Pictures of Moon and Sunspots

Blogged by Xiao Sun on February 25, 2010 and tagged with Sample Images, Moon, Sun.

Let me introduce you Ernie Mastroianni. Based in Whitefish Bay, USA, Ernie photographs the Moon and the Sun with his DMK 31AF03.AS astronomy camera. He also uses this camera for deep sky guiding. Yesterday he sent us a few pictures of the Moon, the Sunspot and his equipments.

The Moon

The Moon

The Sunspot

His e-mail is full of details:

Attached are images of the Moon and Sun, taken with your The Imaging Source DMK 31AF03.AS monochrome camera attached to the axial port of my Questar 3.5 Duplex at prime focus (1400mm at f/15).

I use a C-to-T mount adapter to connect the camera to my Questar and capture the images to my MacBook using Craterlet, a freeware program supplied by Stark Labs. I also have an an infrared cutoff filter in the imaging chain.

The Moon was photographed Feb. 18, 2010 from my backyard in suburban Milwaukee. The Sun was taken on Jan. 12, 2010 from the same location. I use afull-aperture Identi-View filter on the Questar for solar imaging.

Each image is a layered combination of about 250 frames selected from 401. I use Registax to align, stack and process the photos.

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I also use the camera on my guide scope with PHD guiding software when imaging deep sky. For me, this camera has proven to be a versatile andreliable tool.

He also provided us with the link to his own astro gallery http://www.pbase.com/emastroianni/moon.

Thank you Ernie for the pictures and comments! Keep up good work.

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