Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Sunspot of Cycle 25


This evening a picture was made of the Sun with a sunspot of the new cycle #25. The picture is a compilation of different pictures made with ZWO224MC and SolarMaxIII 70/400 DS BF15.
Next to the sunspot some huge prominences can be seen.
AutoStakkert!2 was used to stack AVI movies; final editing with CS4.




Comet C/2019 Y4 Atlas Widefield


This morning, UT 2h58, a widefield picture (13mm) was taken of the area of Ursa Major. The comet can be seen as a very faint "star". Models predict the comet will be as bright as magnitude 2à3 and thus visible with the naked eye. Timing early May.



Sunday, March 29, 2020

M109 Galaxy

Messier M109 Galaxy is located in constellation Ursa Major and about 83million lightyears away from Earth. Picture was taken with Nikon D7500 and TAL200K f/8.5. Setting : ISO6400 and 26minutes exposure, each picture 30s.
Raw data converted to DNG format and stacking using Deepskystacker with final editing in CS4.


Moon, Venus and Pleiades at Sunset


Sunset March 28, 2020 : close encounter of the Moon, Venus and the Pleiades.


Still 5 Messier Objects to go

Still 5 Messier Objects to go to finish my Messier list.

Below my "To Do list" of my 5 Messier objects and arranged by date of midnight culmination and altitude above horizon :

April 1 : M68
April 16 : M83 8°55'
June 16 : M6 6°34'
June 20 : M7 3°58'
June 29 : M69 6°22



Close encouter Moon Venus Pleiades : Video


Close encounter of the Moon, Venus and the Pleaides at sunset of March 28, 2020. Video taken  with Nikon D7500. Setting Timelapse mode with 3min interval.

Saturday, March 28, 2020