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Showing posts with the label sony a6000

Short Solar Session

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W hen I got up this morning, I immediately noticed that the sun was streaming in our windows and it was a color of light that we haven't seen in quite a while.  It took me a few seconds to recognized it but it was normal, bright sunshine not discolored nor diffused by smoke!  When I peered out the window, I noticed that the sky was a nice blue!  My first thoughts were that I should take advantage of the rare good weather to do some solar astronomy.   Unfortunately, my spine still has not fully recovered from my latest spinal problems that left me crumpled on the bathroom floor a few days ago.  This meant that I would need to keep my astronomy gear to a minimum to limit the amount of gear I would need to lift and carry outside.  So, I decided to go back to basics with simple gear.   I chose my smallest telescope (physical size)...  my Apex 102mm Maksutov-Cassegrain.  I chose my simplest solar filter which is a glass filter that mounts on the front of the telescope.  I chose a tiny s

Giant Prominence and Spicules

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M any  nights before heading to bed, I continue to try to refine my workflow for processing my solar imagery data.  I'm definitely beginning to understand what needs to be done in this process because I feel my resulting images are getting better and better.  This photo, below, is a photo I compiled and processed from data collected just a couple of days ago on July 31st.   I've found that when I black out the disk/sphere of the sun, everything on the limb of the sun really stands out.  The fine hair-like spicules of red-hot plasma are clearly visible all along the limb.  In this particular shot, there is a rather large prominence too which really is the main subject here.  This is red glowing plasma consisting of hydrogen and helium.  This prominence is flowing and looping along magnetic fields about 24,000 miles into the corona from in front of the limb to back behind the limb in this photo.  Generally speaking, prominences can flow and loop into the corona upwards of tens of

A Short Solar System Imaging Session

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M y previous two blog entries were about this same topic but with different images shot on the same day (earlier in the day during daylight) with the same equipment.  These few latest blog entries are about revisiting some older videos and images in an effort to understand a new software program meant for processing this type of imaging data.  This time around in this blog entry, I'll share the resulting images of some planets and our moon that Sheila and I observed that evening. In case you haven't yet read the couple of previous blog entries, these photos in this blog entry are from a short imaging session I had with Sheila back in November.  We observed the moon, Jupiter, Saturn and Venus.  I think we were only out there for less than a half hour but we came back into the house rather cold since it was a brisk 40 degrees or so.  That is about my limit on tolerating cold weather and, even then, I don't want to be out longer than a few minutes.  ___________________________

A New Camera

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A new, smaller APS-C sized Sony camera (left) to complement my full-frame Sony kit. I've been waiting for a specific Sony camera to drop in price into my "acceptable" price range for two years now. Finally, a couple of weeks ago, this camera dropped in price and fell within my target price range. After holding this camera in my shopping cart for a day or two, finger twitching and hovering over the "buy now" button, I finally ordered it for myself.   I purchased this camera as a means to complement my current full-frame Sony camera. Mostly, I wanted to get my hands on this camera to use for wildlife and sports. Purchasing this camera would allow me to sell off all my far older gear with far smaller sensors... noisy, rather crappy sensors, at that... gear which has been consistently frustrating me and driving me crazy for many, many years. This particular Sony camera uses the same lens mount as my current Sony workhorse camera and I already have a decent