!
