Pascal Hilkens Astro Home Page
Tuesday, November 29, 2022
US Postal James Webb Space Telescope Stamps
Sunday, November 27, 2022
Mars with UV-IR blocker and bandpass filter IR742
Imaging Mars on Friday, November 25, 2022. My first time use of an UV-IR blocker together with my ASI224MC color camera. The white polar cap is now good visible, which was not the case during my previous imaging sessions. This could confirm that I was imaging in IR and polluting it with visual light.
Next to this, I used also my new bandpass filter IR742 for the first time. The result is an mono picture with some great details.
Setting: TAL200K f/8.5, ASI224MC, Barlow x2, ADC
Filters: IR/UV blocker and IR742nm
Saturday, November 26, 2022
BlueWalker 3 - Estimate Magnitude 1
Observing satellite BlueWalker together with SeaSat1. Estimating magnitute around 1.
Satelliet BlueWalker 3 is a prototype satellite for AST & Science's SpaceMobile mobile communications constellation. The satellite will be to test AST & Science's patented technologies for connecting to cellphones in a space environment for their planned SpaceMobile constellation. The 1.5 ton satellite will deploy a 10 m diameter phased array antenna with 64 m2 area consisting of numerous identical sub-antenna modules to connect directly to standard mobile phones.It is a prototype for the larger operational BlueBird satellites. The first five BlueBird satellites will be similar to BlueWalker 3, while the remaining will be larger.
Sunday, November 20, 2022
Mars and Infrared
My picture of Mars, earlier this week, is made using my ASI224MC camera. The ASI224MC, is a color camera with some good respons in the near infrared. As I did not use an IR/UV blocker the picture is an IR picture polluted with visual light -see also article "why you should use an IR cut filter with a color camera". The color of my Mars picture is reddish/pink which is not a realistic color. I saw different pictures of Mars from other amateurs which are using an IR/UV blocking filter. Threrofor I ordered an IR/UV blocker with the following properties.
On top of this I will purchase two IR bandpass filters: 642 and 742nm IR bandpass filters. Below is a graph showing the IR bandpass and the sensitivity of the ASI224MC camera.
RGB lines represent the sensitivity of ASI224MC
642, 742 and 807 are graphs of the IR bandpass filter.