Wesley's Tool-Box

I've risked the streaking and went with lower ISO and longer exposure for today's comet C/2013 R1 Lovejoy photo. I've experimented with the micro-adjustment head (Longperng TP98AR) that finally arrived late last night after much delay to see if that would help reduce the streaking, but manual compensation proved to be quite difficult. So, after about an hour of fiddling I ended up taking simple long exposure photos just before the Sun came up.

As a note, I waited for another pass of Tiangong-1 half about twenty minutes later, but either the calculations were off or it was too dim (it was supposed to be around magnitude 1) against the brightening morning sky to be seen.

Settings: SX50 HS - 243mm - ISO 800 - 15s - f/5.6
Time: 2013-11-26 06:26 - 06:29 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
7 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

I ordered an equipment on Thursday through Auction (kind of like eBay and is indeed run by eBay Korea). It was shipped out on the same day via KG Yellow Cap (kind of like FedEx), and usually, it should arrive a day later. What the picture tells you with "배송출고" on 22nd, 23rd, and 25th is that the courier went out with the package with the intent to deliver it to my doorsteps.

Well, it's still not here as of this writing, although I've contacted the courier in question and he told me he'll really try to deliver it today. One problem is that he errorneously tagged it as "배송완료" on the 23rd, which means it arrived at the destination. This told Auction that the shipment has basically been fulfilled, and unless I tell the system otherwise, it'll automatically complete the whole transaction in exactly one week, which is on December 1st, which is what "12-01결정" at the bottom means.

I think the system just recognizes any "배송완료" string as the shipment completion and ignores anything that subsequently happens. This sucks, because the counter has gone off earlier than it's supposed to and it has no intention of reverting.

While I made an unsuccessful attempt to photograph Tiangong-1 space station transit the Sun, I noticed some big sunspots. Sunspots like these cause solar flares, which have been prevalent in the recent months. This particular group of sunspots shown here is called AR 11899, of which the biggest one is casually referred to as "Sunspot 1899". It's about 4 times the size of the Earth. If you click the picture for the full look of the Sun, you can also spot AR 11903 near the middle.

Settings: 1200mm - ISO 250 - 1/1000s - f/6.5
Time: 2013-11-23 13:22 KST
Location: Seoul, Korea
10 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

The story of The Hunger Games is essentially about a teenage protagonist that accidentally set the chain of revolution into action in an oppressive government. The sobering part of it is that, even though she's essential to the whole process, she's ultimately a political pawn that are tossed around by both the government and the rebels for their own end.

She does not really understand what's happening around her. I wonder if we aren't, either.

I tried the Baader Moon & Skyglow filter early this morning to photograph comet C/2013 R1 Lovejoy with my Canon SX50 HS as I mentioned yesterday. It has some interesting effects to the photos.

It does tone down the white noise as intended, but the background turns from black to dark blue. The tail doesn't really become more bright because it's a filter that blocks certain wavelengths, not some sort of a booster. But due to slightly lower noise it's easier to make it more visible with post-processing.

For reference, the bottommost star in the cropped photo above is HR 4572 (HD 103799; HIP 58287), a 6.6 magnitude star in Ursa Major.

Settings: 243mm - ISO 1600 - 6s - f/5.6
Time: 2013-11-21 05:32 - 05:36 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
15 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8