Swansea Astronomical Society Blog

Thursday, November 8, 2018

Terraforming Venus

Tonight we had our first meeting  at Technium 2 (University of Wales, Trinity St David). Dr Nik Whitehead gave us a talk on Terraforming Venus. Terraforming Venus is actually a better prospect than terraforming Mars, due to there being more oxygen and water available.

There are several ways we could go about Terraforming Venus, for example adding hydrogen to the atmosphere, putting up a giant parasol to shade (and cool) the planet, or even crashing the moon Enceladus into it!

If you would like to see Nik's slides, they are publicly available here:

Nik's slides on Terraforming Venus

Many thanks to Nik for talking to us this evening!

posted by Gaynor Thomas  # 10:45 PM 0 Comments

Friday, November 2, 2018

M42/43 with AstroDMx Capture for Linux

A ZWO ASI178MC (USB3.0, 14 bit ADC) camera was placed at the Newtonian focus of a Skywatcher Explorer 130 PDS 130mm, f/5 Newtonian mounted on a Celestron AVX EQ, GOTO mount. AstroDMx Capture for Linux was used to capture 50 x 4s; 50 x 20s and 10 x 60s exposures as 16 bit Tiffs all with matching dark frames. The groups of images were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker running in Wine. The final images were post processed and combined in the Gimp 2.10 and further processed with Fitswork and FastStone both running in Wine.

Click on an image to get a closer view

Photograph of the equipment showing the computer capturing data

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Linux capturing data

The non-destructive live view controls adjusted  to reveal the 16 bit data being captured

M42/43

Steve Wainwright & Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 7:14 PM 0 Comments

Wednesday, October 31, 2018

The Crescent nebula

LRGB image. 5 minute subs, 13 x red, 9 x green, 12 x blue and 4 x luminance using SX694 and Altair Wave 102mm triplet. 10 additional lumance using Atik 428 and Starwave 70edt were combined with other 4 and stacked in Pixinsight. All other stacking done in Maxim DL. Final processing in Pixinsight.

Click on an image to get a closer view.

Crescent nebula LRGB

HaRGB image. RGB used again together with 12 x 10 min H-alpha subs using the Atik and Starwave combination. H-alpha combined with the red channel and then used as the red channel using pixelmath in Pixinsight.  I also applied the H-alpha-R image as a luminance layer after processing in Pixinsight. This image shows a lot of the background hydrogen around the nebula.

Crescent nebula H-alphaRGB

Anne Startup

posted by astroimager  # 4:40 PM 0 Comments

Deep Sky Sketches with a 150mm refractor and a Watec camera

A 150mm refractor and a Watec camera as an electronic eyepiece were used to see these objects for sketching.

Click on an image to get a closer view

Jim Startup

posted by astroimager  # 4:35 PM 0 Comments

Tuesday, October 30, 2018

M27: Bicolour and LRGB images

Bicolour using Atik 428 and Starwave 70EDT
12x600s ha and 6x600s O3. Stacked in AstroArt4 and further processed in Pixinsight. H-alpha mapped to red, OIII to blue. Before combining I used pixelmath to generate a green channel, H-alpha and oIII were multiplied together and multiplied by 1.5. You can see a hint of the extra nebulosity particularly in O3.

Click on an image to get a closer view

Bicolour image of M27

LRGB using SX694 and Wave 102mm triplet.
10 each of 300s exposures red, green, blue and luminance.
Stacked in Maxim DL then processed RGB and luminance separately before boosting saturation and combinging to LRGB.

LRGB image of M27

Anne Startup

posted by astroimager  # 6:11 PM 0 Comments

Deep Sky Sketches

The sketches were made using a 150mm refractor and a Watec camera as an electronic eyepiece.

Click on an image to see a closer view

Jim Startup

posted by astroimager  # 6:05 PM 0 Comments

68.1% waning Moon with AstroDMx Capture for Linux

A ZWO ASI178MC camera was placed at the Newtonian focus of a Celestron Nextstar 130SLT f/5 Newtonian mounted on a Skywatcher AZ GOTO mount.
AstroDMx Capture For Linux was used to capture a 2000-frame SER file of the 68.1% waning, gibbous Moon.
The best 20% of the frames in the SER file were stacked in Autostakkert! 3.10 and the resulting image wavelet processed in Registax 5.1, both running in Wine. The final image was post processed in the Gimp 2.10.

Click on the image to get a closer view

68.1% waning, gibbous Moon

Steve Wainwright & Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 1:11 PM 0 Comments

M27 with AstroDMx Capture for Linux

A ZWO ASI178MC (USB3.0, 14 bit ADC) camera was placed at the Newtonian focus of a Skywatcher Explorer 130 PDS 130mm, f/5 Newtonian, mounted on an HEQ5 GOTO mount. AstroDMx Capture running on a Fedora Linux laptop was used to capture 20 x 22s exposures plus 10 matching dark frames of M27.

Click on an image to get a closer view

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Linux demonstrating the new non-destructive transformations for visualising the 16 bit data being captured.

Using an arcsinh transform to visualise the data.

The images were stacked in Deep Sky Stacker running in Wine and post processed in the Gimp 2.10 and FastStone.

M27

The imaging setup

Nicola Mackin & Steve Wainwright

posted by astroimager  # 12:12 AM 0 Comments

Monday, October 29, 2018

NGC 7318 Stephan's Quintet

Celestron 9.25 SCT AVX, 0.63 Focal Reducer, Celestron Off-Axis Guider, ZWO ASI120MM guide camera, 10 images at 300 secs exposures captured with the Orion G3 DeepSpace Colour CCD camera, then processed in Orion Studio Software, Fitsworks4 and then in Adobe Elements 11.

Colin Miles

posted by astroimager  # 11:58 PM 0 Comments

77.9% waning Moon with AstroDMx Capture for Linux

A ZWO ASI178MC (USB3.0, 14 bit ADC) camera was placed at the Newtonian focus of a Celestron Nextstar 130SLT f/5 Newtonian mounted on a Skywatcher AZ, GOTO mount. AstroDMx Capture for Linux, running on an Xubuntu laptop was used to capture 2 overlapping, 1000-frame SER files of the 77.9% waning, gibbous Moon.
The best 30% of the frames in each of the SER files were stacked in Autostakkert!, stitched in Microsoft ICE and wavelet processed in Registax 5.1, all running in Wine. The final image was post processed in the Gimp 2.10.

Click on the image to get a closer view

77% waning, gibbous Moon

Steve Wainwright &n Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 2:23 PM 0 Comments

Astronomy at the National Waterfront Museum Swansea

The Swansea Astronomical Society put on an astronomy display at the Museum, including some scopes outside looking at the night sky.
Howard Davies, the SAS chairman gave a talk on the night sky while other members manned displays of scopes and images, with children's activities.

posted by astroimager  # 12:06 AM 0 Comments

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Deep Sky sketches

I used my 150mm refractor and watec camera as an electronic eyepiece to see these objects to make sketches.

Click on a sketch to get a closer view

Jim Startup

posted by astroimager  # 12:31 PM 0 Comments

Saturday, October 27, 2018

93.6% waning Moon with a Bresser Messier-AR-102-AS ED refractor, a QHY 5L-II-M and AstroDMx Capture for Linux

A QHY 5L-II-M camera was placed at the prime focus of a Bresser Messier-AR-102-AS ED refractor, mounted on a Skywatcher AZ, GOTO mount. Two overlapping 1000-frame SER files were captured of the 93.6% waning Moon using AstroDMx Capture for Linux running on an Xubuntu laptop.

Screenshot of AstroDMx Capture for Linux capturing the data

The best 30% of the frames in each SER file were stacked in Autostakkert! running in Wine. The resulting images were wavelet processed in Registax 5.1 and Stitched ion Microsoft ICE, both running in Wine. The final image was post processed in the Gimp 2.10.

Click on an image to get a closer view.

93.6% waning, gibbous Moon

A 2x Barlow was fitted and a 1500-frame SER file was captured of the Mare Serenitatis, Mare Tranquillitatis, Mare Crisium and Palus Somni region of the Moon. The best 20% of the frames in the SER file were stacked in Autostakkert! and wavelet processed in Registax 5.1, both running in Wine. The final image was post processed in the Gimp 2.10.

Steve Wainwright & Nicola Mackin

posted by astroimager  # 1:36 PM 0 Comments

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