Elon Musk is so eager to get to Mars but we already have a great shot of the Milky Way from Mars !
Saturday, June 10, 2017
Monday, June 5, 2017
CATE Experiment Project Practice #5
After noticing (thanks to Joe Earp) that I had clamped down the equatorial head on the tripod too tightly (which resulted in an inability to adjust the AZ on the EQ head smoothly and finely) I now am much more careful about how much torque I secure the EQ head to the tripod.
The result is that I was able to get polar aligned in the daytime much quicker and with greater success in tracking the Sun (for the August 21, 2017 eclipse) than ever before, keeping it within the required 15 pixel maximum drift.
This first image is an HDR image created by the SolarEclipse app that CATE provided. Yes, it is over exposed but then the settings are preset by CATE for the actual totality.
The result is that I was able to get polar aligned in the daytime much quicker and with greater success in tracking the Sun (for the August 21, 2017 eclipse) than ever before, keeping it within the required 15 pixel maximum drift.
This first image is an HDR image created by the SolarEclipse app that CATE provided. Yes, it is over exposed but then the settings are preset by CATE for the actual totality.
This next image has been post-processed with Irfanview by increasing the gamma and adjusting the contrast and brightness a little... it helps bring out the Sunspot group 2661:
This final image is just a shot of the Sunspot group 2661 cropped and sepia toned for effect:
Practice, practice, practice!