Wesley's Tool-Box

My daughter Celine got interested in building a telescope after seeing a couple of real ones in the house. She even made a make-believe one out of a couple of tubes. But to make a working one, one would need at least two lenses - an objective lens and an eyepiece. Those aren't just lying around anywhere in working pairs, so I searched for a simple telescope building kit instead.

And this "HT-Mini v2" was just the thing I wished for. It's cheap, at about US$5.60, while seemingly easy and sturdy enough for a kid to handle. I ordered two, so my two daughters wouldn't fight to have one, and the kits arrived in the mail the next day. Each of them were basically comprised of a pre-cut foam sheet and two lenses.

We opened the package and got to putting one together.

About two hours ago, National Geographic Channel finished the world's first ever live broadcast from space, at ISS, called "Live From Space". To commemorate this event, I took out my camera and shot the ISS making a pass in the sky about 3 hours before the broadcast.

Interesting thing about the photos this time is that ISS was making a slanted pass, so the angle of view changed noticeably in the 2-minute time span. The solar panels were initially facing almost directly, but it was facing sideways towards the end.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Settings: 1200mm (3x enlarged) - ISO 80 - 1/320s - f/6.5
Filters: None
Time: 2014-03-15 05:43 - 05:44 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea

Here's that picture of the Moon I took a few days ago while photographing planets. The terminator highlights the craters well.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Settings: 1200mm - ISO 80 - 1/30s - f/6.5
Filters: None
Time: 2014-03-10 23:46 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
40 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

Planets shine bright even under a washed-out city sky, so I've gotten around to photographing them often. But it has only recently come to my mind that maybe I should take many of them in a single night and see how different the apparent sizes are at the (almost) same time. Last night was cloud-free, so I got around to actually carry it out.

So here's Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars. Venus was considered, but the nearby buildings blocked the view and I wasn't dressed to venture outside at the time. I did photograph the Moon while it was close to Jupiter. But it's too big to display it along with the planets, so that'll be up on another post.

Jupiter is the biggest, as expected, and it'd always be the biggest round planetary disc found in the Earth's sky. Currently, Mars looks slightly smaller than Saturn without its rings. When it makes a close approach to Earth, though, it can look bigger than Saturn.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Settings: 1200mm (2x enlarged) - f/6.5
Filters: None
Time: in KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
Stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8

Jupiter: 2014-03-10 23:38, ISO 160 - 1/80s, 17 photos
Saturn: 2014-03-11 05:40, ISO 160 - 1/40s, 15 photos
Mars: 2014-03-11 05:52, ISO 80 - 1/160s, 15 photos

Just after taking photos of Saturn last Thursday, I could see that Mars was right next to it, so I decided to point my camera at it, as well. This would be the first time I took photographs of Mars.

Closest approach of Mars to Earth for this year would happen in about a month (April 14), but it wouldn't be quite as close as some of the years, so it would look rather small - it would be 60% that of August 27, 2003 and 62% that of July 31, 2018. Still, I'll try to take some photos when that happens.

Device: Canon SX50 HS
Settings: 1200mm (2x enlarged) - ISO 80 - 1/125s - f/6.5
Filters: None
Time: 2014-03-06 06:32 KST
Location: Suwon, Korea
14 photos stacked with RegiStax 6.1.0.8