On November 11, 2019 at 12:35 UTC, an interesting and rare phenomenon will occur – the transit of Mercury across the disk of the Sun. At this time, Mercury will be between the Sun and the Earth, and when viewed from Earth, it will be visible as a small dark circle against the background of the Sun. The first touch will be at 12:35. After one and a half minutes, the entire disk of Mercury will go to the Sun and pass through the entire disk of the Sun. Transit will end at 18:04.
Visibility conditions
Just the beginning: Eastern Europe, the CIS, European Russia, Scandinavia, the Middle East.
Beginning and middle: Western and Central Europe, Africa.
Fully: South America, Central and Northeast America, Southern Greenland and West Africa.
Mid and end: most of North America (except East), New Zealand, Polynesia.
Unavailable for observation: Ural, Siberia, Asia, Far East, Indonesia, Australia, most of Alaska and Greenland.
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статьи
It so happened that I like to take pictures of the Moon and the planets more – an interesting dynamics, quick and easy getting results. On the lunar-planetary capturing I have already written several instructions. Recently tried shooting planetary nebulae. These are small, bright and compact objects. Moreover, the surface brightness of some of these nebulae can be so high that even in a small telescope a greenish glow is noticeable.
For the selection and stacking of frames, I have long been using the program Autostakkert. Initially, it is designed to work with lunar-planetary videos. However, Autostakkert does very well with nebula / cluster videos. Over time, the author of the program added the ability to calibrate (loading a dark / flat frame).
In the video below, I will show from start to finish the process of processing the video of the planetary nebula NGC 6826 “Blinking.” This is a very bright nebula – when shooting, the shutter speed was only 0.5 s, that is, 2 frames per second were recorded. The video is partially cropped (long stages of addition and alignment). Using this technique, you can also process the video of clusters, nebulae, and galaxies.
Equipment: Celestron NexStar 8 SE telescope, Sky-Watcher EQ5 mount with motors, ZWO IR-cut filter, ZWO 224 MC camera (500 ms, gain 533, gamma 40). The video was recorded using the FireCapture program, the recording format is SER, it can be opened by the SER-player. A video with dark frames was also recorded – without it, color spots and bright thermal illumination from the right and bottom edges of the frame become noticeable in the final image. For a start, you can practice without shooting dark, but their use is highly desirable.
The processing steps are as follows.
1. From the clip with dark frames we create one dark frame (the so-called masterdark) in the Autostakkert program.
2. Then open the nebula clip in Autostakkert. We load the masterdark received earlier. We make alignment and sorting of frames by quality, indicate addition points, number of frames, and start the addition process. Also masterdark can be loaded after leveling and sorting.
3. The final result of the addition in the form of a single blurred frame is opened in the Fitswork program – we adjust the levels, if necessary, level the background, save.
4. Add sharpness with wavelets (Registax 6) or deconvolution (Astra Image).
5. Crop and save the picture.
Links to software: https://www.star-hunter.ru/en/software/
Выезд 24-25 мая 2014 года, 1 км к югу от Анапы.
Пожалуй, каждый новоиспеченный владелец телескопа мечтает поскорее выбраться в тёмное место со своим приобретением 🙂 А если не мечтает, то следует этим заняться! Дело в том, что даже небольшой 70-80 мм телескоп, находясь под незасвеченным небом, покажет галактики, туманности и скопления гораздо лучше и ярче, чем в условиях городской засветки. Именно для наблюдения этих слабосветящихся объектов (еще их называют дипскаи, или DSO) и проводятся все эти ночные вылазки. Единственное исключение – это Луна и планеты, они одинаково хорошо видны и в городе, и за городом. В данной статье я поделюсь своим опытом организации астрономических наблюдений. Да, можно просто закинуть телескоп в машину и уехать подальше, однако в таком случае Вас будет поджидать целое поле граблей, от которых я постараюсь Вас уберечь 🙂 Жителям сёл и деревень в этом отношении гораздо проще, так как в малонаселенных местах и фонарей меньше, однако я надеюсь, что мои советы будут полезны и для них.
