Groups Picture Astrophotography Workshop

Group picture of VVS Astrophotography Day on January 31, 2023 at Urania Hove (Antwerp). Helios was represented by 3 members: Walter, Leo and myself :)

Update Stellarium 1.2

 

Version 1.2 of planetarium software Stellarium is available. Update done and all settings taken over and working fine.

XBOX Game bar: Recording your Screen Winkey+ALT+R

An easy way to record your own screen or record a workproces on your screen is the windows app "XBOX Game Bar".

The XBOX Game Bar is a standard package in Windows (10) and you can open the app using Winkey+G.

To start recording press Winkey+ALT+R. Recording format is MP4 and  the video is uploaded in the standard video map. Have fun!

NINA memory issus

Since january 21st I'm struggling with errors from N.I.N.A. Most of them are related to memory errors. At first I made some changes of the windows settings on memory usage. Next I changed back to NINA 32 bit version. When imaging with my ASI2600MC I kept having the same errors. As a next step I updated following drivers and software:

        - ZWO ASI Native drivers

        - ZWO ASCOM drivers

        - ASCOM Platform

The updates made no difference and I still got errors. I read that the 32bit version of NINA maximizes the RAM memory to 2Gb. So, I went back to NINA64 bit and installed the latest beta version of NINA (64 bit 2.1 HF1 RC005). Executing a dry run went succesfull, even after framing and imaging.   So, so far so good. 

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) widefield

Image of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) from Jan 28, 2023 taken with Nikon D7500 and 130mm. Stacking using APP with 15 pictures each 15s exposure time and different ISO levels. The result was edited with CS4 and DeNoise AI.

The green color is becoming obvious. 

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF)

 

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) near constellation little dipper.

Comet C2022 E3 (ZTF) with three tails

When looking more closely at my image of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) I saw a third tail. But I thought this was an artifact created by processing the image. 

Untill today, I never heard about comets having more then 2 tails. I always read that comets have 2 tails, one dust tail and one plasma (ion or gas tail). This morning I read an article on Spaceweather mentioning C/2022 E3 (ZTF) having 3 tails : see this link

So why 3 tails? This phonomenon is an optical illusion weh seeing the comet from Earth. How this happens is explained below (source wikipedia).

As a conclusion, my image of Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) has 3 tails, one dust tail, one plasma and one anti tail. Below I added false colors to show more detailed all three tails.