Eclipse from Melbourne with timelapse

[rustigsmed]

Hi all,

Forecast wasn't looking good but the skies were clearish so decided to setup the eq mount, I've two 12" newts but the dob's focal length puts the moon just inside a canon's sensor with no margin for error, the f4 imaging newt was right on the money.

was difficult polar aligning still light, and the eclipse was underway when I decided to take a timelapse. of course 10 mins before totality it was blanketed. Decided to stick it out and got some good shots, also the timelapse wasn't a total fail either, I see it as good practice for when its clear the whole way through :thumbsup:

it really is a lovely site even without a scope.

timelapse below
https://www.flickr.com/photos/80336656@N07/15291875979/in/photostream/lightbox/

need some cropping/editing of the other shots, straight out of the camera.


cheers,

rusty

[N1]

Some great shots and timelapse with an occultation to boot.
Agree - TLEs look great with the unaided eye!

[michaellxv]

Well done for sticking it out, the clouds add a bit of drama to the timelapse especially when it clears for the occultation.

[rustigsmed]

Thanks Michael packing up definitely crossed my mind - I was wondering what the record was for taking photos of clouds.

I might have to look into software to eliminate the up and down movement of the moon just to clean it up a bit.



Cheers! Yep the occultation actually came out alright which was a nice bonus.

[multiweb]

Little pink to my taste. I really like your timelapse. :thumbsup: Nice and smooth. You have a decent frame rate. What intervals did you use between exposures?

I'm having issues registering some of the shots for mine too. Lots of manual tweaks to stop the shaking. I wish there was one simple button to press and fix the jittering.

Looks like you had some clouds. Good on you for sticking with it. You've got some fantastic stills out of it all.

[rustigsmed]

thanks Marc,

yes - way pinker than everyone else's here - that is actually straight out of the camera (astro mod) - I've just built a new computer and need to shift all my astro apps across yet. Am hoping a simple RGB align will produce the nice copper colour everyone else has - although that won't help the timelapse.

I tried the anti-shake functions in windows movie maker last night and it made it worse - possible due to the cloud sections it is very jittery or it tried to align the darker parts rather than the moon.

I am hoping Castrator will work just worried about the FOV from memory its better for planets.

The frame rate is high enough that I could slow it down more and it would still be smooth but wanted the path of the shadow to stand out, it is one image per 6 seconds. I was hooked up to Backyard EOS but had magic lantern controlling the camera. the great thing about that is that it is very easy to change the exposure settings between shots.

cheers

[multiweb]

Mine turned out pink as well. What I did is tweak the white balance on the bright moon uneclipsed until I got the natural greyish color and apply it to all the subs equally. It seems to work.

I have successfully registered about 800 subs with the FFT script in PixInsight. I have about 50 odd shots that I'll have to tweak manually.
I had a clear sequence with no clouds and it still jitters in places. When the bright crescent gets thinner or brighter and also during totality because there are stars moving in the background so sometime the scripts registers on the stars rather than the lunar disc.



I did 5s exposure intervals for the Saturn occultation and had over 1000 subs to play with so it certainly makes for a smooth motion and you can slow it down to 15fps and still keep the fluidity. This time I shot every 20s and kept changing the ISO. So a lot less frames to play with. During totality I was shooting 5s subs. I wasn't sure how long I'd need so that's why I made a choice of 20s intervals. I ended up with 800 subs or so. Gives me 30s of video if I stretch it. Time for a bit of creative stretching and fading ;)

[rustigsmed]

looking forward to seeing your results marc! sounds like you have put a lot of effort in - probably a good thing you didn't go with 5 seconds this time around! 50 manual is still a lot, i'm sure the creative stretching will string us along ;) i'm not familiar with pixinsight, but it will get a run once the computer is up and running properly.

with the amount of cloud in the middle probably not worth me going overboard on tweaking the timelapse. if it were clear all the way through definitely. fingers are crossed for the next one, conditions weren't well suited here but next time, polar aligning the night before would be a winning option :lol: that would take care of most of the drift.

I'm happy with the backyard eos and magic lantern combo, and recommend it for people looking at doing the same next time round, so easy to adjust with BY eos saving/previewing the files while ML does its intervalometer magic, and tweaking exposure between subs with the manual buttons.