Some Beautiful Hubble Images

Here is a little collection of images from the Boston Big Picture.

Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2009

As you can see arranged in an advent calender format so you'll have to wait a few days to see them all.
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Not Particularly Astronomy

Here is a fun video I made a week or so ago and I’ve compiled the same footage a few times on my channel with different effects.

Here Is probably my favourite version:

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Comments Now Working

Sorry if anyone was trying to leave a comment and was unable to, I have now changed the settings and it should now work fine.


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Video Compilation November 2009

I've assembled some of my favourite clips into a compilation. Including music from Zero Project.

All uploaded in 720p (took 3 hours to upload and failed once).

I hope you enjoy it.

Update:

Using Unsharp Mask Filter as reccomended by Till Credner, Allthesky.com here is version 2:

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Moonlit Night

Another night, little stars but a beautiful moon.

A good example of the bane of astronomers, the full moon. Our incredibly bright satellite illuminates the night sky in a similar way light pollution does. This prevents viewing of any dimmer stars.

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The rise of the Pleidies

Another video of the night sky, enjoy.

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Moonrise

Another moon related video.



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04 Oct 09 Time Lapse Video

Another beautiful moonlit night, enjoy!

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05 Sep 09 Moonlit Night

Time Lapse Video of a beautiful moonlit night in my garden. 



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Updates September 09

As you may have noticed the change of the layout of the site. This post will summarize these changes.

The most major change made is that posts on the main page are not now shown in full. These have been condensed into small snippets that allow you to only expand the stories you are interested in. This seems to work well in most browsers however Mozilla Firefox seems to only expand certain articles, I'm looking to fix this bug so if you have any ideas (or solutions) please comment  now works fine (it was firefox being more selective about html tagging). 

Next is the new Label cloud, this should allow you to sort through the various articles quickly and find what you want faster.

Finally I have added the Blogroll which allows me to show you the blogs I read, and if anyone has any suggestions, I will be happy to review them.

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Camera hood and fan

In this post I'm going to examine how I made the camera hood and fan.

This is the camera hood and fan design I use to prevent condensation on my camera. The fan is quite effective, until the humidity gets too high.
I use a variety of materials to make this, as follows:

2x Cardboard Box
80cm Computer fan
Metal coat hanger (wrapped around the open end of cone)
Power supply or 6-12V battery (I adapted a universal power supply)
Large Bin bag
Duct tape or glue gun
Twine or string

To make this I just used trial and error. It depends on your camera’s field of view as to how wide your cone should be. However it is likely that you will want to create the cone as an oval shape as most cameras have a wider field than height.

Once you have worked out the approximate shape of your cone, attach the metal coat hanger to keep the shape of the end of the cone. Finally cut a hole at the top and attach the fan, pointing at the lens of the camera.

Once that was complete I attached the bin bag as to cover the camera completely to prevent light showers affecting the equipment.

Here’s the diagram:

From Posted Images

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Equipment, Software and Methods used to make the Time Lapse Astrophotography

In this article I'm going to explain, with images, how I take the time lapse video footage and compile it. By reading this information, you agree that neither the site, nor author can be personally be held responsible for any injury or damage cause by following these instructions. The instructions are purely here for reference and have no warranty or guarantee associated with them.

Equipment Used

The main piece of equipment I use to take the footage is a Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera. The camera I use is a Canon EOS 400d (also known as Rebel XTi). I use this camera mainly because the image quality is very good for my requirements, the camera is relatively good value at £400 ish (probably less now as it has been replaced by the 450d) and mainly because it is on loan from Bat Pro Ltd. (the company I work for). Most DSLR cameras will work fine as long as they have exposure times up to 30s. 

A sturdy tripod is necessary for any night time imaging, due to the nature of the exposures, up to 30s each, the camera needs to be very still to prevent any wobble which would blur out and ruining the image. I use a Benbo Classic tripod, this is bulky and sturdy and I believe quite old, but it gives me a massive scope of adjustment, putting the camera at almost any location desired, whilst still being rock solid.

Another vital piece of equipment is an automatic shutter timer, also known as an intervalometer. The one I use was purchased through eBay for around £40. These automatically trigger the shutter at regular intervals, you can do this yourself using manually triggering the shutter, however this is tedious, cold and generally inconvenient for 5 hours recording. Just clicking a few buttons and going to sleep, letting your gadget do its work is incredibly useful. Also some cameras can accept modified software to do this automatically so it may be worth checking yours using google.

Finally if you plan on taking images over a long time frame, the built in battery of the camera will probably not be suitable (up to 6hrs recording maximum ), you can either purchase a battery grip (which can double your battery life by packing two batteries in the grip), or as I use, an AC adapter, these enable “unlimited” power as long as you are near a power socket.

Lastly a high capacity memory card is needed to take enough images, 4GB should be enough for the 400d at low quality for almost 48 hours at 31s intervals, with the AC adapter, this is the only limiting Factor. 

The final issue is weather. Check your local weather using a reliable weather source (BBC is what I use however I also check with metcheck, MSN and the met office on occasions). Also assuming you will have a relatively clear night, the temperature could drop rapidly. This can cause condensation to build up on the lens. A hood for you camera and a fan blowing air over the lens can reduce most of these problems. 

Method

Assuming you are familiar with the equipment at hand this should be no problem. Once the camera is mounted on the tripod safely and the shutter timer is plugged in you are ready to go.If you have an option on the camera to disable continuous numbering do this now, as it'll be easier to compile later. Also remember to set the time on the camera accurately.

I recommend using a 31s interval on the timer, set the camera to automatically set the exposure (no flash setting works fine on 400d) and depending on card space set the camera to take low or medium quality images in fine mode.

Finally decide where to point the camera, I usually use Stellarium (found here) and run a simulation of the whole time the camera will be taking photos to see what stars will be shown, and whether the moon will be in the way (if you dont you can end up like this Here).

Once that's done, put in the card, switch on the camera, remove the lens cover (trust me this is easy to forget at night) and start the timer, (assuming you hear a click or two, its going fine!).

Compiling and Uploading

To compile the video I try to use free or open source software. I'll explain how to do this on MS Windows however I may add a Ubuntu/Mac OS method later on.

MS Windows Method

Software needed: Virtualdub (Here), Xvid (Here).

Copy files from the camera card into a new folder on hard drive or high speed removable device. Ensure these are numbered correctly something like IMG_XXXX.jpg, IMG_XXX(X+1).jpg, IMG_XXX(X+2).jpg (if this is not the case, select all files, sort by date modified, right click on first and rename, this will automatically rename the files with continuous numbers)

Firstly Install xvid, this will enable virtual dub to compress your videos to a reasonable size.

(install first or run from zip folder) Run virtual dub and accept the license agreement.

Go to File > Open Video file > and select the first photo (ensure automatically load linked segments is enabled).

This should open all the photos as individual frames. Next go to Video > Filters > Add.

The filters needed are as follows:

• resize ( I use Precise bicubic A=-0.75) at 1280 x 720 and crop to aspect ratio (16:9)
• temporal smoother (at setting 4)
• (optional) brightness/contrast to suit the video file

After this go to video > frame rate and set to 15 or 25 depending on how long and smooth you want playback.

Then Video > compression and select Xvid MPEG-4 Codec

Once done you can save these settings (file > save processing settings) and not have to play with them again (just load them at file > load processing settings).

When you are ready to render go to file > save as AVI and then wait for it to complete.

Congratulations on successfully rendering your first time lapse video.

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GCSE Astronomy Project

I thought I might upload some of the work I did for my GCSE coursework project.

This is the Observation part of the coursework, it is a single image made up of many separate frames all overlay over each other.

The images were taken on the 01/04/2008 between 21:29 and 23:29 (BST). This is a 2 hour time lapse image used to calculate the length of the sidereal day, i took the images with 2 minute intervals (manually)

Well here it is:

From Astronomy Stills

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Meteor Image

Just got a nice bright shot of a meteor, pretty impressive indeed.

As usual taken with the Canon 400D, 30s Exposure.

From Astronomy Stills

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Persied Meteor Shower 2009

For those of you that have been listening to the news recently will have heard of the recent meteor shower peak.

The peak was during the 11-13 August and during this time you could have seen meteors quite often.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, the weather for Shrewsbury has been poor over this period and I have been unable to capture any meteors using my equipment.

On the brighter side I seem to have solved this issue of condensation on the camera lens and will post details later.

I hope clear skies for all (however the forecast says otherwise), as the meteor shower should still be visible, and its definitely worth watching for an hour or so.

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TLT 10 and 9.

Just a note to say two new short videos have been uploaded.

TLT 9 Suffers from the lens misting up completely on the camera, this leaves a great effect at 1:30 as the sun evapourates the moisture off the lens. However this isn't great for astrophotography, so if you have any potential solutions to the condensation build up please contact me (either comment or email).

TLT9:

Direct Link

TLT10:

Direct Link

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Time Lapse Trial 8

New time lapse trial video.

Direct Link

From 0:51 to 0:55 Venus is visable. The focus was off during this video.

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The Boston Big Picture: Solar Eclipse

Just read a great article on the recent solar eclipse in Asia:

Here

The story closely looks at the effects of the eclipse on the population, rather than the astronomy behind it, however the high quality pictures definitely make it worthwhile to see.

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Latest Time Lapse Trial

Last night I was able to get some footage, the weather wasn't brilliant, with almost continuous cloud. However it was a chance to test the system, and it worked flawlessly, with a continuous shoot of over 12 hours, only partly filling the card.

The only thing really of note is that there is a brilliant sunrise imaged in this, the only point that had clear skies!

Well here it is:

Direct Link

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The Eagle has landed: 40 years on, Apollo 11

This story looks at the moon landings 40th anniversary

As you may have noticed, if you use Google, read the news or generally browse the tech news on the Internet that today is the 40th anniversary of men landing on the moon for the first time.

You probably remember the iconic images and video of the first few steps on the lunar surface, with Neil Armstrong's “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” (quite whether he meant to say “a man” and it slipped his tongue is still a hot debate).

You've probably heard the conspiracy theories, from the “non believers” (see also Attention Seekers). For those I have a few questions:

1.Why was the USSR quiet if NASA didn't land on the moon? Wouldn't they have said something if it was fake?

2.What do you say about the new photos from the LRO? (See above Right)

3.As Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke said “We've been to the Moon nine times. Why would we fake it nine times, if we faked it?”

Anyway, this is becoming off topic.

Landing men on the moon may have been a great publicity stunt by NASA and the USA, it was also an amazing achievement for the technology of the time. With such crude instrumentation (by today's standard) NASA managed the almost impossible feat of landing on the moon and bringing them back to earth safely.

Sources and links:

Image from: NASA LRO Apollo Landing Site Pictures

Wikipedia Moon Landing Hoax

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The ISS (I think)

A photograph of the ISS.

From Astronomy Stills

This streak I believe is the ISS (international Space Station)

Image taken 13/07/09 0005 (BST (GMT+1) camera time not set perfectly)

Camera aimed SE pointing approx 45 to 60 degress upwards (I know I didnt really look closely at this)

The way I tracked this is using Heavens Above (Here).

The details are as follows

Magnitude -3.4

Time above horizon: 2302-2307 (GMT)

Location: Longden ( 52.6521°N, 2.8252°W)

If anyone else has other ideas of the unidentified object feel free to comment.

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Trial videos uploaded

I've uploaded a selection of the better time lapse trial videos I've made, these were made with various different settings, as noted in each of the details. These were mainly made to test the ability of the system and the image settings.

The whole playlist can be viewed from here

I'll be posting some longer term (12 hr+) time lapse videos very soon, however the weather here is not very good. The trials taken so far have been limited to the battery life of the camera (5-6 Hrs). I have recently received an AC adapter for the camera so from now on I will be able to make longer videos (if the weather allows it!).

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First Video

Just mentioning that the first Abbott Astronomy video has been posted onto Youtube:

A direct link to the video to playback in HD is HERE

This is one of the trial videos that I've made to test out various settings and ideas.

The camera used is a Canon EOS 400d and it is linked to an automatic shutter trigger (more detailes of my method and equipment will be uploaded later).

The clip is only 15 seconds long, and from about 10 seconds onwards, the moon starts flooding out the picture. At 0.05 the streak of light (going diagonally top right to bottom left) I've identified and believe is the ISS.

General Description: This is one of the first time lapse videos I've made, a small trailer for what's to come.

Camera Info: Canon EOS 400d, 30 sec interval, No Flash auto exposure, 28mm

Video Info: 29.97fps, 372 frames, 1280x720 resolution, No filters

Location: Shrewsbury, UK 13/07/09 2252-0205

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Welcome

Welcome to Abbott Astronomy this is a website created by myself, Michael Abbott.

Currently this site is part of an extended project. However I plan to continue adding information and media far bond the project criteria as for me this site is going to be a hobby to fulfil my interests in astronomy.

This Site is currently in its early stages of development, I will be uploading information, videos, pictures and other media very soon.

In the meantime, watch this space.

Thanks

Michael

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