Tonight a big solar storm hit the earth, showing aurora at least as far south as Northern Africa. I’m at ‘RACA’, a Belgian astro camp and took this picture with night mode on my Pixel7 phone. The main show lasted well over an hour and traces are still visible now, several hours after the start!
Last year, I had my mirrors tested optically because I was never 100% content with even my “sharpest” results - there was always a feeling that there was an unnecessary bit of blur in the raw data....
Individual recordings are 5000 frames at 133fps, the field of view of the ASI462mm camera is about 4x2 arc minutes, so a number of individual stacks were combined in a mosaic to reach this resolution and field of view.
Planetary and lunar imaging works very differently than deepsky imaging. The technique behind it is called ‘lucky imaging’. Only about 20% of the sharpest recorded frames actually are used in the final image.
No - found a local metalworker (specialising in metal staircases and metal gates for properties) - the design was based off of a wooden concept designed by an engineer friend with astronomy experience. Because of the type of scope and mount, I wanted a low wall and not just a roll-off roof. I got inspiration from a local public observatory which has a big observation platform housing a 24" scope and a bunch of others where the entire roof and sidewall rolls back, but the final design is very different - I’m super happy with it, it’s extremely sturdy yet can be opened with one hand.
Intense Aurora visible from Belgium (lemmy.world)
Tonight a big solar storm hit the earth, showing aurora at least as far south as Northern Africa. I’m at ‘RACA’, a Belgian astro camp and took this picture with night mode on my Pixel7 phone. The main show lasted well over an hour and traces are still visible now, several hours after the start!
Very high resolution Lunar photography with a 20" telescope (www.flickr.com)
Last year, I had my mirrors tested optically because I was never 100% content with even my “sharpest” results - there was always a feeling that there was an unnecessary bit of blur in the raw data....