My current interests in astronomy 26/8/2024
At moment my interests are mainly solar and radio astronomy, although my background is in visual observing.
Here are some of my recent solar photos.
Mostly Quark + Equinox F9 100mm + Flatcap + HEQ5 + Hinode guider + 174MM.
One is my first successful scan with Sol’Ex spectrohelioscope.
I do some astrophotography but I wouldn’t describe myself as being expert in any way at that.
Some of my favourites above.
The solar timelapses are a recent thing.
The Hinode helps significantly to keep scope tracking sun over few hours. Then, an ERF becomes vital as scope and filters heat up+++ when scope continues to point at solar disc over protracted period. Also need a VERY fast laptop with USB3 and SSD and large RAMDisc – I use i7 with 16GB RAM, 1 TB SSD. Gary Palmer recommends the 174MM and I like it too as compromise between resolution and size files. I used to have Player One SolarMax but that produces even bigger files. A solar run creates 160GB data for me as it is. I use ImPPG, and Photoshop to process images with Topaz plugins but alternative software is use by others.
The Sol’Ex I am using is cast in aluminium! A group of us – very eclectic international group – have aske done member in Vietnam to get these machined. Very solid and stable. However, the project as designed by Christian Buil is meant to be 3D printed at home. My first one was 3D printed by Azzur3D in France who do many of them with Shelyak optics.
Actually, my main thing now is radio astronomy and I am speaking at IAS on mapping Milky Way at 1420MHz (hydrogen), a project which truly blows my mind – I cannot believe that amateurs can demonstrate the spiral arms of Milky Way and dark matter quite cheaply in their own backyards. It is quite robust too – I.e. it works!!!