Glenn Graham's Astro Page
The Graham Mobile Observatory makes a trip to Central Oregon.
New Stuff:
(Solar activity: October 2003) Wow,
lots of solar activity this month. We had two HUGE sunspots with
lots of detail travel across the solar disk. I was so impressed with
the view through my 60mm ETX and solar Hydrogen Alpha filter that I
just had to try to get an image. I used the webcam again and got a
single 120 frame AVI video from with I took the best 20 frames and
merged them into a single clear image. A little sharpening and contrast
enhancement was done to get the result shown here (taken just hours
before 486 released the 4th largest flare ever recorded):
(Oregon Star Party from the air: August 2003) Another of my hobbies is flying small, light weight electric R/C airplanes. This year my Zagi flying wing came along on the Oregon Star Party trip. I've modified a small digital camera so that it can be mounted on the small airplanes and controlled from the ground. I've decided to try to get images of each of my favorite observing locations from the air. The image below is one of several taken at OSP this year (other Star Parties From The Air images):
(Mars Opposition: July-September
2003) I've had several opportunities to image Mars over the last couple
of
months. Its amazing to see how much it increase in size approaching the
opposition while the south polar cap shrank. Now, past opposition, Mars
is shrinking again while the south polar cap is nothing more than a
speck. The images below were taken with a Logitech Pro3000 webcam as
were the Jupiter and Saturn images farther down the page. However, I
used
K3CCDTools
to control
the camera and capture the avi video files. I then used
RegiStax
to filter out the blurry images
from the video file then align and merge them. Finally, I used MaxIm DL
to sharpen the result
with unsharp masking and modified the contrast and brightness.
When I was a kid, I was awed by the
early Mars images sent back by spacecraft of Olympus Mons, the largest
volcano in the solar system, and Valles Marineris, a canyon that
dwarfed our Grand Canyon. So, I was really pleased that I picked up
hints of both of them in one of my images. Olympus Mons is an oval
shaped
brightening near the upper left edge and Valles Marineris is located
near the dark
patch just right of center.
(OMSI Mars Party! August 24, 2003) Here I am getting the 12" scope and webcam prepared. The webcam performed wonderfully and the projection of Mars was large and well detailed. The "Eye of Mars" was visible in addition to the southern polar cap. The image shown on the projection screen was the size of a manhole cover. It was easily seen from across the parking lot and worked well to give everyone (~4000 attended the event) a preview of what they would see in the scopes provided by RCA members.
(February 2002) First try using a webcam for astro imaging. It was amazingly simple to get started. I used a Logitrch QuickCam Pro 3000. Just popped it open, unscrewed the lens, taped it to a plastic 35mm film can and slipped into the scope (I'm designing something better, but it worked). I captured 10sec. video files of each object, used the program avi2bmp to select the best frames, then AstroStack to combine and process them. Each is about 40 frames and taken with my 12" SCT with 3x barlow.
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Favorite Events From Years Past:
(September 2001) Saturn Occultation: Even though I was sick with a cold I managed to get my buns out of bed for this spectacular event. Ever since I had seen a series of photos of an occultation of Saturn in one of my college textbooks I've wanted to see one and catch it on film. Everything worked out well and the resulting video was beyond my expectations [ Click here for video ].
(August 2001) My father Ron and son Brian getting prepared for our first night at OSP '01. We arrived on Friday and were rewarded with wonderfully clear and dark skies. That same night I ended up with several reasonably nice photos. Saturday night was devoted to observing and watching the sky. Brian was our chief satellite and meteor spotter.
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