Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis)

Posted on by darek

Location: Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð – Island.

The great expeditions with PTMA (September 2019)

These are the last photos of the northern lights, which I was able to photograph during the trip to Iceland from September 2019.

During last nights I’ve took these photos I slept very little. The quantity as well as the scope of the performance that was taking place above my head, beat all the previous ones I’ve seen so far.

I decided to post only those more interesting shots. There are 23 photos that I selected among 37 GB of data (913 files) from material I’ve collected two nights in a row.

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 1 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 2 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 3 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 4 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 5 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 6 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 7 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 8 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 9 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 10 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 11 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 12 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 13 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 14 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 15 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 16 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 17 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 18 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 19 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 20 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 21 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 22 of 23

Aurora Borealis – Miðdalskot, Bláskógabyggð - Photo nr 23 of 23

The equipment with I took wonderful photos:

  • Body: Canon 6D,
  • Lens: Irix 15
  • ISO 1600
  • Lights: 10 [s] – 15 [s]
  • Precessing: RawTherapee oraz Gimp

More details about the phenomenon itself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora

Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis)

Posted on by darek

Island – Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis) – The great expeditions with PTMA (September 2019).

Aurora Borealis – Hellissandur, Island - Zdjęcie nr 7

It’s been far over half a year since the trip and I keep coming back to memories. I don’t think it will ever end. It’s like addiction.

Aurora Borealis – Hellissandur, Island - Zdjęcie nr 8

The equipment with I took wonderful photos:

  • Body: Canon 6D,
  • Lens: Irix 15,
  • ISO 1600,
  • Light: 10[s],
  • Processing: RawTherapee and Gimp.
Aurora Borealis – Hellissandur, Island - Zdjęcie nr 9

Aurora Borealis – Hellissandur, Island - Zdjęcie nr 10

Więcej szczegółów o samym zjawisku: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zorza_polarna

Pinwheel Galaxy (M101 / NGC 5457)

Posted on by darek

is a face-on spiral galaxy distanced 21 million light-years (six megaparsecs) away from Earth in the constellation Ursa Major. M101 is a large galaxy, with a diameter of 170,000 light-years. By comparison, the Milky Way has a diameter of 100,000 light years. It has around a trillion stars, twice the number in the Milky Way. It has a disk mass on the order of 100 billion solar masses, along with a small central bulge of about 3 billion solar masses.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy

Pinwheel Galaxy (M101 / NGC 5457)

A good example showing how a coma mirror can break a nice picture. I’ve hope, that the coma corrector I will buy in the coming week, will eliminate the above mentioned optical defect in the entire camera frame.

Pinwheel Galaxy (M101 / NGC 5457) - 50% crop
  • Photos taken at May 2020,
  • Equipment: Canon EOS 6D, CT10 Newton 1200/250[mm], F4.8, NEQ6Pro.,
  • Composition: Astro Pixel Processor,
  • Processing: GIMP + plug-ins,
  • Lights: 81 x 120[s], ISO 1600,
  • Correction frames: Flats, DarkFlats, Darks, Bias

SynScan GOTO v4 controller – trouble with buttons

Posted on by darek
SynScan GOTO v4 controller

Over the last year of using my SynScan GOTO controller, I’ve noticed that the ESC button doesn’t always work as expected. Somehow I lived with it limitations. Last time the left Ra button, also began to fail and did not always connect. I could live with it for some time and it was, but lately it was even worse. After pressing the Ra button, this one did not always bounce up and the mount started to rotate like a carousel. After all, I have to mention that I had many trips together with my equipment and it is not a set that was used in the static way. A red light came on in my head – something needs to be done against trouble coming. There were not many options available, just two. First I am sending the controller to the service or second I will do something myself to fix those issues. My engineer nature took over (as always), I started to solve the problems myself.

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