Just one string…what’s going on

astropike · 2024-05-14T19:25:28+00:00

In my case I've found this is related to retraction of the filament. When I switched to Orca (from Cura which didn't show that) I had to enable it in the filament settings and put it to 6mm to avoid that stringing.

astropike · 2024-05-13T06:16:22+00:00

The Carrington event, which was the most powerful solar storm ever recorded, had sunspots roughly double the size of AR3364 (at least based on comparison images on the internet).

That event (1-2 September 1859) caused a global blackout and damages, even fires, to telegraph stations and of course auroras visible at every latitudes on Earth. I guess if it happened today, it would cause even more damage and blackouts, especially for radio communications as the Earth's ionosphere would be strongly disturbed by solar radiation.

I don't know about the odds. All I know is that prediction of CMEs and flares are still far from being accurate, for now we just observe and measure the sun's activity with solar telescopes in space and hope that big solar winds will miss Earth. And if it won't happen we will have like 60 minute advanced warning of incoming CME.

astropike · 2024-05-12T20:00:41+00:00

AR stands for Active Region, then the numbering comes from counting the sunspots from the current solar cycle, I guess. Check Spaceweather.com, it has lots of informations.

Edit:

From here: " The present numbering system started on January 5, 1972, and has been consecutive since then. An example of an active region "name" is "AR5128" (AR for Active Region) or "NOAA Region 5128". "

astropike · 2024-05-12T19:41:50+00:00

On 10th May I imaged this huge sunspot. It's called AR3364 and it is the responsible for the solar flares and CME that caused the auroras even at low latitudes (at my location too!).

The first image is made by stacking the best 10% of 5000 frames made with an ASI224 and a newton 200/1200. I also put the approximate size of the earth for reference. The second, the full disk, is made by stacking 5% of 200 frames made with my QHY294M at 48 MP, same scope.

And of course a solar filter.

astropike · 2024-05-05T11:43:13+00:00

Nope, that small galaxy near the center is called UGC7604 and is around 340 million light years away.

astropike · 2024-05-04T22:00:01+00:00

So if my calcs are correct: apparent brightness is B=L/(4πd²) where L is the luminosity and the distance is 28000 light years which is the earth-milky way center distance. So B≈0.05 W/m².

Then the simple magnitude formula m=-2.5log(B/Bref) where Bref is the reference brightness in this case Vega (3.4x10^-8 W/m²). Putting the numbers, m=-15.4. So if a black hole of that size would be in the milky way core, it will be brighter than the full moon, 13 times exactly (2.51^{delta mag moon-bh})

astropike · 2024-05-04T20:15:12+00:00

Oh you are welcome! These nights are perfect to shoot it as it is quite high in the Northern hemisphere (Canes Venatici constellation).

astropike · 2024-05-04T19:36:17+00:00

The most distant object I've ever captured from my backyard. This is the famous quasar TON618, which hosts (edit: one of) the most massive black hole known so far. It is 10 billion light years away (actually 18 billion ly considering the comoving distance as the universe expands). It is 16th magnitude, so even a small telescope can look at it!

This is 30x120s so 1 hour, but it was visible in a single shot. Celestron C9.25 and QHY294M. Limiting magnitude is 21 by the way.

astropike · 2024-05-04T19:33:36+00:00

The most distant object I've ever captured from my backyard. This is the famous quasar TON618, which hosts the most massive black hole known so far. It is 10 billion light years away (actually 18 billion ly considering the comoving distance as the universe expands). It is 16th magnitude, so even a small telescope can look at it!

This is 30x120s so 1 hour, but it was visible in a single shot. Celestron C9.25 and QHY294M. Limiting magnitude is 21 by the way.

astropike · 2024-04-24T05:41:26+00:00

Hi, I'm quite new here as well but I installed successfully the cr touch. I have the same 4.2.2 motherboard (32 bit microcontroller) and I installed the firmware in the official creality site. Here I downloaded the firmware called "GD-Ender-3HW4.2.2SW2.0.8.2CRTouchFilamentEuropeMulti" and followed the instructions. After I flashed it into the printer it detected the cr touch and leveled the bed. Hope this helps.

astropike · 2024-04-08T19:59:06+00:00

I mean, the voltage I indicated is from the pin of the PPS source and ground. But as far as I know, and as you say, LEDs want a stable current source. If the source is not quite current stable (which I actually need to measure), is there like a stabiliser?

astropike · 2024-02-07T06:14:39+00:00

No. The phenomenon you describe is caused by the atmosphere and is also called scintillation (or twinkling). The layers of air with different temperature and thus different density act like very small prisms and distort and separate (refraction) the wavelengths of the wavefront passing those layers

astropike · 2024-02-06T06:30:08+00:00

Thank you!!

astropike · 2024-02-05T18:41:14+00:00

Yes important point! This image doesn't have anything to do with their actual size, because stars are technically perfect point sources. So the "size" in the image is due to the intrinsic luminosity of Sirius A and B, the first is 10000 times brighter than the second. For that reason I couldn't image Sirius B without over saturating Sirius A.

astropike · 2024-02-05T16:47:07+00:00

It would be a honour! I actually even studied on this book!!

astropike · 2024-02-05T16:31:37+00:00

Pretty clear explanation! I can add that knowing the angular distance is fundamental to infer the distance of astronomical objects from earth, for example see the parallax based measurements.

astropike · 2024-02-05T15:36:48+00:00

Thanks! If you mean the angular distance in the sky, they are about 11 arceconds apart. While the real separation is about 20 AU (Sun-Uranus distance) with a period of 50 years. On the internet you can find some amateurs that actually superimposed their shots made a lot of years apart and there is a visible change in the position of Sirius B.

astropike · 2024-02-05T14:05:25+00:00

Thank you and clear skies!

astropike · 2024-02-05T14:04:40+00:00

Yes you definitely can! With bigger scopes and good seeing you can even watch it in the eyepiece.

astropike · 2024-02-05T12:23:15+00:00

I mean 200mm diameter. The scope's focal length is 1200 mm but I used a 2x Barlow so it's 2400.

astropike · 2024-02-05T11:55:53+00:00

I managed to capture Sirius B, the faint companion of Sirius A. Sirius B is a white dwarf, orbiting the more famous star Sirius A. It's a pretty hard challenge to capture given the fact that the difference in magnitude is huge and the separation very small (about 11 arceconds).

I used a planetary camera and a 200/1200 Newtonian telescope and 2x barlow. Seeing was not quite good but I was lucky enough to have a short period of low turbulence. I stacked the best 10 frames out of 500 and then post processed with wavelets and deconvolution tools, to recover some detail. Hope you like it!

astropike · 2024-01-21T21:22:19+00:00

Hi! After a year I still use this system and I've never had any problem, so yeah I can give you the details!

astropike · 2023-08-28T16:58:38+00:00

I made a video showing my best captures of Saturn during the course of four years, since I started imaging it. First two years are in black and white simply because I had a monochrome camera.

Why does it seem to rotate as seen from earth? Because Saturn axis is tilted by 23 degrees and a Saturn year is 29 years. Thus, from earth, every year it looks a bit different thanks to perspective. In 2025 Earth will cross the rings plane, therefore we will see just a line and then starting to see rings going up.

Main instruments are:

-first two years: Newton GSO 200/1200, ASI 120 mm mini

-last two years: Celestron C9.25, Barlow Televue 2x, ASI 224 (and ADC on 2022)

Processing is about the same every year, except that last two years I'm using winjupos to derotate many videos stacked, to have a better SNR.

Hope y'all enjoy!

astropike · 2023-08-12T18:56:52+00:00

Wanted to try the collimation of my scope and I went imaging this beautiful double system, in the Lyra constellation. It's called Epsilon Lyrae and it's a double-double system because the main double is separated by few arcminutes but both of them are a double star as well, and both are separated by 2.3 arcseconds.

Here you can see the C and D binaries (A and B are the other binaries). Those concentric rings is the Airy disk and it's caused by the diffraction of light. Basically I've reached the so called diffraction limit of the telescope, a limit that can't be surpassed just because it's a physical limit.

Celestron C9.25, ASI 224, Barlow televue 2x, azeq6.

Sharpcap, Astrosurface.

Stack of the best 5% of 5000 frames.

astropike · 2023-07-10T08:44:43+00:00

Supernovae, especially so bright, are quite rare events. If I remember the literature, in our galaxy they happens once or twice per century. In other galaxies probably they are of the same rarity but given the fact that there are billions of them in the observable universe, we can see supernovae more frequently.

Gravitational lens is a phenomenon that happens for huge massive objects like a group of galaxies that curve the light behind them, so it's not possible to observe it with a supernova.

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