Well I think I’m starting to make progress. I’ve been trying to get a converter that will turn the .MOV files outputted from the Nikon 5100, into an AVI format that can be read by Registax. Despite lots of forum reading and various questions asked, every software converter I’ve tried has failed. I’m not sure if it has something to do with the fact I’m using an iMac with Registax running in a…
Sunspot Watching
Taken on the Friday. The following day. I’ve been trying to remember the last weekend where we got two clear nights back to back, but last weekend we got them. With all the technical issues of the mount now resolved, we built up a 10 point pointing model and used that to refine the Polar alignment. It’s probably not accurate enough for long exposure photography, but fine for the current program of visual observation….
Mare Imbrium Reprocess
With the cloud base 50 metres below the house, I guess I won’t be opening up the Observatory tonight then! Rummaging through the files on the laptop, I came across some avi’s taken last year for a Moon mosaic I was working on. With nothing better to do, I reloaded this section into Registax six to try and eak out a little more detail. What struck me was the radial ejecta from Aristillus which…
Bank Holiday Weekend
Managed to get quite a lot done this Bank Holiday weekend. Friday night was clear and we managed to open up the Observatory and get some observing done. The G11 is still playing up and I suspected the memory battery cell was flat, so I loose all settings when I power down. That’s been rectified now, so will have to rebuild the pointing model the next clear night we get. Collimation is still not…
Astronomy Section.
I’ve finally decided to end my Windows hosted server and revert back to good old Unix. This means that the Astronomy section of my webby which was all coded for ASP will no longer run. It’s going to take a few weeks to untangle all the text from the Access database and republish all the images back into individual HTML pages. The new Observatory, the DBO 2.1 as it is now called, is now…
A 9 day old Moon
Unlike deep sky imaging where exposures tend to run into hours, the Moon can normally be captured in a matter of seconds. While this composite of seven webcam video files took a total of about 30 minutes to capture, it was possible to do each section in between banks of cloud rolling in the from the West. Unfortunately full cloud cover took hold before the last three sections could be captured. Nevertheless it was…