Photo Nightscape Awards ESO

The Photo Nightscape Awards are for those amateur astrophotographers who want to compete. The contest is open till august 15th, 2017. See for more information here.

Planes all over...

Partial Halo around sun

High clouds above Averbode resulting in a partial halo and sundog.

Jupiter using SharpCap Capture Soft

In stead of using FireCapture I used SharpCap 2.8 for Capture Software of my ASI224MC camera. The advantage is that colors are shown in Live view during capturing. With moderate seeing I could take some pictures with TAL200K. Stacking completed with RegiStax.

Saturnus with ASI224MC

Meteoblue predicted an open sky... unfortunately clouds all over. Clouds only dissapeared for a short period after midnight. Enough to take some pictures of Saturnus but with a full moon in the back. Pictures taken using ASI224MC using capture software SharpCap 2.8 on TAL200K. Stacking done with both RegiStax and AutStakkert 2.6.8. Results are combined in CS4.

Jupiter using ASI224MC

Jupiter is still visible from sunset untill after midnight and seen as a bright "star" in the south about 40° altitude.
Even the fact the moon is almost full I was able to observe Jupiter (and it's moon) and to make some pictures using my camera ZWO ASI224MC on the TAL 200K f/10.
Capture software FireCapture and stacking of the pictures was done using both AutoStakkert 2.6.8 and RegiStax6. Afterwards editing using CS4.

Beautiful and Active Sunspot AR2661

Sunspot AR2661 is growing and with an open sky this morning, I was able to take some pictures in visual aswell in H-alfa. Using my TAL200K f/10 with Astrosolar filter ND5 results in a shutter speed of 1/500s applying ISO100. This resulted in a very sharp picture with a lot of contract and details. Editing was done using CS4.

Near Sunspot AR2661 and seen at the "edge" of the sun, some big prominences could be observed using my PST40. The best result was realized using ISO800 and a shutter speed of1/25s. The picture was taken afocal on a zoom lens 8-24mm on 24mm and finished using CS4.