Stereo Elenin

The real Elenin comet is seen crossing STEREO B HI2 imager in early August. No great tail is seen and it doesn't look that impressive. Though, the really impressive thing is that the NASA/STEREO guys put the efforts in to roll the space craft to make these images possible.

image data courtesy of NASA/STEREO/SECCHI, many thanks for it.

SDO sees SOHO comet

In bound SOHO comet disintergrates as seen in SDO AIA images. Image data courtesy of SDO/NASA.

Plasmoids

A recent Solar CME released large amounts of material from the the Sun's surface. Some interesting plasmoinds can be seen in the STEREO Cor2 imagers. Image data courtesy of STEREO/SECCHI/NASA, I did the rest my self.

Scope Park Concept

Congrats to GRAS on securing a plot of land at Siding Spring for there new Australian GRAS complex. This is my concept of heavy duty set of amateur observatories, complete with control rooms or accommodation. I like the new one click Comet service they offer. I will have to get in the queue for Comet Elenin.

From the ground

Here are a few attempts of imaging the sky using my own equipment. A Standard DLSR and an EQ mounted Orion 80MM EON. The struggle with suburban light polluted skies and polar alignment make things always interesting. I need more time and more Patience, working on both.... These Images are single shot 90sec images with just a little post exposure processing, they would mostly washed with a light red haze with out it.

Eta Carina Nebulae, compare with the older post of GRAS images

M42 in Orion , compare the older post of GRAS images

Centaurus A

Omega Centaurus

The best for last. I was able to spend a night in the country on the Loddon river flood plains in central west Victoria. The recent flood water had mostly gone, my brother had an new duck pond complete with wild ducks. Fishing for carp from the back porch which also turned up as the occasional road kill on the local roads. They were seen crossing the flooded road, Why did the carp cross the road?... no better not.

Still a struggle with polar alignment, but managed these two single shot wild field 5 minute exposures. One of the LMC and the other of the southern cross, coal sack dark nebula and omega Centaurus show as a yellow fuzz ball.

Comet 249P

A view of comet 249P as seen in STEREO HI1A imager. Showing a small tail to the left as it passes close to perihelion, the sun is to the lower right and north is up.

Fun With Geminids 2010

Here is some fun that you can do, while the clouds are covering the sky or as where I am from the sun is up, with the Geminid Meteor shower that is starting up about now.

You will need two pieces of software,

Spectrum 15 - spectrum lab to view a audio spectrogram of a wave file we will capture.

Soundtap - audio streaming recorder software to capture the audio stream into a wave file.

Now when you have the software loaded and installed, i am not going to tell you were to get it though..

Now go too Spaceweather.com and find the Spaceweather radio page that has a button to the Radio Meteor audio stream. Click on this and chose the option to hear the audio stream. As the Geminds are active you should hear an occasional pop or whistle sound. They are the Meteors entering the atmoshpere.

Start the soundtap software, you will see a start record button. Yes , you can hit record any time and hit it again to stop. I recorded about a minute at a time, a 10Mb wav file, if you here meteor going past stop the recording.

Now open the spectrum lab software, under the file menu is an option 'audioplay list', select that.

The little folder symbol on th left is how you can locate your saved wav file. Try looking in C:\program data\NCH Swift Sound\soundtap\recordings\ for the last saved wav file.

Hit the play button on the SL playlist window and you should see the spectra gram start to display, look for the different types of meteor sounds. See the image above. You can run the spectrum lab later and set it up to play the recorded wav file and play the sound to the speakers.

check out some of the configuration options that are available.

Have fun the meteor count is rising, how many can you capture. Let me know if you record a big one. Here is what they sound like.