STEREO image Rotator

Made a bit of software to show the concept of how STEREO takes images around the sun.
Needs more work and more images for a full year worth of rotation, 1 degree per image should do it.
Name that comet.......??
Flickr looked too chunky, so loaded it to Youtube.

Youtube STEREO Rotation concept

Comet ISON

Leaving the Sun
Comet ISON now a diffuse object leaving the harsh solar environment. Not much left ...

ISON in SOHO
A couple of views of ISON first fading in SOHO C3 and the new tail reappearing in SOHO C2.
Those with a keen eye will see the ISON gas tail swing away clock wise  the C3 images and persist across the perihelion passage to continue to grow  in C2

A new angle on ISON in SOHO C2

Ground Viewing 20131130
No luck as the comet was not condensed or bright enough, just dusticles and smudges. I could see some thermals when i pushed the pixels around with imageJ.

Update 20131130 ISON gets Hot!
You already know this and much more,but the data lag means we have to wait for the good images.

ISON brightness flares and Encke flys on..

Update 20131129 - Well is was Fryday  for ISON. It has been quite surprising, I'll post images when the good data is publicly available. But you may like to see these two long HI1A sequences.Here are my two avi's , may not load in windows viewer so use quicktime. Log scaled and contrast adjusted to make one pixel bright on ISON nucleus. Shows the tail material better.

STEREO HI1A ISON 20131120-24

STEREO HI1A ISON 20131124-26

A longer sequence 20131120-24
What dynamic features can you see? double click to make the video full screen, looks better..8)
A better long sequence 20131121-22
Logscaled images.

ISON Enters HI1A 20131120
more details become visible due to better imager resolution. Some rotational aspects become apparent,  I think

ISON tail dynamics
more tails interactions in with the solar wind across 20131119 seen in STEREO HI2A

ISON tail dynamics

Make that four
A fourth small comet has appeared in the HI2A FOV. Comet Nevski..
Comet ISON has brightened and is interacting with passing CME material.

CME passing by ISON 20131114

ISON interacts with CME, tail disconnection event 20131114

Three comets in the wind
ISOn, Lovejoy and now Encke are all detectable in STEREO HI2A images from 2013110
ISON showing some elongation. CME materials is passing by, long ION tails are being seen from ground images of all these comets. Encke is also in the FOV of STEREO HI1A showing some tail dynamics.

ISON in the solar wind

  Update 20131030-
ISON has been detected in STEREO HI1B roll data.

Recent images from the ground have seen some tail disturbances of LoveJoy. A CME plume is passing by, more are following.

I tweaked these images and data from the Goddard  and STEREO NASA guys to show where ISON is in relation to the windy inner solar system. You can also see the new Lovejoy comet tracking northwards. The colorful charts shows CME predictions into the future, while the STEREO images are from the past 5 days.

ISON possibilities

This image of comets disrupting or vaporizing as seen from STEREO COR2 image data. Well known Lovejoy is the only one that made it around the corner before failing. A few Kreutz examples are here and a SWAN detected comet. I think there are different events happening in the images. SWAN appears to vapourize while the others appear to disrupt before getting close. These are possibilities for ISON as it get close to the SUN.

Comet Encke 2013

update 20131203- Encke exhibits some tail dynamics closer into the Sun .

Comet Encke is now in the FOV of STEREO HI1A. It has some interesting features. I Can see the dust tail radial discovered by Spitzer and seen in this image from Micael Jager.  MJ image Encke dust tail

My Image processing in this anim GIF,

DIY Passive Radar Meteors

Found this very interesting use of USB TV dongles. This very smart guys had made a passive Doppler radar that can see aircraft and occasional meteors . I gotta try this at least once...need more info though.
see this link and follow to the guy doing the really cool stuff.

howto Passive Radar RTL-USB

take a good look at the video....

ALT-AZ mount DIY

Found these $20 digital levels at Aldi. They have 0.1 degree resolution, so made two of these into an manual AltAz mount. Still a little bit wobbly but can carry the DMK51 and 26mm lens. I will try to image the current Nova if the clouds go way. Using a similar technique to processing STEREO/SECCHI images I hope to be able to see down to at least mag 8, hopefully mag 10. This will let me see Neptune and some of the brighter asteroids. The drift technique will allow the motion of the planet or asteroid to be detected. I propose to look at the SOHO kreutz comet path that occasionally passes overhead, perchance to see an early comet.

update 20130828 - Some efforts with this mount. Positioned the camera and let the FOV drift taking 1 second images Making a medium of 20 images. FOV is 15x10 degrees, down to appox mag 8,.

CRUX again

Scorpion tail with M6 andM7

Meteor Morning Perseid?

Maybe a Perseid??

After a clear evening twilight on 20130812 the clouds rolled in with a few hours of rain. The clouds persisted until about 2012813 0400. About the time the Perseid Radiant was well below the north horizon from Melbourne Australia this single meteor was caught by the tail.

Morning Meteor 20130710

20130710 AM All activity , good meteor 0531...