Wesley's Tool-Box

For the past few weeks, clouds and rain due to the monsoon prevented me from seeing a clear sky at night. But that period is nearing its end, and last night I had a near-perfect opportunity - no clouds and no haze. Brightness of the first-quarter Moon was about the only fly in the ointment.

As I was only able to observe the southern sky out the window of my room, I consulted a star chart to see if anything interesting was there to see. Pluto immediately caught my eyes. As you might know, this dwarf planet is making headlines at the time of this writing because the New Horizons probe made a flyby two weeks ago. The unprecedented details of the images from the probe is capturing public interest, and mine. So I wondered if I could see a glimpse of it with my own telescope.

Problem is, Pluto is very faint - 14.1-magnitude right now. Based on my past observations, it would be at or just outside my limits even with astrophotography. Sure enough, when I pointed my telescope to the right position, I couldn't make it out visually. So I attached my DSLR camera and took several long-exposure photos in hoping that they'd be more revealing. One of such result is the photo you see above. The brightest star is ξ1(Xi 1) Sagittarii, a 5.1-magnitude star. Most of the rest are fainter than 10-magnitude.


After carefully comparing the photo with a detailed star chart, I finally found a dot that didn't belong to a star. This seemed to be Pluto that I was looking for. But to make sure, I compared all the photos I took over the span of about an hour and looked to see if there was any movement - a telltale sign that it's not a star, but an object moving around the solar system.


Indeed there was. This was the dwarf planet I was looking for. This process of comparison was basically how Pluto was identified and discovered in the first place back in 1930, so it was pretty satisfying to retrace the steps. I'm also glad to know that the southern sky at Naju is still dark enough to see this faraway world.

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 6SE
Device: Canon EOS 450D (prime focus)
Settings: (1500mm) - ISO 1600 - 30s - (f/10)
Filters: None
Time: 2015-07-26 00:06 - 01:13 KST
Location: Naju, Korea

On the Memorial Day in Korea earlier this month, the night sky was clear and had three planets shining brightly in the sky at the same time. I took my astrophotography equipment outside and got some burst mode photos of the planets.

It seemed that Venus was quite bright and the default camera app didn't have enough adjustments available to make it dark enough to reveal any details on the half-disc. Also, Jupiter now being in the lower altitude hampered the details somewhat. Other than that, things turned out fine. It was nice to have a direct comparison of the apparent sizes between the planets.

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 6SE + 5mm eyepiece
Device: iPhone 6 Plus (afocal)
Filters: None
Location: Naju, Korea
Stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

Saturn
Settings: 29mm - ISO 400 - 1/15s - f/2.2
Time: 2015-06-06 21:44 KST
30 photos

Venus
Settings: 29mm - ISO 250 - 1/30s - f/2.2
Time: 2015-06-06 21:40 KST
100 photos

Jupiter
Settings: 29mm - ISO 320 - 1/30s - f/2.2
Time: 2015-06-06 21:16 KST
100 photos

It seems that I get to see a "great" transit of the ISS in front of the Sun once every year, with the space station appearing large enough to make it look like the letter H. This time, CalSky was predicting a nearly perfect condition at Naju, a near-center pass with an apparent diameter of more than one arc minute (63.1"). With the weather cooperating, I did not want to miss it.

To make sure I did not miss anything, I took out both my Celestron telescope with the smartphone adapter and my SX50 HS camera. I was hoping that at least one of them would catch the occurrence. I hurried with the setup and had everything ready just barely. I let my iPhone 6 Plus start recording the view through the eyepiece of the telescope in 240fps slow motion video, and pushed the shutter on my SX50 HS in continuous shoot mode, all mere moments before the transit.


The SX50 HS captured just one frame, which was sort of expected. The quality was easily better than my previous attempts thanks to the large apparent size. But the real deal was in the iPhone 6 Plus. It had captured 80 frames of the ISS in motion in total, with each frame besting the SX50 HS's efforts. The 240fps video capture truly shined, creating this smooth slow motion video as a result.


Here's the stacked and post-processed composite of the video in a single picture; click it to see it in full resolution. You can appreciate the details of the ISS and the sunspot AR 12339 quite better this way. If you look at the space station up close as seen in the first picture of this post, it's good enough to identify its major features. I've marked them for your convenience.

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 6SE + 25mm eyepiece + 2.5x barlow
Device: iPhone 6 Plus (afocal)
Settings: 29mm - 1280x720 - 240fps - f/2.2
Filters: None
Time: 2015-05-10 13:33:58 KST
Location: Naju, Korea
Stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8
- #1: 12 photos
- #2: 10 photos (ISS, each) / 100 photos (Sun)

Last attempt to photograph Saturn with my iPhone was far from optimal. But the conditions were much better this time and I hoped to get a clearer picture. I had the Snapzoom adapter hold the iPhone 6 Plus on the Celestron telescope and started recording the visuals of Saturn.


Initially, I used the video mode on the default camera app as I've done with Jupiter a few days ago, but I decided to try the burst mode photos as well. I took 400 photos in the span on 40 seconds. The above is the result - it seemed to produce a better result because of the higher data rate. So I used this to produce a composite photo.

After doing the stacking and post-processing, I was able to get the most detailed look of Saturn yet. The Cassini Division came out sharper and the lighter band at the middle of the surface became visible, besting the results from SX50 HS. A more stable atmosphere and a higher quality eyepiece may help even further in the future.

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 6SE + 5mm eyepiece
Device: iPhone 6 Plus (afocal)
Settings: 29mm - ISO 640 - 1/15s - f/2.2
Filters: None
Time: 2015-05-02 03:44-45 KST
Location: Naju, Korea
46 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

Lots of planetary photos from amateur astronomers seem to be derived from a small video camera attached to the telescope. I do have lots of smartphones that could serve a similar purpose, so decided to make use of them instead. Holding it steady in front of the eyepiece was a problem, as evidenced by my earlier attempt, so some sort of an adapter was needed.


This is where Snapzoom digiscoping adapter came in. I originally bought this several months ago to photograph stars using binoculars, but it could be made to work with telescopes by attaching an included weight. After lots of paddings here and there, my iPhone 6 Plus was able to fit into the adapter and work with the eyepieces that I owned.

Once my NexStar 6SE telescope was aligned with the stars so that I could track any celestial objects, I slid the phone-adapter-eyepiece assembly into the telescope and began looking at Jupiter and the Moon, the biggest targets.


And this is how Jupiter showed up on the screen. The bands and the Great Red Spot were faintly visible, just as I saw with my naked eyes. The shakiness due to the atmospheric turbulence was also quite apparent. I recorded the sight for two minutes and processed the resulting video through PIPP. Finally, the processed video was stacked and sharpened with RegiStax. The final result, as you saw at the beginning, has a more "natural" feel than the ones from SX50 HS for some reason.

Telescope: Celestron NexStar 6SE + 5mm eyepiece
Device: iPhone 6 Plus (afocal)
Settings: 29mm - 1920x1080 - 30fps - f/2.2
Filters: None
Time: 2015-04-27 21:57-59 KST
Location: Naju, Korea
300 frames stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8